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Comment by wereHamster | Hacker News Reader

How come the US Air Force has Sukhoi aircrafts? Did they buy them from Russia? I can't imagine Russia selling their top aircrafts to an enemy.

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The USAF has a long history of acquiring foreign aircraft[1], sometimes through defectors, other times by purchasing them from foreign militaries. I don't know the source of the Su-27's in question here but I believe the USAF acquired a few airframes from the Ukrainian Air Force. Various MiG's have also been acquired from the Moldovan and Belarusian Air Forces.

Also, there were two Su-27's for sale privately in the US a number of years ago[2].

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4477th_Test_and_Evaluation_Squ...

[2]http://www.prideaircraft.com/flanker.htm

According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Su-27#Operators)

Two Su-27s were delivered to the U.S. in 1995 from Belarus.[60][72] Two more were bought from Ukraine in 2009 by a private company, Pride Aircraft to be used for aggressor training for U.S. pilots.[73]

The two Su-27s that Pride Aircraft acquired and certified were big news when they were publicly put on sale around 2009-2010 but I'm not sure if they were actually bought by the USAF or a private company to do contracted DACT.

I imagine it is tough work maintaining them. A decades old soviet plain, and you have no access to the manufacturer. I suppose the cannot just call Russia and order parts.

Similar to Iran trying to maintain a fleet of F-14s.

I've seen SU-27s a few times in the air and on the ground here in Australia. The Indonesian air force has them and they have visited our shores as part of exercise 'Pitch Black' in the past, and probably will do in the future.

MiGs are not 'top secret' jets behind the iron curtain any more. Lots of friendly Air Forces have them now (India etc.) and they routinely co-operate with western forces on exercises.

According to wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Su-27, there are two in private ownership in the US. It's been in service since the mid-80s so not so new, and not surprisingly available outside Russia.

Reminds of a scene in JAG where the main characters, 2 US military officers, steal a Russian jet. The Russians wonder why they stole the plane, as they could have just bought it. [1] I miss that show.

[1] https://youtu.be/Ei9KEF7OsKQ?t=2m

Well, it kind of happened but with a Soviet pilot (defection).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-25

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Belenko

And does Russia have any F-16s?

It's very likely. The US has sold F-16s extensively.

I don't believe so, or at least I've never heard about Russian F-16s. Iran still flies some old F-14s though.

The USAF seems to be pretty strict about not allowing more modern fighters to end up in private hands. There are a number of F-86s, F-104s, F-5s and I believe one F-4 Phantom still flying around the US in the hands of private collectors and air museums but nothing newer like F-14s, F-15s, F-16s or F-18s.

Edit: While I've never heard of any F-16s in Russia I'm sure the Russians have had plenty of time inspecting and probably even flying F-16s, it was a very widely exported plane.

Never mind that Iran is still flying F-14s...

Does Russia have an equivalent of ITAR? If not, that could partly explain why US aircraft are less commonly sold.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arm...

> And does Russia have any F-16s?

Not publically but I would assume they've had access to Venezuela's F-16A/Bs, though those are probably in fairly poor condition by now and are nowhere representative of current avionics capabilities.

After the close of the Vietnam war the USSR, and lesserly Poland and Czechoslovakia, extensively tested US-supplied ex-VNAF ( southern ) aircraft such as the F-5E but since then such opportunities have been very limited.

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