One of Moscow’s fighter jets has been shot down by Ukrainian forces, according to a military blogger with links to the Russian air force. Another pro-Moscow milblogger said that the Sukhoi Su-34 aircraft had been downed by a Western-supplied F-16.
Once they use those F-16s to establish air dominance someone needs to give them a few A-10s to help them speed up retaking their territory.
Or they could just put sanctions on emirates or thailand where russian are chilling, stop sending more war toys to the ukrainian government and the war would be over within a month.
Pakistan proved AIM-120s are still king in the air for MRAAMs back in 2019 against India’s Su-30s.
Obviously there’s a lot of skill and technique involved, but you get a pretty nice edge with the range. Apparently the IAF said that the pilots couldn’t get a shot off without first entering the no escape zone, or at the very least felt uncomfortable getting locked up before they could lock the F-16s.
Although now that China has brought back LRAAMs, it’ll be cool to see what the USA makes as the successor to the AIM-54.