A NOTE OF INCAUTION. When we read reports of how Iran or Venezuela or China has managed to purchase some large number of Su-30s or some other advanced fighter aircraft, and then read about how the Su-30 has outfought the F-15 in exercises, it's important to remember that technology isn't determinative in military affairs, and especially in the context of air superiority. I've been slogging through Abraham Rabinovich's The Yom Kippur War for the last week, and one of the things that stands out is the utter supremacy of the Israeli Air Force in aerial combat, in spite of technological equivalence with the Arab states. Put simply, flight hours and good recruiting methods overcome technological and numerical advantage rather dramatically, and the US has (along with Israel) the best trained fighter pilots in the world. For reasons both political and economic (Chinese fighter jocks on long exercises deciding to land in Taiwan rather than go home, for example), most potential foes can't come close to meeting the level of training that the US conducts. Finally, of course, we do have numerical and technological superiority, even without the F-22. All of the scary Su-30s that Iran is supposed to be buying would become scary craters by the second or third day of any conflict. --Robert Farley
