Sure. But I doubt they were released by the US government. I think that's the difference here. If EA wants to make a game where you can splash Flankers or F-15s...whatever. However, if the US government / USAF / USN were to make a game where you were flying missions against Chinese J-11s, I'd think they'd get a little…

I hope the Peshmerga kick ISIS' ass. Having said that, one of those armored vehicles had a really close resemblance to this.

This is a 1/5 scale RC model of the ATD-X from about 7 years ago used to test angle-of-attack. The general layout of the aircraft has remained the same, although the nose looks longer to me.

Overall it's small, but this is especially noticeable in the wings. So, it's not going to carry a lot of fuel and it's not going to be able to hang an appreciable amount of weapons under the wings. The range of this aircraft is probably pretty close to that of a lawn dart. Maybe it's some kind of scale model to test…

In Pierre's world, any aircraft that was not designed by Pierre Sprey is a piece of shit.

@T5Killer. No biggie. There were so many MiG-21 variants that it wouldn't surprise me to find out one of them was armed with a chainsaw and a 120mm cannon.

Actually, some MiG-21s (MiG-21F-13) had a single thirty round NR-30 30mm cannon. Several US fighters in Vietnam succumbed to it.

Well the F-35A has a cannon, so it's hard for me to understand why the F-35C doesn't, especially since it has a larger internal volume. The F-35B is the variant with the greatest need for a gun considering it will be used by the Marines, but I'm guessing the lift-fan takes up most of the space. It's a damn shame.

Oh. I'm not saying we should emulate the Soviets. And yes, commonality between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. were different, even back then. They tried to reuse engines, radars, guns, and even major build assemblies between aircraft. The design bureaus were more or less forced into commonality through the use of handbooks…

The USAF (and post WWII America) has always had a fascination with high tech above all else. Just look at aircraft development in the 1950s and '60s. America rarely iterated on its designs. Each aircraft was distinct from its predecessor. Of course, this leads to very expensive aircraft that were so complex that they…

The Air Force never learns its lesson. Faster, higher-flying, technologically advanced, and expensive have always won out. They did they same thing in 1947. Get rid of all the prop driven aircraft because they couldn't survive in the world of fast, high-flying jets. Then the Korean War breaks out and the F-80 and F-84…