COMPARISON OF MIG-29 AND F-16 AIRCRAFT IN THE FIELD OF SUSCEPTIBILITY TO DESTRUCTION IN COMBAT

Abstract

Because the Polish Air Force currently uses F-16 and MiG-29 aircraft, the aim of the study was to conduct a comparison of the susceptibility to destruction in combat of these two aircraft. The first part of the work concerned the analysis of individual critical components, such as: general characteristics of the airframe structure, aircraft engine, flight control system, fuel system, aircraft weapons, radar system. The index of susceptibility to destruction in combat was defined considering the listed critical components and the following types of enemy weapon: aircraft gun, air-to-air missile, anti-aircraft gun, surface-to-air missile. The analysis proved that the aircraft have similar susceptibility to damage in combat, a slight advantage of the F-16 aircraft in this respect was determined. The presented scheme can be used to analyze other aircraft. Proposals of aircraft modifications, directions of further actions, possibilities of using the described method were presented. The method can be used to making decisions by governments regarding the purchase aircraft for their fleets and identify aircraft critical components with high susceptibility to destruction in order to introduce appropriate modifications by military aircraft manufacturers.