Everybody loves the 'hard metrics' such as climb rate, weapons carried, thrust, etc...
Let us take the extremes of the hard metrics: F-16 vs Sopwith Camel.
If we put the greenest of pilots into the F-16 and the most experienced of combat pilots into the Sopwith, the F-16 would win in a sec. I said the F-16 and not the pilot.
But if we close the hard metrics gap between fighters, something like the F-4 and F-15, then it becomes less aircraft and more pilot that will make the difference between victory and defeat. Look up Operation Bolo.
Therein lies the problem with looking for hard metrics to make a comparison between two fighters, which inevitably lead to outlandish declarations about whose air force is better than whose: the pilot.
The pilot is the unknown and the problem for such comparisons.
The aircraft does not fight on its own. It needs a human decision maker and this factor is always an unknown. Items like roll rate, max thrust, and cruising speed are tangible comparators. Whereas items like morale, training, motivation, and institutional support are intangible comparators. The latter controls the former.
One example from WW II is the famous 'Thach Weave'...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thach_Weave
The tactic was invented before its inventor even met that 'most maneuverable opponent'.
The differences between the hard metrics of the American and the Japanese fighters were greater than %10 overall, the threshold of which fighter's capabilities overtake pilot's capabilities and this comparison favors the Japanese Zero. And yet the intangible metrics of personal experience, study, and creativity allowed the technically inferior American fighters to defeat the superior Japanese fighters.
In aerial combat, even with today's modern fighters, a break, forced or not, means a run for safety. You most likely will not have a second chance to get a favorable position for another shot.
In many analysts' opinions, the overall differences between the J-10 and the F-16 are less than %10. Sure, you can find discrete items in each fighter that will be quantifiably higher/better than its opponent, but there are plenty of real life experiences like Operation Bolo that will challenge conventional wisdom regarding hard metrics. Between the J-10 and the F-16, it will depends on the pilots.
Another issue is mission types. Both the J-10 and F-16 are multi-roles. With air-air, your opponent is the same as you, but with air-ground, your opponent lives in a different environment, wields different weapons against you, moves differently, and generally outnumbers and outguns you. The F-16 has proven itself to be a formidable long range strike and even CAS platform in actual combat. The J-10 has not. If you must import your defense and if your immediate neighbors are not friendly, which platform would be more attractive to buy ?
Am not saying hard metrics are useless. In fact, hard metrics are vital clues as to how they will place limits on pilot's skills. If you know the jet will out accelerate you, that is a %99.999 safe assumption that a high speed (or even Mach) dash will be a part of his combat repertoire. The limit was changed from your previous opponent's inability to escape you to one where he can outrun you. But just as hard metrics are clues on limits, they also forces creativity on not to get into situations where those limits comes into play. You cannot assume your opponents do not know how to avoid those traps.
What I learned from the martial arts are also common in other forms of combat, although in different words: A good fighter hides his weaknesses, but a great fighter uses them.
For now, and probably for at least the next 50 yrs, it is accepted that in order to be 'operational', meaning no longer a student pilot, you need to have 80-100 hrs of actual fight time. It means that if your annual flight hours are less, your skills would atrophied to that of a student pilot level. Then in order to be combat deployable, you need 120-150 annual flight hours. For US, our criteria would add 20 hrs more to that range.
Flying is where you are able to put theory of a tactic into practice. In the movie 'Top Gun', the 'hard deck' is 10,000 ft. It means no combat-type maneuvers below that altitude. It is a safety issue. In real life combat, there is no 'hard deck'. What this means is that without actually flying, even with some limits that do not exist in real combat, you will not know what it is like to have your tactic challenged by the environment and/or by your opponent.
The best fighter pilots are %99.999 of the time have the highest flying hours.
J-10-B and J-10-C
