the su27 is a great air superiority fighter. its great usage of thrust vectoring allows it to pull extremely high g\'s, perform stunts such as the "cobra".. other such planes such as the f-15 eagle, or the fa-18 hornet, or even the higly agile f-16 cannot preform many of these moves because of the strain put on the wings of the airplane.
the russians were alot farther ahead in air superiority technology than we were, then we outspent them on nukes, and they went bankrupt, lost all of their money, couldnt fight. meanwhile we were still playing catch up, and after many unsucessful tests, in cooperation with lockheed martin\'s skunkworks, we created the f-22 which hasnt been put into full constuction of squadrons until earlier this year... so go figure, it took us till about now to get our fighter that is better than the su27 off the ground. yeah, if they were smart they would have "owned" us.
dont forget, they got to space first....
all in all both planes rock. i want one, any of you guys willing to donate? eh ill just join the airforce
(god i cant type well its been along time)