My brother sent me a fantastic video of a flight demonstration by the Russian-built Sukhoi SU-30 fighter aircraft.  Says Wikipedia:

The Sukhoi Su-30 (NATO reporting name ‘Flanker-C’) is a highly agile military aircraft developed by Russia’s Sukhoi Aviation Corporation in 1996. It is a multirole air superiority fighter, but can also play an effective role as a strike and offensive support aircraft. The aircraft is comparable with USA’s F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and F-15E Strike Eagle.

Here’s the video:

Says retired U.S. Air Force Major General Hank Stelling as recently as January 5 of this year:

This is for those of you who will understand how remarkable this really is.  Any way you slice it, pretty impressive.  Great camera work.  This remarkable aircraft and its pilot demonstrate what I thought impossible for a high-speed jet fighter.  In the SU-30MK, Russian aviation has surpassed that of the US and its NATO allies.  This truly impressive fighter can stall from high-speed flight to stop in less than a second.  It can fall back on its tail, without compressor stall, and go into a flat spin and recover in less than a minute.  There is no aircraft in any country’s inventory that could stand up to it in a dogfight.  (Emphasis added by Effluent.)

The Wikipedia entry elaborates on some of the technological capabilities of the aircraft:

Angle of attack: The Su-30MK’s aerodynamic configuration is an unstable-in-longitude triplane (see relaxed stability). To increase lifting effectiveness and enhance maneuverability of the aircraft, canards are installed. They are deflected automatically to ensure controlled flight at high angles-of-attack. However, canards are installed only in some Su-30 variants like the Su-30MKI.

Pugachev’s Cobra maneuver: The integrated aerodynamic configuration, combined with the thrust vectoring control capability, results in unprecedented maneuverability and unique takeoff and landing characteristics. Equipped with a digital fly-by-wire system, the Su-30MK is capable of performing a number of unique maneuvers. They include the well-known Pugachev’s Cobra and the Bell. While performing a somersault maneuver, the aircraft makes 360-degree turn in the pitch plane without any loss of altitude. In the controlled flat spin maneuver, the aircraft performs several full turns in the horizontal plane, with zero forward speed, virtually on the spot.

2D thrust vectoring control: Differential ±15-degree deflection of the engines’ axisymmetric nozzles (with turn axes positioned at 32-deg angle to each other) enables pitch/yaw thrust vectoring control. Depending on the maneuver to be performed, nozzles deflections can be synchronized with or differ from the deflections of horizontal tail planes. However only the Su-30 MKI variant has 2D TVC.

The canards are clearly visible in this view:

That stuff might sound like gobbledygook to some, but you have to admit that the aircraft, when mated with the particular pilot who performed in the video, is sheer poetry to watch.For more information on this topic:

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