you are a fanatic you remember the history of Mathias Ruth a young german who crosssed all the soviet airspace till he landed at the kremilin with its little plane during manys hours without been detecting by any radar.Imagine now if that little plane a tourist plane i say were a cruise missile what would be arrived? i would to say this fact show there is a question of quality of equipement. You speak of quality of training but i must remember you that during the cold war west pilots are more hours of training than the east ones including russia pilots.i will end this topic in saying that SR71 during the cold war violetd all times and with impunity Soviet airspace.Electronic was not a soviet field, it was and and is now west field.....

The MiG-29 lacks nightfighting capability.

Well first of all he was detected. Second, of all the air traffic over Russia they hardly gave a little plane too much notice. Third, those who did notice awaited orders from Moscow. The last thing commies ever encouraged was initiative.

Oh yeah and as far as SR71 goes, first of all you are talking about a plane with a max cruising speed of 3.3 mach at an altitude of 85000 feet. Second, 29As were built 11 lost.2 Bs were built 1 lost. http://www.voodoo.cz/sr71/sr71losses.html All lost to malfunctions etc. And as far as overflights, it did do some overflights, but as far as I know, none too deep as Gary Powers in U2. Deep reconaissance was done mainly by orbiting reconnaissance satellites. http://www.nasm.si.edu/research/aero/aircraft/lockheed_sr71.htm Now, as far as cruise missiles go, russians have cruise missiles of their own and not the puny versions of scuds Saddam wound up having. No one argues the fact that cruise missiles are an effective weapon, within it's area of effect. The thing is ships that launch those would be as good as dead, not to mention the carriers, once they launch aircraft and are detected. The difference being, we are not talking about a confrontation with a third world country here. One has to be realistic as far as expectations of losses and areas of superiority go. The bulk of the combat would likely take place in the fields of Europe and Asia. And it would be the ground combat that would help determine areas of Air Superiority in the end. Since airpower does not take nor hold the ground.

could the stealthinazation of aircrafts spell the end of dog fights.

yes they have cruise missiles but all most of them missed their target during their developpement and that fact had suspended their devolppement till the end of the cold war.One who missed its target landed in Sweeden in 1983 if i remembered well. one another landed simply in sea after missing its target

Yes no one was shooting down but i can tell you SR71 did deep reconaissance.at the end of the last year i saw a declassified document about SR 71 activities.We saw the russian pilots and radar officer saying thier frustated with SR71 the saw it violting thier space but they were unable to shot it down.....

It was decteted so late that President Gorbatchev was so furious that he punished his chief airforce and others officers!!!! for a nuclear missile an interception in a final approach is worth nothing

Yeah, because by the time the permission from Moscow has arrived, the aircraft was no longer in Russian space.

> could the stealthinazation of aircrafts spell > the end of dog fights Well, if you think about this to its logical conclusion, stealth spells the end of BVR combat, not of dogfights...