4.5 Gen fighters arguing about fighting at the merge is just sooo passe.
Don't you stick and rudder geriatrics know it's all about Gen 5s killing the opposition during flight briefing ?
Seriously, 3D thrust vectoring really doesn't matter unless you are very slow and trying to make all that fancy high alpha stuff work, after all - speed is life, right ? RAF Typhoon pilots have always had an unhealthy "thing" about the Su-30MKI, having previously stated that it's the one aircraft they (the Typhoon jockeys) can't live with at the merge. Was it Sun Tzu who said that the fight is won or lost before the battle ever begins ?
Strangely all this talk of 4.5s twirling around each other 500m apart and trying to make their silly little HMCS lock on to each other for a high angle off boresight kill is making me a Belieber about the whole F-35 argument. Who coulda thunk it ?