It is, and they stopped making them in 1994, so they’re all getting pretty up there in age, and they can’t really make more of them. They also don’t have an airframe that can do what the 31 can do - it’s big party piece is a fuck-off powerful PESA radar. It’s not maneuverable, but it’s super fast, can shoot extremely dangerous and very long-range missiles, and can burn through a lot of jamming with the sheer power of its radar.
TL;DR every one of those that Russia loses creates a mission capacity hole that can’t easily be filled.
It is, and they stopped making them in 1994, so they’re all getting pretty up there in age, and they can’t really make more of them. They also don’t have an airframe that can do what the 31 can do - it’s big party piece is a fuck-off powerful PESA radar. It’s not maneuverable, but it’s super fast, can shoot extremely dangerous and very long-range missiles, and can burn through a lot of jamming with the sheer power of its radar.
TL;DR every one of those that Russia loses creates a mission capacity hole that can’t easily be filled.