The Most important Statistic, and the one that cannot be graphed or Quantified
You put a bad pilot in a good airplane, and he or she fights a good pilot in a less capable or equivelant aircraft.....The good pilot wins every time.
Airframes and the systems are just tools, they don't mean a damn thing if you have more money than brains and experience.
Case in point, the Falklands war, on paper the Supersonic Mirage III should have had a picnic eating Sea Harriers alive, at least on paper, but the operational reality was that the RN had the better pilots, and they weren't flying at the maximum range of the Harrier, so they could defeat a supersonic aircraft with a subsonic aircraft, especially when the Mirage could not loiter and dogfight.
On the other side of that example, Argentinian pilots flew the Skyhawk A4Q, Ex Israeli Dagger ( Mirage 5), both old obselete versions of the Mirage and Skyhawk, without alot of electronic support, and still inflicted potentially crippling damage against the premier Naval Air defense systems in the Royal Navy, and that done through visual bombing, requiring overflying the target. not very healthy thing to do in the late 20th century, or now for that matter.
I will not refer to the Etendarde exocet. That is another discussion of missile performance, not aircraft.
My point, performance stats are such a small indicator of true combat capability, the true indicator is using those capabilities and matching them to realistic pilot/mission planning, and most inpotantly, pilot training and capability.
