Good overview with photos, poor in tactics and combat deployment

Rating:

What I have in my hands is 144 pages Modern Fighters First Edition book by Mike Spike, re-print of the year 2000 UK Pegasus Publishing. It is an excellent book describing modern fighters around the globe: Tornado, Typhoon, Mirage 2000, Rafale, Harrier, MiGs, Sukhoi family, as well as US, Sweden, and even Chinese airplanes. However, for some reason I was expecting a little bit more out this book especially in the tactics and maneuvering against enemy aircraft. I remember the older book either with the same or with the similar title which was about twice thicker describing less number of fighters, however in much more details. For example, it was a good chapter about British Harrier describing the development, engine's cutaway view, weapons, and deployment during the South Atlantic Conflict in 1982. There were British pilots who first deployed change of the vectoring thrust in the combat revolutionizing the modern air warfare. Anyway, I would still recommend this book for the wide range of people mostly due to its affordability and amount of useful information contain including excellent photos.

On Brassey's Modern Fighters

Rating:

Awesome!!!! Though I'm only 10, accurate photos and easy- to- read text allowed me to learn a lot about fighters.

Good info and photos; sloppy editing

Rating:

This is a worthwhile book for those interested in modern military aviation. Covered here are 16 modern fighters in service - China's J-7 and J-8, Tornado, Mirage 2000, Su-27/35 family, Mig 29, Mig 31, Harrier/AV-8, Eurofighter, Rafael, F-14, F-15, F-16, F-18, Sweden's SAAB-39 Grippen, and Taiwan's IDF, and 4 aircraft in development stage: Sukhoi's S-37 Berkut, JSF's, and F-22. Curiously, among the more fascinating fighters still in development, 3 are not covered here: India's LCA, Japan's F-2, and Russia's Mig 1.44/MFI.

It discusses some newer technologies like stealth, unmanned combat vehicles, laser weapons, and thrust-vectoring (mentioning X-31). Fighter maneuvers and tactics are also covered. Mike Spick does a good job describing each integral part of a modern fighter plane, like the propulsion system, wing aspect ratio, ejection seats, radar, etc. There are nice photos. The charts comparing performances of aircraft are interesting.

The most obvious flaw of this book is very sloppy editing. Typos are abundant. There are some errors, some obviously accidental (e.g., it mentions that Taiwan started IDF development in 1992 -- but it should be 1982 -- in 1992 IDF was well in production and Taiwan had ordered F-16 and Mirage 2000).

Also I wished that Mike Spick could give more subjective views of the aircraft. For example, how is F-16 compared to F-18? Why would an airforce choose one over the other (e.g. Spain, Canada, and Australia all chose F-18 and no F-16). Although he dose give good opinions and comparisons when talking about the Su-27 family.

Overall, still a pretty good book.

Its not bad

Rating:

The book gives you a quick "brief" overview (and I stress brief) in how to read the fighter aircraft specifications; after that you are giving a brief history of "modern" fighter aircraft. There are some errors in the book and the one that really standsout is the image of the F15E in which the caption calls it a F15C as there's a WSO seat back there. F15E are known to fly solo on occassion as the only time when the WSO comes onboard is for A/G training or a real life sortie.

The F-14 or aicraft in the same layout (SU27, Mig29) wing loading isn't correct as even states that the pancake section even lower this data even more but doesn't continue on explaining by how much, which throws the graph in the early chapters out the window.

The top speed data isn't correct as the F-15C has practically the same limit as the F-14.

It's a good book though if you just want to learn something quickly but if you want to learn more, you'll have to look elsewhere. I wasn't pleased with the book as I was hoping to learn more.

Great text and photographs.

Rating:

The book was absolutely well worth reading. The
photos are great with lots of aerial shots. Text
is easy to read and comprehend, especially for
those who do not know anything about military
aircraft. Anyone interested in fast-jets should
purchase this book as a starter.