Apart from technically superior radar and weapons systems, the USAF Weapons School[0] teaches USAF fighter pilots how to engage within the envelope of those weapons.

In the early part of the Vietnam war, the air-to-air missiles kept missing the target due to poor pilot training. The result of the Ault report[1] and subsequent TOPGUN[2] program worked to remedy the shortcoming in the training. The USAF FWS was created after seeing the results of the Navy TOPGUN training.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USAF_Weapons_School

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ault_Report

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_Strike_Figh...

It makes me wonder a little bit if their skills are vastly overestimated.

Experienced USAF pilots have hit the ground during combat operations. That doesn't mean they were not skilled pilots, just that they made a deadly mistake.

I didn't agree with this at first, but they claim that modern missiles are able to differentiate between heat signature of plane body and engine nozzle. Also modern missiles are capable of 50G turns. That G-loading tells nothing about turning circle, but it does tell surprisingly nicely how quickly you can deviate from straight line. Fighter plane loses every time from every angle at every speed.

The only problem of air-to-air missile dominance is that they burn through all of their fuel relatively quickly. Once that happens, maneuverability goes down really quick. So the "no escape zone" is crucial and it varies from missile to missile.

If you want to stay alive, you need to out-range or surprise the enemy. Either stealth, superior radar or longer range missiles.

It looks like fighters have become very expensive and very mobile SAM sites. It beats me why countries without aircraft carriers would ever pick F35. You can get ~50 trucks with Pirate IRST and METEOR missiles with the same price. More area covered at any given time while survivability goes up like hell I don't know what.