SU-27s for sale in Illinois

I can hear the dealer's sales pitch now: "What do I have to do for you to fly out of here today in your very own Sukhoi SU-27 Flanker?"

As blogger Dave Majumdar has reported, Illinois-based Pride Aircraft is offering two demilitarized SU-27s. Pride specializes in selling Czech-made L-39 jet trainer, and acquired the former Ukrainian Flankers from a previous customer. The aircraft have been stripped of all military avionics and weapons systems, and are intended to be sold as warbirds.

This gives me hope. After I make my fortune in the blogging business (hah!), it's nice to know there will be some cool toys waiting for me to play around with. I've always said the SU-27 would be my pick in a fourth-generation fighter dogfight. It's not because I believe it would beat an F-15. It's because, as a lowly journo-blogger, I expect to survive about 2 seconds in a real dogfight, and I've heard many good things about Russian ejection seat technology!