The Su-35 and Su-37 "SuperFlanker" developments of the original Flanker airframe design are as far as I know, currently in Russian service and reflect the final achievement of the late Cold War expenditure which broke the Soviet economy.

With triplane canard layout, state of the art avionics including an additional, rearward facing fire-control radar, new active-guided R-27 variant missiles and in the case of the Su-37, Mach 3 rated engines (airframe is still Mach 2.35 rated), with 3D variable geometry nozzles, the SuperFlankers are generally considered the most significant air combat threat of the 21st century battlefield for which Typhoons and Raptors were evolved.

They are somewhat of a different animal to standard Su-27 "Flanker-B" exports and general squadron equip.

The Su-30 long range interceptor is a misguiding initial description of this particular aircraft's mission parameters, that of a new sort of "combat AWACS" designed for 10+ hour mission times and fitted with sophisticated data link technology to transfer radar operation for up to four standard Su-27 Flankers to the two-man "director aircraft" for all but electronic invisibility with a fully retained lethality (MiG-31's also have this feature).
The "flight leader" itself of course combines this with full combat capability and is typically heavily armed to work in concert with standard, single crewed Flankers.

Since we have Su-33's in the game...

And it would change the nature of strategic organisation constructing missions, somewhat.

Would also change the era by about 10 years

Yea this game takes place around 1982 and the Su-35 made its maiden flight in 1988. But it would be cool to pull off all those awesome maneuvers against your opponent, those capitalist pigs will never see it coming lol.

quote:

The Su-30 long range interceptor is a misguiding initial description of this particular aircraft

No, but at the slow speed you have to DO these maneuvers at, you'll never know what hit you with that 120 slams into you, either.

the su-35 and su-37 are not currently in service, the russian air force hardly has money for fuel let alone new aircraft. the su-37 [only one, or possibly two, exist, i forget...] was purely a demonstrator, had only two dimensional thrust vectoring and no rear-facing radar [the su-34, a naval strike variant for export, however, does.]
As for the suggested active-radar variant of the r-27, i think that none such exists, at least in service, the r-77 being much more capable [a ramjet powered variant of the r-77 is available for export], the closest i think is the version that is optimised for very small, very low-flying targets like cruise missiles.
The su-35 on the other hand is simply an upgrade of the su-27 to involve tri-plane layout, modern all glass cockpit, sidestick controller with the option of thrust vectoring in the future.
As for the proposed uselessness of high-alpha manouvres possible with thrust vectoring, I am assuming most of you are aware that dynamic decelerations like the cobra can briefly defeat doppler radars [tho i would be suprised if that hasnt been taken into account by now...], speeds in protracted dogfights are often very low due to hard turning, conventional control surfacs become less useful, this is where thrust vectoring becomes extremely useful.
i think that is all i have, i really hope i didnt sound too picky, but i hardly ever get to tell anyone this stuff!!
[also, one drawback of the (very excellent) HOTAS Cougar system, it gets in the way while im typing!!!
Cheers