Washington (UPI) Feb 9, 2009 – Indonesia’s recent purchase of several older-design Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker combat aircraft from Russia highlights a crucial lesson of weapons development and international arms sales — technical superiority is relative, not absolute. You don’t need state-of-the-art weapons if your potential enemies are only equipped with older ones. Just making sure you have a sufficient quantitative and qualitative edge on them will do just as well.