Su-30 for Russian Air Force #2

We can go even further and mention RQ-170.

RQ-170 had same stealth tech as B2 which is supposed to be the most stealth plane in the world. Well, it is a drone size of said bomber and it was not only detected near Iranian airspace, but it was hijacked by Iranian Soviet era radar.

So this event actually threw two stones at one bird in terms of debates:

1) proclaimed "stealth" really isn't important at all and is actually proven to be less than beneficial against an enemy with a potent AD network and EW capabilities.

2) Relying on Drones is stupid. It just means that so long as it let's off a signal to a command post, it can be hacked. As well, since no pilot exists to control the jet at any given point, EW can either hijack the craft itself or destroy its onboard electronics and forces drone to drop rather than turn around. Analogue systems are still important imo.

The RQ-170 event was so big yet people easily forgotten it. It is essentially the F-117 event all over again but gets no talk.

An Indian AF cpt will say "see, drones are the future because of Geran2. Without realizing that these drones fly a pre determined path. They are essentially smaller and cheaper cruise missiles in a sense. Drones in the sense what Ukraine used and the like are rather very easy to shoot down and Russia proved that. Fighter jets eat those drones for breakfast.

You are totally right Seph except that Fighters wont eat these targets for breakfast because the ARH missiles they will be burning through to take out these small low slow targets will render those fighters rather vulnerable to enemy engagement and trading a Geran drone worth $800 for a million dollar AMRAAM or Meteor is just pissing money away at a rate even the west cannot afford.

Everyone who has the money already made contract to replace them with f-35.

Israeli F-35s wont enter Syrian airspace on their own... how safe do they think they are?

The US wont let the Turks own S-400 and F-35s at the same time... they didn't ban F-35s from operating in Syria or Israel where Syrian based Russian S-400s could track them and gather all the secret information they say they are afraid the Russians might gather if Turkish F-35s and Turkish S-400 batteries operate together... almost like they are afraid that Turkey might find out just how stealthy the F-35 really is...n't.

The Russians didn't refuse to sell S-400, and the Turks said it was better than they said they were promised in terms of its performance when tested with F-16s and other systems they have... the Russians were clearly conservative in their promises and were not afraid of Turkey using their products... perhaps the Americans have not been conservative with their promises and fear being exposed...

Home on jam isn't an easy way to obtain a kill. You have no idea what your missile lock on and some jammings are impossible to track the source. It's a easy way to spend missiles on nothing. Specially against modern jammers.

That is very true, but the missile can now have the processing power of a desktop computer from 10 years ago and could examine the signals it is receiving together with the signals it is emitting and work out what is reflection and what is just being broadcast as noise... an encrypted 128 bit radar signal is not the easiest thing to replicate in real time... and when they can do that a 129 bit encrypted signal contains twice the number of key potentials...

They are designing missiles optimised for killing stealth targets so the chances an IIR seeker will be included with an ARH or perhaps other sensor means the job of staying alive for the target will always be problematic... for any aircraft.

It doesn't have any EO for looking downward specialized in ground attack mode. So your statement is just dumb and you know it, just trying to save the face.

Its OLS covers a greater visual area than its radar which is also used to find ground targets... it wont see ground targets behind itself but why do you think it would need to?

Russia has an enormous number of different platforms it could use on the ground, in the air and in space to find potential targets for aircraft like the Su-30 to go and inspect and evaluate and unlike the Su-35 it can have a guy in the back looking for targets on the ground while the pilot in the front looks for threats and incoming missiles or ground fire and is always ready to react to anything he spots.

Only su-24 and su-34 have such EO systems and they face the front only. With a pod you can fly anywhere near the target and still keep a lock on it with your EW ball.

The OLS system of the MiG-29 and Su-27 were always used for air and ground targets and contain laser range finders for attacks on targets without using the radar.

The new models include thermal imagers and digital video sensors... in fact the MiG-35 has a downward facing pod to compliment its OLS with the pod handling targets below and even behind the aircraft while the nose mounted system handles forward hemisphere targets in front of the aircraft like the radar does.

Thinking not having coverage below the aircraft is somehow a problem is just ridiculous for a low fast aircraft... WTF is an Su-30 going to do about flying below 100m at 700km/h with a target it detects beside it? The only system it would need to detect such a thing is threat detection, not target detection.

The Su-34 with recon pods would be used to find targets with belly mounted sensor pods... remember there were about three different sensor pod options?

What makes you think the F-35 has better stealth than the F-117? The truth is it is quite the opposite...

Even just in IR terms the difference would be enormous... look at the engine heat difference of the two is enormous...

And we know how well the F-117 did in Serbia. So well they retired it from service shortly afterwards as it was a compromised aircraft.

And both are subsonic...

In many ways the F-117 carried two LGBs... for all the cost they could have just used two cruise missiles to replace its capability...

I guess the results of f117 were actually pretty good. Main dumb thing is they didn't use long range weapons on it and stick with free fall bombs in a contested area.

Like the B-2?

The PAK DA is not a strategic bomber, it would be used as a theatre bomber, though even then with glide bombs and standoff missiles, but in the strategic roles it would use long range missiles.

Stealth isn't invisibility. Get too close to radars and you will be spotted. But with tactical missiles with 100km range and gliding bombs, radars will have hard time finding you.

The Russia IADS is optimised to shoot down bombs and missiles too, the SA-12 from the 1980s was intended to shoot down Honest John II warheads... the export Antei-2500 is intended to shoot down ballistic targets moving at up to 4.5km/s with an ERA of 0.02m... a single battery can handle 16 ballistic targets at once.

The RQ-170 event was so big yet people easily forgotten it. It is essentially the F-117 event all over again but gets no talk.

With the added issue that a drone can be knocked out in international airspace, the other side can just claim it was threatening and was a danger to civil air traffic...

Ironically a stealthy aircraft actually will draw the attention of every air defence system, but not make them turn on their radar... they are more likely to use optics or other systems to detect... with a drone you could send up an Su-25 to intercept it...

Interesting. Where did you read about this? Isn't it supposed to have <10000km range? I was under the impression it was to be a strategic bomber replacement for TU-95. If its just a theatre bomber, they should just adapt the IL-76. Mod it to fly at higher altitude and it can just circle overhead with ginormous volumes of fuel with a magazine of 100 FAB 500 glide bombs that it can deploy over a massive radius. Imagine how cheap and incredibly deadly that would be.

Russia does not have Strategic Bombers... it has Strategic Cruise Missile Carriers.

The Tu-142 and current model Tu-160s can't even carry bombs AFAIK and the PAK DA is intended to replace the Tu-142 as the long range subsonic cruise missile carrier and the theatre range Backfire bomber.

The PAK DA will not drop bombs on the US, though it might drop bombs on Europe or Syria or Ukraine if they are still fighting there.

Notice how no one publishes radar signature from side, rear, top or bottom?

The RCS is given as a single number... if you have ever seen a RCS picture showing the RCS of an aircraft it looks like a hedgehog that sprouts out to quite large reflections at some angles in the top down view.

A more realistic model would be 3D and it would look even more like a hedgehog in that view... no single number could possibly represent its RCS... and you can bet they pick the best result... it is never an average.

It doesn't matter if it is a horse or a grain of sand... how many grains or sand or golf balls operate at 10km altitude at 800km/h?

Old radars would have removed a grain of sand sized reflection as noise, but modern radar has computer processing and all sorts of special wave manipulation options that will let a modern radar detect such things and track them, and of course when used in conjunction with IRSTs it means such aircraft would not be invisible even if you got them down to the head of a pin.

Funny how they use perfect spheres for their descriptions like marbles and golf balls.

Russian radars in Russia detected US F-35s operating along the Iran Iraq border, which tells you how useful it is.

Not to say it is totally useless, but it certainly is expensive for something neither Israel nor the US seem keen to test any time soon.

No Israeli F-35 flights over Syria, and no US F-35 flights over Crimea, despite the UK sailing their ship through its waters... before running away.

More importantly if it was effective then why are they putting F-15s back into production and also looking at continuing to make F-16s....

L Band doesn't need heavy computational power. Actually, it relies on DSP much like all other radars to do real time calculations and processing of data. The Elbrus 2C+ has such DSP cores to do it.

Anyway, as said, most F-22's are either barely flyable.

Su-57 is a continuation and stealth of Su-35. Using some newer tech but most part, it is just a build up of it.

F-22 stealth is very good in frequencies at which fighter's radars work.

They claim it is good, they claim lots of things.

The F-22 is supposed to be super cruising around at medium to high altitude picking off enemy aircraft from range... the sort of flight profile that would make IRSTs and long range IR guided missiles rather potent.

Why do you think russians fielded the su-35 with L band radars and an Irbis radar that is like 10 times more powerfull than previous radars used in su-27 ?

It is just an airborne equivalent of NEBO... the MiG-31 had a powerful radar too...

Stealth bring lot of advantges in BVR engagement. You can counter it with triangulation, datalink with external L band radars or IRIST and of course it's not a 100% success protection but you better have it than not.

Well in theory that is true but in practise not so much, the best defence of Russian airspace has more to do with SAMs and IADS than with roaming fighters and interceptors looking for targets.

Thry buy f-15 because it still does the job against low tier countries. And Russia still doesn't have anything close to 180 f-22. They only have 100 su-35. Su-30 is outclassed by a great factor and even that they have only 120 or so. Meanwhile US is also buy hundreds of f-35.

The US doesn't have close to 180 F-22s... half of them are not operational most of the time and they are expensive to operate.

The Su-30 is being upgraded to become a two seat Su-35, plus Su-57 is in production and soon a lighter fighter will be put into production too.... might be MiG-35 or it could be a 5th gen light fighter... we have seen Sukhois entry in that regard and a model of two potential MiG types (single and twin engined), but we have not seen anything from Yakovlev or Tupolev or the other design bureaus...

China is the only one who has enough fighters to pose a threat to the US aviation.

Enemy aircraft are not the threat to US aviation, an IADS that is mobile and powerful will make it ineffective rather quickly... after a few hundred western aircraft are shot down they will have to change tactics because they can't operate with such losses to their attack and their defence which is based on aircraft.

I'm talking about aviation only not counting AD and cruise missiles that can strike airports and planes in hangars.

The only weapons that will make it to targets are hypersonic manouvering missiles which Russia has deployed and used successfully.

Western aircraft will be horribly vulnerable, especially their high maintenance stealthy ones that can't just operate on the side of a motorway.

Ok, the wing mounted L-band just doesnt look like a steath hunter as many claim, L-band requires 3 things.
Large size, Significant power and powerfull computation capabiluties.
The L-band radar on the Su-35 is lacking in 2 of these factors

Why do you think lower frequencies requires higher power?

The lower frequencies are more effective against stealth because they are not effected by shaping... think of it in terms of visible light... if you are tracking a target on the ground a high definition high quality of an image does not help if the target has excellent camouflage. A slightly blurry image where you track the entire object as a blob of colour or light however means it is rather easy to track and follow and would struggle to blend in to the background sky when it is moving and things around it are not.

The L band AESA antenna is not used for tracking, it is purely for detection and should be able to detect stealthy targets out to normal detection ranges for conventional aircraft because the overall size of the aircraft matters and not its shaping or coatings.

The NEBO radar on the ground uses Ku/Ka band high frequency radars but also lower frequency radars all together.

The signals and data are not shown separately but the information is collected and combined into a single display.

Think of it being the same as a digital video channel feed combined with a thermal video channel feed.... the digital video gives a high quality view of the things around you, but the thermal channel can see hot objects and objects that might be camouflaged with dead plants or paint or fabric, but being dead or being fabric it will stand out on the thermal imager.

The thermal imager alone would give a low quality view that makes identification difficult, but combined the two channels offer a much richer view of the world that is 24/7.

Adding low light capability and colour digital night vision will improve the view even more.

The point is that the nose mounted large powerful radar of the Su-35 and the wing mounted L band AESA radar antenna together with the IRST can combine to create a much richer view of the world around the aircraft than any of these systems on their own. The IRST is a passive system but the other radars could be used actively or in listening mode depending on the situation.

The range of frequencies it can operate in means the potential for an aircraft to just listen while ground or other air platforms scan in a wide range of frequencies to find targets of all different types.

.As for BVR, americans have yet to prove they can hit anything in BVR without AWACS support .
So its less BVR, and more staying hidden to get them in WVR position.

The Russians are on the verge of deploying short range R-60 follow on self defence missiles which will take self defence a step further by being able to intercept incoming SAMs and AAMs.

For internal carriage in bombers and fighter aircraft for self defence.

And as for the F-35, well i guess wave tactics is one way to make them usefull.
And how exactly is the Su-30 outclassed?

Even without upgrades the Su-30 can carry a lot of missiles... the F-35 not so much.

Unifying the fleet so the Su-30 and Su-35 use the same radar and engines and equipment and systems should result in savings and funding boosts to those companies that supply that equipment.

So its just a numbers game then, in that case we may as well bring the Mig-23s back, put an Irbis in them and load them up with r-77s and r-37s.
Lets the boys in front send the approximet firing solution and fire away.

Granted, they already have something like that with AD systems, but thats doesnt aplly here, apparently.

Actually S-70 with lots of long range AAMs loaded into them would be handy force multipliers... as would S-350 and S-400 and S-300V4 and BUK and other systems on the ground...

If su-30/35 were so good they wouldn't be developping a stealthy su-57.

Russia never made any commitment to go all stealth... they were always going to produce conventional aircraft alongside the Stealthy aircraft.

A heavy stealth fighter makes sense, but heavy fighters in general make sense if you can afford them and Russian heavy fighters are cheaper than western light fighters... hell Su-30s were cheaper than HAWK trainer aircraft.

With light fighters they need to get some 5th gen aircraft into production and service and determine if a cheap 5th gen light fighter is actually possible, and if it isn't then it probably does not make sense to have a light 5th gen fighter in numbers... which is supposed to be the purpose of a light fighter.

If they can get a light fighter of the 5th gen that is affordable then it would make sense to not bother with lots of light 4th gen fighters even if they are cheaper to operate than the heavies.

They are in the position where they have 4th and 5th gen heavy fighters in production and can continue to work on 5th gen equipment and technology and put it in all three types... (single and twin seat 4th gen and single seat 5th gen).

Pretty soon they are going to look at two seat and carrier based 5th gen heavy fighters too... a modification of the current single seater 5th gen.

They are also in the position where they have at least three options for a new light 5th gen fighter and probably more than that with MiG having a single and two engined options for land and carrier based aircraft, plus Sukhois Checkmate and there are probably planes from Yakovlev and Tupolev too, plus a super cheap single and twin seat 4th gen fighter (MiG-29M/2) and a carrier capable single and twin seat 4th gen fighter (MiG-29K/2) and an advanced but affordable single and twin seat fighter (MiG-35).

They also have wingman drones like the S-70 family of drones to add numbers as well.

They have some choices to make which no doubt will be based on what each department of OAK can come up with.

They are also working on a new stealth strategic cruise missile carrier/bomber, and a very very fast replacement for the MiG-31.

If they were the US we would be talking about how spoiled for choice they are...

UAC says that it delivered a batch of new-build Su-30SM2 multirole fighters to the Russian MoD. This is the first batch of SM2s delivered in 2023. Number of aircraft is not specified; video suggests just two. A third SM2 in yellow primer is clearly visible in the background.
2/It's worth noting that the very beginning of the video appears to partially show a fourth aircraft next to the aircraft in yellow primer (also without the final paint scheme applied); note the vertical tail in the top left of the still below.
Vid link: https://vk.com/video-211699782_456239119
3/3 The new-build Su-30SM2s are for the MA VMF (Russian Naval Aviation). Their delivery follows the delivery of 2? new-build Su-35S multirole fighters & 2? new-build Su-34M(Su-34 NVO) strike fighters to the VKS (Russian Aerospace Forces) earlier this year.
Total number of fixed-wing tactical combat aircraft delivered to the Russian MoD this year so far: 4 (?)
- Su-34M*: 2 (?). Recipient: VKS
- Su-35S: 2 (?). Recipient: VKS
*In press releases, the Russian MoD generally refers to the Su-34 NVO as Su-34M.

Actually with no tail stinger between the engines I would say they are MiG-29/35s.

I reckon someone in the know is having a laugh... or it is a desperate attempt at getting noticed with something that otherwise most news agencies would completely ignore...

By the way, no one noticed this?

Behind the Su-30SM2 without the black color of the navy, the tail of another plane appears with the top of the tail in grey, like an Su-35

It does not resemble any other type of Su-30 manufactured at IRKUT neither for Russia or countries like Belsus or Kazakhstan.
It is possible that Su-35s are being manufactured also in IRKUT due to increased war production??
Of course, it is very possible that production has increased apart from the "peacetime" contracts that were signed a couple of years ago and that had very small, almost ridiculous numbers.
While the required number of Su-30SM is close to being met, the required number of Su-35 is still very large while at KnAAPO should be manufactured  exclusively the 5th generation aircraft , due to the great need to cover at least 10 Su-57 regiments , approximately one for each combined arms army


This also indicates that the images have been taken at different times and even days, the most probable number of Su-30SM deployed is 4 Su-30SM2 which would bring the number in Kaliningrad to 20 units.