all were scrapped to prevent Iran getting any parts
Maybe Iran could sell them a couple of airframes...
Billion US dollars each...
BTW if you ask an American they will tell you it was the MiG that copied the A-5 Vigilante... who copied whom?
Yeah, I heard that chestnut before... the only problem is that the F-15 and the MiG-25 look nothing at all like the A-5 they don't have anything in common at all except two side by side engines but a single vertical fin... the MiG-19 had two side by side engines and a single fin... in comparison the MiG-25 and the F-15 have exactly the same layout... from the top, from the front, from the side, from the rear...
Claiming the MiG-25 is a copy of a Vigilante is a joke and a poor joke at that... just desperate.
That is why I say the design generation matters, because the state of the art evolves more or less the same for everyone, and logically applicable solutions for similar problems often look quite similar.
Which makes the American claim that a mach 2.5+ MiG-25 interceptor designed to shoot down Mach 3 bombers might be a copy of an American carrier based strike/ESM aircraft is just silly.
They were probably fooled by the layout and forgot to think it may be almost twice as heavy as it appeared, which would screw any further estimation about its capabilities...
Not fooled by the layout... the layout is sound and is used by the MiG-25, 29, 33, and their stealthy designs I have seen so far as well as the Flanker and Fullback families and the F-15 and F-14 and F-22 that all use two engines and two vertical tails.
They assumed it was a mach 3 plane and thought it was made of titanium so it would be lighter and still heat resistant, but making aircraft out of titanium is bloody expensive... the SR-71 got withdrawn multiple times because of their cost to own and to operate, but went back in to use because they have unique capabilities and CIA drug money was paying for it all anyway...
That is why I think that A2A-specific drones will be created and not only missile trucks.
A custom made A2A drone will be a pain in the ass... you could have it able to pull 30g and with full TVC it would be a terribly tricky target to defeat... imagine the first one that is hijacked and used against the civilian aircraft of the former owner...
It is also relevant to consider the current trend towards self defence missiles, that may render this approach of overwhelming salvos useless.
Morphie is already there... and that little quad pack of Pantsir missiles... it just means you are going to need more missiles to penetrate the enemies defences...
Morphie is supposed to be carried by fighters and also bombers as a self defence missile for use against enemy SAMs and AAMs and enemy aircraft and drones.
There are so many stories in the internet about soviet and Russian fighter programs that I prefer to check a couple of times before being categoric, but I don't remember reading about MFS program.
The MFI and LFI were the PAK FA and the new light 5th gen programmes predecessors... they were replacements for the Su-27 and MiG-29 which at the time were both interceptor/fighters. Improvements in electronics led to them being changed to MFS and LFS... I don't know the Russian terms but they changed from next gen interceptor medium and next gen interceptor light (MFI and LFI) to next gen multipurpose medium aircraft and next gen multipurpose light aircraft.
The MFS is what the S-37 Berkut won, which is the black canard and tail equipped FSW fighter from Sukhoi, and the MiG 1.42/1.44 lost... but may have sold information about to China nudge nudge wink wink...
Winning the competition led to the PAK FA programme being run by Sukhoi and the Su-57 has resulted...
The idea here is that the optimal role for the UCAV is low subsonic penetration while the Su-57 takes care of any potential enemy DCA. For that role supercruising is optimal, because it allows to reach the interception point of the enemy before it can attack your planes, and because it gives the possibility of attacking without the enemy being capable of attacking you. There is no better approach to A2A. As argued above this massively extends the footprint of your fighter fleet and their effectiveness/survivability.
But racing ahead of the low flying drone you are supposed to be providing top cover for is just alerting ground based air defences isn't it?
Wouldn't it make more sense to have the drone flying up high with you so there is no risk of ground fire damaging it and its weapons get better range performance as well...
Of course, as said above the air superiority fighter is not the one exposing itself to ground based air defences, or doing it by very brief periods of time, supercruising is critical for that.
Super cruising is about covering larger areas of airspace and being able to chase down enemy bombers stuck at subsonic speeds, and giving height and speed boosts to any missiles you do launch... it has little to do with evading SAMs... SAMs will smack a mach 2 target every bit as easily as a mach 4 target if they are manned because they won't be pulling more than 3-4 gs at most and most likely much less most of the time to maintain speed.
This seems to be the bottom line of your argument. Here I have to say that, while I am very aware of that, when we talk about aerodynamic targets we are implicitly assuming them to be manoeuvrable. My original argument when you brought the SR-71 was that a high flying aerodynamic target that flies slow is toast, which it is. I am no expert in the SR-71 and I would not focus the conversation on it, but I guess it had some kind of ESM equipment onboard to avoid SAM sites.
Manouvering is the difference, and the SR-71 is pretty much unable to manouver when operating at top speed... minor course corrections only... in comparison an aircraft like an Su-57 or even a MIG-31 can perform manouvers that would make them more difficult targets.... the 31 can only pull 5 gs but at the height it operates at most planes can't even do that.... the MiG-31 has large control surfaces and the speed it moves at makes it rather manouverable for its size and weight.
I ignore ESM because it is an unknown... one year a jammer might keep the Titanic safe and the next year the same jammer might attract missiles like flies to a sheep carcase.
Of course, if it flies towards the missile and actually cooperates in being downed, the faster the target, the better, but that is normally not the case. Even very high and very fast, a target will manoeuvrer and get out of the way, or in turn, it will not go inside AD bubbles it cannot timely scape from.
Most SAMs are located near the targets they are protecting so most of the time the incoming aircraft has to go where the SAMs are.
This, without further clarification, is not true. It can only engage a cooperative target, a very cooperative one
Well to be fair if the S-400 did launch to intercept the SR-71 at max range and the SR-71 detected the presence of an S-400 and jammed on the anchors... slowed down to a much slower speed and turned around and left the area then I agree the S-400 missile would not hit the target... but the SR-71 wouldn't have any idea the S-400 is on the way so unless they are contacted by radio or satellite link then they would most likely continue unaware... and when they were 400km from the S-400 battery suddenly they would detect an active radar lock on to them from above and seconds later an S-400 would blow through them ripping them to shreds.
I don't know the turning characteristics of a SR-71. With a MiG-31 those 200 seconds would be enough for the plane to turn away. Even at only 1º/s you can change heading within the first 90 sec and ruin the whole kinematic chances of the missile.
Not even close at only 1km/s... the S-400 battery would be tracking you so if you turned one degree after 90 seconds then for 110 seconds you are moving along a slightly different course... after another 60 seconds (after that first 90 seconds... so now 50 seconds to impact) if needs be the S-400 battery can send a course correction to the missile to change its trajectory slightly so when it comes roaring down near vertically on the SR-71 it will be leading it a little bit but it will otherwise be central in its view... meaning little chance of escape...
Maybe if you were moving at 3km/s and you could turn 5 or 10 or 15 degrees for 20 seconds and then turn 20 degrees back the other way.... then the chances of using up fuel and energy on the missile and indeed running the risk that shifting the intercept point 50km it might simply not have time to turn and reach the new intercept point when the target is going to be there... half a second late and you miss by more than 1.5kms.
Why the human? In fact the problem is the low lift inherent to the high speed design, plus very thin air at high altitude.
Because at that speed turning creates huge gs very fast and human beings are not g tolerant... the pilot might survive 12 gs for a few seconds but the will just be passengers unable to function or manage or operate normally... a missile moving at mach 10 making a 5 degree turn could do it pulling 30gs... as I mentioned... the SR-71 at full speed could not complete a 180 degree turn and remain inside the state of California... which admittedly is a narrow state... but not tiny.
I don't understand what you mean by cross range Garry
A target that is not heading towards the SAM itself... for instance a group of ships surround an aircraft carrier which is getting targeted. A ship in front of the carrier... say 10-15km ahead detects a target it needs to shoot down but the target is heading towards the carrier and not the ship with the SAM. Say the ship is a Sovremmeny class destroyer and the SAM is the naval BUK. The later models had a range of about 42km but a crossing target range of about 14km, so if the target crossed within 14km of the Sovremmeny class ship on its way to hit the carrier then the BUK could take it on... even though the missile can reach targets at 42km...
400 km are against slow/little agile aerodynamic targets
Fighters are a difficult target!
The problem is that speed is not an issue in itself... it only shortens range when combined with manouvering... so 400km for slow... but also fast targets that don't manouver... don't manouver like AWACS and JSTARS and inflight refuelling aircraft, SR-71, Bombers like B-52 and B-2 and even B-1B because none of them could perform more than a few g to evade a missile which as we agree is like a bullet... as long as it is properly aimed you wont be dodging it... and if it can hit targets moving at 4.8km/s I don't think even moving mach 3.2 would make you safe.
Fighters are tricky but likely could only evade if lucky because a 150kg warhead directing fragments towards your aircraft no matter how hard you managed to turn in the last few seconds you had warning of would make evasion very hard.
The main defence of the fighter is that it can turn / accelerate / climb or descend fast, according to the needs. 400 km does not mean that at that distance the kinematic energy of the missile is enough to start the end game pursuit of a very agile target, it means it is already at its limits to hit a target at all.
Missiles don't chase targets... missiles are bullets they are not planes... if a missile ever slowed down to flying at fighter plane speeds it would drop like a rock because those fins keep it stable on its course they don't hold it up in the air.
The missiles that can reach 400km follow a lofted trajectory and are intended to fall on the target from above... course corrections on the way will ensure when it starts looking it is above the target and falling down on it at enormous speeds so in the few seconds between detection and impact probably the best evasion manouver you could make would be to accelerate forward and climb at max speed and even then with a proper inertial navigation guidance system you wont have much of a chance... planes can't jump aside 100m with a micro second warning... and the advanced directed fragment warhead can probably direct fragments as the missile blows past in any direction out to about 100m or so....
A badly guided missile might start scanning for the target and find it is at its extreme right so the missile turns hard right to reach the target... the target if they are lucky might realise from the path of the missile that it is turning hard right and it might put full ABs on and manouver so that the missile has to turn even harder right which might be beyond the capacity of the missile so it will miss and they don't come around for a second go... that miss is a miss.
But a modern missile like S-400 will normally be used against targets that can out manouver it anyway... the long range 9M96 would be better suited for use against fighters.
BTW and for the sake of trying to be factual, defeating of a missile as you describe it is not realistic, the missile just needs to do lead pursuit and, as far as it is way faster than the target it will not need any hard turning at all. The problem happens when the missile, at the end of its useful range, is already too slow to compensate the movements of the fighter.
A missile launched at a target that is at its max range needs a lofted trajectory or it wont hit anything... a target at say 300km would still use a lofted trajectory because it is the most efficient and will get the missile there quicker.
Most missiles can deviate slightly from their normal flight path but can't turn with a fighter plane.... the fact that they are moving as fast as bullet however means even the most manouverable plane wont have a chance to dodge a missile anyway... moving at 1 km per second or faster it will be a tiny dot and then it will blow past you... no time to see if it is going left or right...
Yet they managed to get their hands on all those weapons systems by buying traitors for decades. They have their methods of doing things, and they use to work too...
As we have seen... stories of Saddams WMDs didn't stack up because people wanting asylum will tell all sorts of stories to get in tight with their new chums.
The rose tinted glasses of the cold war period was that if it sounded too good it was propaganda and only if it sounded really bad was it fact... so stories of helmet mounted sights and R-73 missiles would be written off as propaganda, while Russian Army tanks with auto loaders that rip off soldiers arms is pure fact... why their soldiers would have their arms anywhere near the auto loaders is never explained.
They thought their training would overcome anything, but when they went up against German pilots flying MiG-29s they couldn't hide from the results... the down graded export MiG-29B with the centreline drop tank that restricted g performance to 5 g against the F-16... 62% of the time the F-16 got onto the tail of the MiG and got a shot, but 100% of the time the MiG-29 pilot had already gotten off his shot and based on analysis of the performance of the R-73 and the flares used by both sides the F-16 pilots lost every time.
To be honest and even when I am egoistically interested in you taking those infographics as true, (since they worked where my arguments failed Razz ), I have never seen proven and cannot conceive that they are official. To publish such charts that give away the cardinal parameters of your best new systems would be high treason at least, wouldn't it?
The information was released by the Russian government, presumably to sell weapons and to show the superiority of Russian weapons compared with a select few foreign weapons also available. The infographics show areas of superiority, now they might not want to reveal actual information and the information might be conservative and might just be for export models which might be different from the domestically used models, but it is a frame of reference we can agree on is it not?
In my experience the Russians don't tend to inflate their performance figures like they do in the west. Even the Turks said the performance of the S-400 exceeded what they were promised... clearly it was detecting stuff they weren't expecting it to detect...
That supersonic flying wing would be interesting indeed and make sense, if they are really willing to substitute Tu-160.
Imagine they increase the engine thrust of the NK-31 in the way other engines have been improved... dry thrust equal to former AB thrust.... a supercruising Tu-160 would be awesome... and rather potent... and instead of a 2,000km mach 2 dash it could fly mach 2 its entire 12,000km flight range.... without AB...
For A2A drones a much thinner more streamlined supercruising flying wing would be rather interesting... F-35s would struggle to keep up... even if they could supercruise...
There, fixed it for you. You can always count on the trusty Iranian bogeyman to justify any otherwise embarrassing and treacherous political decision
That is dead right... it was to prevent any subsequent government or regime in the Pentagon to roll back the F-35 programme.... so the F-15 is the aircraft that benefits....
During aerial reconnaissance missions, the SR-71 operated at high speeds and altitudes (Mach 3.2 and 85,000 feet, 25,900 meters) to allow it to outrace threats. If a surface-to-air missile launch was detected, the standard evasive action was simply to accelerate and outfly the missile.
Which worked fine for the SA-2s and SA-3s launched at it but would not be effective against S-300 and S-400 missiles, which it never went anywhere near in its operational life time.
Even then a later modification of the SA-2 meant it hit several U-2s at their operational height.
85K feet was its absolute max height... because of its shape the long neck did not create lift and so at higher altitudes it could not sustain its nose up attitude and would superstall... they never attempted to take the world altitude record from the MiG-31 which was about 31km.
MiG-31 intercepts & their fire control radars locks on them helped the USAF to stop all recon flights close to the USSR.
Recon flights of the USSR stopped when Francis Gary Powers was shot down in his U2... no SR-71s ever flew over Soviet airspace... it simply was not safe.
There are news that India has deployed navy's Mig-29K on Himalaya, given that they seems to have the fastest scramble in their arsenal.
So, if true we have a clear indication of the possible role of Mig-35 as a classical point defence interceptor.
Short range interceptor/fighter is what they were designed for....
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Maybe you are talking about some other program?
