5th gen light mulltirole fighter/Mikoyan LMFS

Who says they need to fly hand in hand? The Su-57 will cover much more territory than the LMFS, and the S-70 with huge range and completely different parameters will go deep into enemy territory where the Su-57 maybe will not go or fly twice as long. The Okhotnik cannot keep pace with the Su-57 when it is time to fly fast or accelerate, and so on. They are resources that will be called and coordinated according to the task. Russia is making constant announcements about their battlefield management systems and the increasing coordination of all assets.

If the S-70 can't operate with the Su-57 when it is flying fast why would an LMFS do any better?

What you are saying is that they are for different things and likely wont work together very much at all...

The LMFS can operate closer to the front and close gaps, exactly as you have said several times before. It simply will not have the persistence to stay on station as a Su-57 will do, it will be tasked with shorter, clearly targeted missions.

Wow... an asset that will not fuck off and will hang around your forces and support you and not all the forces along the entire front line... I can see how ground forces would hate that...

This is similar to myself saying twin engine cannot be cheap, it is our opinion.

Look at the Su-57 and the S-70... they are not scale models of each other... they are rather different with the S-70 being a much simplified design even if it uses the same engine and perhaps weapon bays. I am saying making the LMFS in a totally identical single engined version... one with a pilot and one without a pilot you will find that the unmanned model is not a simplified version and certainly not much cheaper than the almost identical manned model.

I think it is sad that I have to spell that out... would think that was obvious...

I don't see why an unmanned LMFS cannot be cheap, or to be more specific, what are the elements a smaller UCAV would spare? None, as far as I see it.

If the LMFS is going to be a 5th gen fighter able to take on opposing 5th gen fighters how cheap do you think they can make it?

MiG-35 cheap? Making things smaller does not necessarily make them cheaper... sometimes they have to be more expensive to make them smaller and with reduced performance because of the size reduction...

I don't think I will ever understand your alergy to single engine fighters but who knows, if you read what Chemezov says, he mentioned light and medium sized fighter and their requirements and characteristics.

No allergy... Russian Air Force policy...

And of course experience that shows single engined fighters are not cheaper to operate... certainly not as much cheaper as claimed by some.

But I don't think it makes sense for MiG to replicate the same that Sukhoi did, only in their own, smaller version.

Why? Do you think the Russian AF likes what Sukhoi does but does not want MiG to do the same?

Actually the F-35 design is quite decent, as far as you stay subsonic and concentrate on strike missions.

Hahahahaha... it is supposed to be a supersonic fighter interceptor strike aircraft... but its design makes it OK for subsonic missions... 1.5 trillion well spent...

The problem is when they try to market it as an universal tool and an air superiority fighter, which it is clearly not.

So the problem rears up when you look at what it was designed to do and you realise it is a poor design... under New Zealand consumer law it could be returned for a full refund because it is not fit for purpose...

There are some guys on the net that really lose their sh*t over it and see it dominating anything at will and assume it fighting will be like playing videogames with God mode on, invisible and all knowing.

Yeah, like over Syria... kicking arse and taking names... from between mountains in a neighbouring country shouting obscenities and then walking home with their chest puffed out like they just won WWII single handedly without any help... like Poland does to Russia...

Such has been the propaganda to force allies to use the F-35 as their main A2A asset, when it should have just remained a strike fighter.

Without the lift fan screwing up its shape and balance it could have been the stealthy F-16 it was meant to... instead they have a stealthy Buccaneer or a stealthy Jaguar... not bad planes by any measure... but not particularly stealthy and certainly not F-16 like fighters which they seem to think it is.

What is so ludicrous, tell me.

Shifting things around like that has more consequences than the benefits you suggest.... can't you agree that any design is a compromise that the designer chooses for specific penalties to get certain capabilities. Changing one thing is never without good and bad consequences and sometimes the bad consequences are not apparent until you test and if you test yourself and are a liar and a dirty cheat like LM are and keep things secret because of potential sales damage then you end up with a supersonic stealth VSTOL fighter that is not stealth and not supersonic and ends up being one of the most expensive white elephants made by any military in the 21st Century... even though it is just starting.

The canard allergy is also something I dont understand. I like the Su-57 very much and it has no canards...

All the planes I like don't have Canards... except the MiG-8 and the Tu-144.

I would think you would love the Tu-144 too... nose lift on takeoff and landing but zero drag the rest of the flight...

Is a strike fighter, while the Okhotnik is no fighter at all.

The S-70 has the potential with TVC to pull rather more g than any F-35 could manage... why do you think one is more of a fighter than the other... neither appear to be amazingly agile.

Three times less thrust, similar weight. No supersonic flight, no surface controls for high AoA, no strong longitudinal authority, dorsal intake that chokes when turning, no afterburner... should I continue?

List the fighters that fight at supersonic speeds...

The Tornado IDF is considered a fighter too... why do you think the dorsal intake would choke... for all we know it might be designed upside down so it pulls negative gs which means no choking of intake and being unmanned it might be able to pull 10-20 g... the final version might have TVC engine with full AB for all we know... I realise it is impossible to make such changes if they were deemed necessary because TVC and AB are such new and untried technologies in fighter aircraft...

But their fighter mission might be limited to operating at high altitude escorting fighters and launching long range attacks with heavy and medium AAMs...

See above. And the model of the definitive Okhotnik had a flat nozzle.

The one displayed, which could easily be disinformation... they have rockets with thrust vectoring paddles in the engine exhaust... a retractable paddle system could easily be fitted to give full 3D TVC to stealthy flat nozzles... jet engine exhaust is nothing like as hot as rocket exhaust in an Iskander or Kinzhal.

The Okhotnik will not be able to close in onto the attackers, that will dance in circles around it.

Why on earth would it want to get close to the attackers... it is looking to shoot them down... not look for a dance...

It will spend its ammo shooting down AAMs. Employing it as you say makes little sense.

Duh... a weapon truck carrying AAMs to shoot down enemy fighters.... yes of course... bloody useless... what was I thinking... much better to have them hold back and send in manned Su-57s and LMFSs to do the shooting and dying against the enemy fighters....

I don't buy the hype, but I have to work with specs in public domain. So if they say the engine gives 40,000 lb thrust and I see it possible and consistent with the performance I see from the plane, yes, I will take it. Maybe not with 100% trust but what else can we do?

What top speed do they claim and how can it possibly attain that speed with after burner use for no longer than 90 seconds?

Reports of Russia targeting F-35s on the border of Iran and Iraq from radar positioned in Russia.... yeah... stealthy...

Why two newly developed engines would make more sense than one already existing engine like izd. 30? 2 x 12 tf is the thrust of a Flanker... what use has the VKS for more planes like that and what would be the savings??

Why would MiG stop working with Klimov just because Saturn works with Sukhoi?

12 ton thrust RD engines could be used to upgrade MiGs as well...

You are deflecting the question.

Can you describe a situation where Russia would be landing troops and ground forces... but it is not important enough to send the Kuznetsov...

A situation where an aircraft with an AESA radar and R-77 missiles is not good enough (Ka-52K), but some super expensive F-35C wannabe is somehow ideal...

I would say the problem requires a solution and there are three solutions with different costs involved... solution one is Ka-52K and Ka-31 for fighter and AEW... not the best and not good enough going forward but good enough for now, solution two is the most expensive but also the most capable EMALS, Su-57, and a proper AWACS, and solution number three which is F-35C... much less capable than 2.... not hugely more capable than one but almost as expensive as three.

The French, the British and the Russians have experience... the French VSTOL fighter never even got into service, the British and Soviet ones did and it seems that the French and the Russians want nuclear powered carriers between 50K tons and 100K tons in weight... 70-80K tons seems like the sweet spot... nuclear power, EMALS cat, and their best fighter available as the primary fighter... for France that is Rafale and for Russia that is Su-57.

Why are you ignoring the basic facts?

What??? They can be the best fighters. But they need to be designed for the role, unlike Okhotnik.

Have you not heard of multirole and prototype... we know what we are seeing is not the final definitive model... there might be customised models for different roles or the final model might be better suited to a range of roles.

Exactly, like Okhotnik.

It is a manned fighter and people really do poorly with high negative g manouvering... something a drone doesn't have to worry about.

That might be the plan... it manouvers in negative g manouvers no manned fighter could match....

Do you agree with JF-17 light ? Or Mig 35 "light"

You can't go too light or it becomes useless... look at the results of the Gripen in the Finnish testing... it is just too light to be useful... a bit like a fighter version of a Yak-130 would too.

The minute you start making something bigger, it will end up taking 10+ years to develop. But a place like Mongolia is exactly where you'd sell them. A place like Armenia shouldn't have bought su 30's. But Russia doesn't have a product for these small countries.

The Russians use MiG-29s in Armenia... the Armenians can choose what they like... but can hardly blame others if they choose badly.

It would be easier to make a light fighter from a simplified medium weight fighter than try to take technology from a heavy fighter and scrunch it down into a tiny airframe.

I am not sure anybody
knows what is the right size. Theoretically it does not matter.

Get it wrong and they will be brushed aside like cruise missiles and drones...

They could have made it a bit longer, making it wide was a design choice, probably caused by the need to combine a fan and weapons bay.

The reasons don't really matter than much... the simple fact is that it is not an F-16, it is a Jaguar or Buccaneer...

MIG-31 has an MTOW of about 50T if there were reasons to build a 200T fighter I am sure it would be done. In fact the arsenal plane concept may result in a 100 T + fighter Maybe based on a C-17 or a B1B or the new US bomber.

My comment was directed at the assertion that good range is never a bad thing, but to get good range requires design choices and compromises in other areas like size and weight...

F-35 is an extra special US ***uster I think we agree with that. Most of its problems are from the desire to combine VTOL and and standard planes. If you look at F15 and F16, there is a much better example of single and twin engine economics.

I agree with that but I am trying to point out that single engine alone does not make a light plane cheaper or simpler or better... F-35 shows this.

I blame trying to make it a Harrier as well as everything else but honestly even if they didn't have vertical landing requirements I am sure it would never have been a cheap aircraft anyway...

They clearly have no interest in saving tax dollars, or providing a good weapon for their military... they complain about Trump being Putins puppet but LM and the other US MIC companies are doing a much better job of destroying the US than Trump ever could.

I assume you mean Switzerland, Gripen actally won the first contest, the second contest the Swiss (probably bribed by the USA) insisted they would only consider in service planes so the Gripen E was excluded. The Finnish HX program is still ongoing. By many accounts the Gripen E is like a mini F-18 Growler in capabilities.

The one whose results Lsos posted that showed Typhoon, Gripen, and Rafale results together with the already in service F-18 performances for comparison. Gripen trailed the Typhoon and Rafale so far it was clearly being discounted for the job on its own which led to Saab suggesting the enormous cost of the other two competing designs might make a mixed purchase an idea...

The Warzone did an article on this subject now too. Its not that bad actually. Other than the cocksure title. And the link to that old Mig 29 hit piece

Tom Arse No Dick is not a reliable source of information in my opinion... few western experts will treat the MiG-29 fairly...

I am asking you, if you make an unmanned version of a light fighter, what are going to be the savings vs. the manned version?

Smaller, lighter, no human support systems or equipment needed ...no oxygen generation systems or ejection seats or cockpit displays, no canopy, no more 9g limits on manouver performance...

Lower safety requirement standards.

I am asking you, if you make an unmanned version of a light fighter, what are going to be the savings vs. the manned version? Tell me systems and actual cost drivers so I understand you. I see almost none from a procurement perspective: supersonic design / engine / high TWR will be there, radar and sensors too, weapons and weapon bays, ECM/ESM, LO design, high AoA / overload aero and struture. What are the savings, the cockpit and the life support systems? Anything else? What is the procurement cost difference between my light single engine fighter that shares a common basis with the manned version vs. your single engined light unmanned version that does not share the airframe with the medium sized, manned twin engined version? And where would those hypothetical savings go if you have to design two completely different platforms instead of one?

So you think the S-70 is just an Su-57 without a cockpit?

They are identical are they?

Same price?

In my model I see relatively low development / platform sustainment costs because of the largely common air vehicle, plus very high operational savings due to the unmanned factor plus higher flexibility because of the platform tolerates high risk employment.

By that definition Air to Air missiles should also be scale models of the aircraft that carrying them because although being smaller design commonality will make them cheaper... common air vehicles and all that...

In yours I see much higher development costs for no big advantage, since VKS already has a hi part of the mix with the Su-57 and does not need another twin engined jet which is almost as big and almost as expensive.

First of all they don't have any expensive aircraft except their strategic bombers.

Right now most of their fleet is Su-27 based so they seem to be able to afford an all F-22 air force force... but clearly they want something smaller and lighter... but that is not to say actually small and actually light... a Yak-130 with a single 9 ton thrust engine wont cut it...

This sounds absurd to me and looks like MiG went "let us find a niche where we have an excuse to do exactly the same as Sukhoi already did"... VKS has no use for this.

The MiG-29 was in service years before the Su-27 got into service... who exactly is copying whom?

The plane I propose is 10 t empty vs. 11 t empty of the original MiG-29. That makes it automatically a total failure for you, only you have never said why, in a reasoned way.

You already said Russian fighters are fat and heavy, and that internal fuel and weapons means 5th gen fighters are going to be heavier than their 4th gen counterparts didn't you?

Where is the capability gap vs. a medium fighter? You have never taken the task of doing a serious, quantitative analysis, period.

Because having a smaller lighter fighter jet that is cheaper to operate only has an advantage over a bigger heavier aircraft if that bigger heavier aircraft is unaffordable...

If both are affordable then you go on capability and smaller fighters I am repeatedly told are worse... everyone says the MiG-29 is rubbish and should be dumped while Flankers are perfect... so how can a lighter MiG-29 possibly be better?

There is no such doctrine, show me where it is written.

The only single engined aircraft they have accepted is the Yak-152 and the S-70...

Actual figures prove the opposite.

The figures show one single engined Gripen is cheaper to operate than two vastly overpriced Euro canards in the form of the Typhoon and Rafale, but it also shows that to get the same performance level of those aircraft you probably need three times more Gripens to do the same job, so all the savings go out the window, and you are left with a fighter that cannot be used effectively on its own...

Why do they need MiG to replicate what they already have from Sukhoi? VKS is not a MiG welfare institution.

Sukhoi has never made an LMFS or anything like it for the VKS... this would be new...

Trying to do a VSTOL single engined fighter is risky and the payoff is shit.

The chances of it being a decent fighter and VSTOL at the same time are very low, while the VSTOL components will make it fragile and flaky and expensive, and even if they succeed perfectly it wont be as good as a slightly bigger more conventional design.

How do you fix a Yak-141?

You make it a MiG-29KR.

Let us summarize your arguments: the Okhotnik may be what it is not, for what we know it could be Optimus Prime in disguise.

Are you saying S-70 can't carry AAMs?

With modern aircraft why do you think multirole is beyond the capabilities of a drone?

But I stick to what we have seen and not to what we may imagine. It is a subsonic high persistence high payload LO strike platform, and it will be extremely useful as it is.

With a full weapon load on a strike mission all 4th gen fighters and strike aircraft are subsonic aircraft... there are very few aircraft that actually operate at supersonic speed as a normal part of their mission. And I am aware of no 5th gen fighters or bombers that are supersonic at low altitude as a normal part of their operations...

For A2A they have the Su-57 which is a world beater in that regard. Sure the Okhotnik can play a role, can defend itself and can restrict the enemy's movements or overwhelm them, but this is a further level of redundancy in VKS and a way more complex thing that what you are stating. It is not an efficient A2A platform compared to a fighter.

Haven't you wondered what its purpose is... I mean why didn't the F-22 have such a drone... where is the drone for the F-35...

Do you perhaps think the purpose of the S-70 is to carry the extra missiles 200 odd Su-57s are going to need to take on 1,000 HATO F-35s?

Together of course with the Russian IADS of course and Su-35s and MiG-35s and LMFS and its drones...

Operating at supersonic speed the Su-57 can operate with Su-30s and Su-57s.... at subsonic speeds the S-70s, the MiG-35s and LMFS wont have the endurance to operate with the Su-57 but might operate with a few Su-30s...

I am not talking only about speed but acceleration, STR, climbing, AoA etc. But of course fighters dash to supersonic to launch their missiles, almost all in fact...

So they accelerate and climb and launch... but they would never keep burning fuel to maintain that speed so their speed will drop back to subsonic quickly enough for the S-70 to return to formation.

The S-70 can carry heavy AAMs that don't need the extra acceleration and height to reach their targets...

At the risk of stating the obvious, normally fighters escort strike platforms and not the other way around...

Fighters might provide overwatch... if they fly low amongst the bombers they are supporting how to they stop enemy AAMs and SAMs getting those strike aircraft?

Leap in front of the missiles like some crap hollywood movie... I'll save you mr president... boom.

Sure. Russians always lie, maskirovka and all that.

This is not a game... they have revealed prototypes of all sorts of things where the actual weapon is secret and still is...

It is a pity that the rivals' missiles have a massively bigger footprint on Okhotnik than the other way around... really Garry this is air combat 101.

Yes... of course... all western missiles easily outrange the R-37M... that is why it has to climb to 40km and accelerate to mach 40 to be of any use as a fighter...

When was the last time an air to air engagement involved accelerating to supersonic speeds before missile launch?

And while you are fucking around climbing and in full AB accelerating to supersonic speeds... 5 minutes.... ten minutes... the enemy is going to stop and wait?

You detect the enemy, you decide whether to launch or not, you turn to fire right at them and you might put on AB but you don't wait 5 minutes to fire while you accelerate... you fire when he is within range...

Ask VMF, they say they want the UDK to be the ship in command in such deployments.

The Kirov class cruisers also had command facilities... how many Yaks did they operate again?

You do understand that a command ship is not necessarily the aircraft carrier with fixed wing fighters... when it is a helicopter landing ship it is a helicopter landing ship.... to carry helicopters and to land naval infantry... the VSTOL fighter they have designed and paid development for is the Ka-52K.

There are obvious advantages, if the UDK can operate closer to Russia and/or in lower risk environments and spare carriers for the more serious / distant deployments, it substantially increases the capacities the VMF and saves big in building, manning and operating ships, which is and will remain for a long time the main constraint of the VMF.

Yeah, because obviously when they are landing troops in one country it is obviously a high priority to have their fixed wing carriers available to bomb baby milk factories in Yemen and also somewhere in Africa, and don't forget needing to attack Uranus...

Hard being the world police.

A jet fighter has completely different capabilities to a helicopter, is this new to you?

It does, but when landing troops if the job is shooting down enemy drones then a Ka-52K with quad Verba missile tubes on each of its 6 external weapon pylons and command detonated 30mm cannon shells is actually more useful than a MiG-29KR...

But you are ignoring in turn facts, namely RF leadership stating several times they are developing a STOL/STOVL plane. So it is not some ludicrous stupidity proposed by yours truly, it is something their military considers interesting.

They have developed such things before too and considering the result I suspect at best it might contribute to the high speed helicopter programmes, but for actual fighters it is a waste of time.

The best way I can make sense of it is by placing them in UDKs that would then see their capacity improved in a substantive way.

Cramming expensive complex dinky fighters on a small ship ruins the ship and cripples your force potential... and it costs more money than you seem to realise...

The catch is that the potential market is very limited, so this is best done if the STOVL plane is a version of some existing platform. This is good old common sense, don't see what is so provocative to you.

Good old common sense that led to the F-35 piece of genius.... it made awfully good sense too... everyone using the same light 5th gen fighter... brilliant... you just have one engine... that will make it cheaper and easier to service and operate.... lets make thousands... that will make it even cheaper...

The profit margins for selling aircraft carriers are not great... most of Russias potential customers either can't afford carriers, or if they can they want to make their own... the idea for export potential is just a plan to pretend smaller carriers can be sold for export which will subsidise our production and make it all cheaper for us... and it never does.

Yes Garry, sure.

Yes, when building a partner drone for a 5th gen aircraft that we can tell immediately by its armament that it is not just a fighter but also intended for strike and a range of other roles, the first priority is to make that drone a fixed rigid dumb strike platform that can only do presumably what the Su-57 can already do... obviously designed to fight against Mongolia in a conflict where the problem is the very high tech nature of Mongolias air force... the problem of course could never be considered numbers because Mongolia doesn't have a lot of fighters... like.... say... HATO and HATO friendly countries with their F-16s and F-18s and Typhoons and Rafales and Gripens and F-35s and all these new 5th gen fighters they are talking about developing... nah... don't need drone support for that...

The plane shows no signs of being designed for high maneuverability but you keep pushing this... we will see, it is not as obvious as you seem to think. With no thrust you cannot sustain turning, to start with. To balance a flying wing is far from obvious, too.

Lots of fighters are shit dogfighters with poor manouver performance... do you not think perhaps a high flying drone carrying numbers of big heavy long range air to air missiles might be useless in an air to air battle... within a few years they will likely have scramjet powered AAMs with astounding range performance... but you think because it is not supersonic it is going to lose in air to air combat.

You like to analyse and investigate... how about a list of how many successful air to air kills involved the launching aircraft actually firing at supersonic speeds...

You say this but you don't say where is the limit so we can discuss endlessly, you in favour of a "middle" 11 t plane and I in favour of a "light" 10 t one. Absurd isn't it?

Didn't you say yourself that with internal weapons and internal fuel for sufficient range a new 5th gen fighter will be heavier than its 4th gen equivalent... which means the LMFS should be 12 ton and not 10 ton...

Which would be ideal with two 12 ton engines...

F-35 proves the US MIC is rotten to the core.

The F-35 proves it is more than just a single engine design that means anything.

Gripen has been tested vs. bigger, way more expensive planes 1 to 1.

If Gripen is not good enough then it is not good enough... complaining that a small light fighter can only be compared against other small light fighters is a copout... if it can't do the job then it is not saving money so its entire purpose is null and void.

A crayon line on my hand is much cheaper than a Rolex watch, but it can't be used to tell time so it doesn't matter how cheap it is because it can't do the job.

It proves incompetence or bias in the comparison.

What bias?

We are talking about a Russian equivalent of the F-35... the whole purpose of the design of the F-35 and Gripen was all about single engine low cost super planes that everyone will buy and it will be amazing.... they are exactly the only planes we have to consider when we hear claims of canards and single engines making planes smaller and cheaper...

It was me who posted that, and it proved Isos claims about the costs of the Gripen were false.

It really didn't say the Gripen was super cheap to operate even compared with the more expensive aircraft that could actually do the job.

What it did say is that Gripen was not a sufficient plane to get the job done... and any advantage in costs of operations and purchase price would be lost in either having to buy the more expensive planes too, or the need to buy rather more Gripens to get the job done...

The report discarded the Gripen as a choice.

See the comments about the Gripen E, too.

The next one is always better... that is the promise anyway...

And it is not LMFS, I don't know how many times we said this already. This is a generic study by TsAGI, they don't prepare their public materials with pictures of secret developments...

They have in the past shown models that are strangely relevant to current programmes like flying wings and stealth fighters...

Price should be very similar

Price would only be similar if the drone is an unmanned version of the aircraft it is operating with... I mention the S-70 and Su-57 because that is an example of a 5th gen fighter and a drone that is designed to operate with it.

Nothing to do with my question. I am proposing an unmanned version of a LMFS, which has the same capabilities, you reply with Okhotnik which has nothing to do with Su-57.

And I said making a drone based on a fighter aircraft design is a good way to get a drone that costs as much as a fighter... it would not save money because it would use the same amount of fuel and need the same maintenance and double the aircraft costs of your airforce... you would only do that if you had bags of money or aircraft were given to you free of charge and you had a shortage of men in comparison with your opponents... and even then that would be Israel and I doubt they want an unmanned F-35 either.

No idea what you mean or what it has to do with the discussion.

The more aircraft you make the cheaper they become so make drones from aircraft.... well make missiles from aircraft designs too... not as fast as current missiles but able to manouver using AI pilots, they could be Kamikazi and ram you.... if they miss they can come around again and pull way more g than any aircraft with humans ever could...

They said the reduction of the Su-57 allowed to increase their order. Price always plays a role, obviously.

It only makes sense if you get more drones than you get aircraft...

It is like warheads on an SLBM... it makes no sense to offload real warheads if you can only fit one decoy to one warhead... it would just make more sense to carry more warheads. But if you can get 50 decoys in the space of one real warhead then offloading two warheads and having more missiles but with 100 decoys per missile extra makes sense.

Not buying an extra 10 Su-57s which frees up the money needed to buy 100 S-70s makes sense... not buying 10 extra Su-57s so you can buy 5 extra S-70s does not make sense.

Nobody is proposing a Yak-130, which is half the weight of the plane I am talking about.

OK, you don't want me to give examples of what I mean by too light... fine.

Sorry?

You have said the MiG-29 and Su-35 are too heavy for what they are and talk about the empty weight of the F-16 as an indication they should be lighter.

First off, there is no thing such as "unaffordable", you can always do like India and expend $9B in 36 planes.

Of course there is... Russia is not getting 10 x 100K ton CVNs... it is simply unaffordable... to buy, to store, and to operate...

Second, the real decision air forces face is what combination of assets they need to cover as many missions with as little money as possible. Normally higher and lower end platforms are used to that end, to ensure capability and low costs. No use in identifying drones with Su-57, no point in trying to stop NATO with Yak-130.

Nice concept from a guy who thinks MiG-29s are obsolete and Russia should have an all Flanker fleet...

The criticism with MiG-29 is not strictly about capability but about the cost / performance relationship, plus the cost of opportunity of deploying such platform instead of other.

Clearly not the case. If the problem was that it costs too much for what it does then they would be ordering MiG-29Ms instead of MiG-35s... but clearly they want the best performance they can manage... which makes perfect sense to me.

Due to improvements in airframe and integration, a plane a little smaller can be as capable as the MiG or more in terms of range and payload performance, as the Rafale demonstrates.

This is what I find frustrating.... What is the point of completely redesigning the plane by removing a engine to make it a single engined plane instead of a twin which they already have... just to make it slightly smaller... what are you expecting to happen...

The Rafale demonstrates what a twin engined aircraft can do... how can you possibly be suggesting taking one engine out of a MiG-29 and expect to get Rafale level performance.... THE RAFALE HAS TWO FUCKING ENGINES.

Maybe radar aperture could be a little worse, but such planes need IADS support regardless, otherwise they have no chance against heavy fighters.

With IADS support they could hang an R-37M under a Yak-152 and it will be the best single engined fighter around.... it would just rely on other aircraft to find its targets for it...

So no proof against, and the current plans of Rostec in favour of no single engine ban.

VSTOL and single engined... maybe they were trying to make the Americans think they were going to make the same F-35 mistake they did... propaganda...

Where is any of those thrice as good as the Gripen?

That shows the super single engined fighter you claim is the best conceptually is actually worse in every regard against the Rafale, and the only area is is better than the Typhoon is EW... and that has nothing to do with its single engined configuration.

And of course those overpriced fighters do sell well, so in reality they are market priced.

Gripens are not cheap and lack performance in every useful parameter listed on that graph... I am surprised they bother trying to sell them.

I meant the twin engine fighter + flying wing UCAV.

So what you are trying to say is that MiG should make their drone as expensive as their 5th gen fighter by making them the same airframe shell and engine, because Sukhoi making a good fighter and then a cheap drone to operate with it that is simple and affordable is a bad idea.... right...

What is wrong with the layout I propose?

An F-35 with the cockpit removed... I wonder.... what is wrong with that... ummm...

We know it can, nothing to do with what I say. It is not as effective as a fighter using them.

So why bother testing it with AAMs?

It is a strike platform isn't it?

What is the relation with my comment? 5G will be able to fly supersonic at low altitude if needed, same as 4G.

Could only do so using continuous AB or are you suggesting sea level supercruise?

Flying low level full AB... what is wrong with this picture...

Not much, because it is pretty obvious and because the Russians themselves have stated it, it is a strike platform.

No, more often they describe it as an assistant to the Su-57. It probably could be used for strike missions but also SEAD missions and also air to air combat...

Look at the amounts of bombers and strike fighters of VKS compared to pure fighters, it is clear what mission needs more ordnance on target.

Even their MiG-31s are multirole, but so are the Su-30, Su-35, MiG-35, and Su-57... and Backfire and Su-34 are dedicated strike missions... not to mention land attack cruise missiles and Iskander missiles which they already have in enormous numbers... there is no shortage of air to ground capacity... their shortage is air to air.

They will operate all together because they are integrated in the same command system.

That would mean the longer ranged aircraft could not operate at long range, or the short ranged aircraft could not operate with the longer ranged aircraft... which means operating together is impossible. As part of the same team, yes, but not together.

TOR and S-300V4 operate together but they are not focussing on the same targets...

Okhotnik cannot keep up with Su-57, Strelets has clearly stated its conventional operational mode is supersonic for all of the flight. It makes no sense to break sound barrier several times when you can stay above with low fuel burn. You propose the Su-57 to stop every few minutes so the S-70 an catch up?

Flying at supersonic speeds means it will cover a hell of a lot of air space... do you think they will run circuits and defend long thin strips of air space at supersonic speeds? Will they maintain supersonic speeds and take 5 minutes to turn 180 degrees and hense fly a big cube of airspace with a gap down the middle the S-70 could fly up and down?

If they are anywhere near the front line with the west enemy forces will necessitate concentration of forces... not spreading them out... 76 high speed fighters running away from all their support aircraft would be a waste of their sensors and equipment... it would make more sense to orbit in friendly airspace and send a few S-70s into enemy territory to see what lights up and what communications occur.

Which ones are those that it can carry and the other fighters cannot? And how many?

The R-37Ms could be carried so that the Su-57 can carry smaller lighter shorter ranged missiles, yet as a team they can still reach into those hard to reach places.

Rather when was the last time it didn't?

When was the last time most fighters actually got supersonic... give me one instance of an air to air shoot down at more than about 30km range.... in the real world most shots are taken with BVR missiles at near WVR ranges....

Most BVR shots miss anyway.

So it seems going supersonic every time to launch a BVR missile is a bit of a waste of time...

• Notes: Initial conditions were 0.76M at 37,000ft. Fuel used was 3,670lb.

Blah blah blah... I am talking about what actually happens... not what the manual states.

VMF wants they UDKs to be command ships so they can be deployed without higher order combatants, it is clear.

Bullshit... they have said nothing of the sort. These new helicopter carriers are to manage the LANDINGS... you do understand the overall command will be on a bigger ship providing security for the landing force and the surface action group that is operating with it.

For strike missions, jet aircraft are on another league in terms of payload, speed and range.

No they aren't. VSTOL fighters are dead ducks when confronted with any decent air defence... they are slow and fragile and have a 360 degree IR signature of a bonfire... Helicopters are cheaper are already in production and can provide direct fire support to the landed troops...

Fighter planes are dead weight dead ends that accountants in the war department will claim are much cheaper than CVNs and Su-57s.... but then Verba is much cheaper than S-500 so why not cancel S-500 and just make billions of Verba missiles... because you and I know they are not the same thing.

And they are also very useful for air policing / enforcing no fly zones or truces.

No they aren't. They are weak and useless and very very vulnerable to even subsonic anti ship missile attack.

As said the air wing of the UDK can be configured for many different missions from humanitarian to landing to strike.

No it can't. The Soviets had Kiev class carriers and they are now gone for lots of very very good reasons.

Most conflicts are not of a very big scale so having something smaller and cheaper than a carrier for those makes sense.

Nothing would be better than a mini carrier... at least nothing would be cheaper.

They starting a new STOVL program suggests they think differently.

they have started 3 STOVL programmes to date... Yak-36 and Yak-141 saved them a lot of money by failing before getting to serial production stage. The Yak-38/M cost them a lot of money and a lot of pilots for an aircraft that was worse than useless and never found a useful purpose.

Almost no country can develop a jump jet on their own and very few can afford or will ever be offered a F-35B, that is why that market is actually interesting.

The ones that can't afford it are the lucky ones. The ones that piss money away on a dead end white elephant waste of money and time are the ones I feel sorry for.... so far only the west with the F-35.

Standard procedure, see above.

How often has it actually happened?

Most engagements are 15-20km... pissing around climbing and getting supersonic is pointless...

No, that weight already considers the weight increase above a light fighter like the F-16, which is ca. 8 t empty.

So they can't make a Russian plane they have to copy the F-16?

BS. A light fighter is not the only asset in the AF, and if it is and you need something better then you are a lousy planer. If you compare Gripen with medium fighters you show you are making the comparison without a real clue of what you need, at best, probably having an agenda at worst.

A Gripen is a third wheel... Russia does not need a Gripen, it needs and wants MiG-35s and a 5th gen equivalent.

Because a plane with a way smaller cost should not be compared for the same amount of planes but for an equivalent number for a given cost.

All your Gripens get shot down on day one of a conflict.... but it is OK because they were much cheaper than the planes that lasted the week because they were good designs...

Cost is a limiting factor... it limits how many aircraft you can deploy. It is not a mitigating factor... a loss doesn't turn into a win because when you tot up the loses, your planes lost cost less than his planes lost... Russia can't afford to do that because just shooting down one F-35 would mean they could lose 20 MiGs and still pretend they won the financial war.

It is already pretty clear the Russians are winning the Financial war.... their Su-57s are cheaper than Gripens.

They apply if you don't engage in fact twisting. Which you are very much doing.

What facts am I twisting... people buying F-35s do so because they have no choice... certainly not because they are cheap...

The claim was that according to the report the Gripen was three times as expensive as claimed.

The claim was that the Gripen was pitched as being expensive to buy but very cheap to operate... it was certainly the former but found not to be so cheap to operate... not actually expensive, but not as cheap as suggested. Cheap operation was dropped from the sales pitch.

The Sales pitch was always that the plane was not cheap to buy... they couldn't hide that obviously, but that the lower operation costs would mean it would end up being the cheapest option... and that was in the Indian competition against the MiG-29/35.

The cheap to operate spiel was dropped from later competitions...

And it may still be better and more economical.

It can't be better or more economical if it does not do the job.

It is not LMFS for god's sake.

Show us the LMFS and we can compare and decide for ourselves...

What.... you don't know what the LMFS looks like?

Join the club, but don't pretend you know what it looks like...

So if you need a light fighter with good A2A performance comparable to manned fighters, you will end up with a similarly sized and priced UCAV.

Bollocks... it is easy to make a smaller stronger airframe that can take 30g with huge control surfaces and thrust vectoring control engines that allow it to achieve high g manouvering... a relatively small light platform with two nice engines for excellent acceleration and climb rate.

Most air to air victories were not dogfights except when there were only WVR missiles like the Falklands where they had to be... why close in with a target before launching missiles? Simply... you wouldn't unless you had to... because most WVR missiles are very very good... so as a pilot getting into a dogfight situation is effectively getting into a potentially suicide situation especially against a target that can massively out turn you...

S-70 is fine, if LMFS needs a powerful strike platform to work with it would make sense that they can use it too, no need to create another UCAV covering the same role.

It is a good support drone for bigger aircraft over large distances... a smaller lighter cheaper model will compliment the LMFS too.

It is a drone... they have them from hand sized balls they can roll into rooms or throw over cover to see what is there to palm sized flying drones all the way up to drones bigger than fighters... having more types in different weight ranges is a good thing...

Of course the limit between missiles and UCAVs is blurring

People who think suicide drones are new... it is basically what most guided air to air and air to ground and even ground to ground weapons are... though in the past they were not AI controlled thinking robots... just telecommand (ie SARH) or self guiding (IR and ARH)...

You are forgetting the operational costs, which in the case of the UCAV will be a fraction.

Not when you take into account loss rate... modern fighters will be good for 5-6,000 hours... will drones equal that?

As said, take a regiment where one sqd is manned and the other is not. You have half the pilots and roughly half the training needs. And you get the operational flexibility because you can take more risks.

You take more risks and you lose more aircraft and your numbers drop... and what happens when a sophisticated enemy takes control or your drones and commands them to attack your manned aircraft?

Drones are a tool, but it wouldn't be a great idea to rely on them for air defence...

Further onwards you can have one piloted machine for each three or four UCAV and further reduce costs. I suspect this is the reason forr the manned / unmanned remark by Chemezov.

My understanding of what they are talking about with the S-70 is not that they will boost numbers and act like manned aircraft able to perform independent aircraft, but would operate as extensions of the existing fighter force carrying sensors and weapons that can be directed into places you wouldn't risk flying a manned aircraft... but also as something semi expendable... not to be used up each mission, but if they run out of fuel doing their job and end up crashing then that is OK...

No...

You complained that the MiG-29s empty weight is too much and even bitched about the MiG-35s empty weight from an episode of Combat Approved was too high too.

Don't know what they make the perfect F-16 out of, but I suspect lies.

And I thought my username and image were too obvious...

The image looks more like an X-32 than a MiG-35...

Without knowing the price tag you don't know. Maybe they wanted something good enough, given it was going to cost almost like a Flanker...

Maybe getting a useful aircraft is more important than purchase cost and that even if it costs the same as a Flanker its operational costs will be lower...

WOW.... I sound like a SAAB salesman...

The new fighter will not be a further version of the MiG-29 unless they are really cash strapped and see no chance of selling properly. New generation means clean sheet design.

They will have been testing and evaluating designs for the last 30 years for this job... lots of choices and features to look at and to try and evaluate and either keep or discard.

You again thinking single engine planes have half the thrust... Rafale's M88 engines have a joint thrust of 15 tf, like one izd. 117 but with a weight significantly higher (like 400 kg more), tell me the big problem of using one engine instead of two?

You think single engines with thrust performance of two smaller engines are everywhere and cheap and available in large numbers... and are reliable enough to not need any backup.

Reminds me of an F-16 pilot flying near a B-52... the F-16 pilot got bored and just did a roll and then a loop... all safe distances from the bomber and then he said on the radio... "can you do that?"... after 5 minutes... the B-52 pilot responded by saying.... "can you do that?".... to which the puzzled F-16 pilot asked what he did, and the B-52 pilot said... shut down three engines and maintained speed and altitude for four and a half minutes...

It would be a massive gain for any plane to go from two engines with the necessary duplicated ancillaries, increased complexity and maintenance needs to just one engine, which on top of that is shared with the heavy fighters for even better logistics, training costs and economies of scale, and reduce almost half a ton in empty weight in the process... you don't get often optimizations as good as that.

What training costs.... each aircraft and engine will come with a manual... any support crew should be able to be trained up on a new aircraft reasonably quickly but in practice would likely never need to support a wide variety of aircraft types because the different types have pilots and crews that work on them that don't rotate to different aircraft all the time.

It is not better logistics if all your aircraft use one engine that is expensive... having two engines does mean more thrust.... the bog standard MiG-29 had 16 tons of thrust... the current ones have 18 tons... which F-16 variant had more thrust than that?

Your claim that you need three of them for each of the others was debunked, thanks.

Your chart showed the Gripen was inadequate and there is no evidence that having more than one Gripen would have made any difference at all to whether it could achieve its goals or not... if one T-26 light tank can't destroy a Panther tank then 30 T-26s are not likely going to do better.

Yes, what is wrong with that?

A 120 million dollar drone that is not stealthy or supersonic?

Bombers like Su-34 carry them too. Russians like their planes to be flexible and capable of holding their own in case of need, I see nothing wrong with that. You making no distinction between a strike platform and an air superiority one is what is remarkable here.

The Su-34 could carry R-77s on most of its weapon pylons and be used in an emergency as an air superiority platform... a massive cruise missile strike on a Russian airbase and it would make sense to launch every aircraft loaded with AAMs to blunt the attack as far away from the base as is possible, but in the real world the Su-34 is better off carrying strike weapons and perhaps a few AAMs for self defence.

The S-70 is going to be flying around with the Su-57 which can do strike, but most of the time it will be taking down enemy air defences (SEAD) and also providing air superiority, so why link it with a strike only drone? It would make more sense to use the S-70 with Su-30s which wont be supercruising, but will be managing smaller lighter fighters in air defence roles.

Yes, waste the expensive missiles with the Okhotnik and leave the dangerous issues and coming close to the enemy to the Su-57. Very logical.

The model shown of the S-70 looks rather more stealthy than the flying model we see today... why do you think sending some high flying stealthy S-70s into HATO territory to hunt AWACS and JSTARS and inflight refuelling aircraft is stupid? Don't you think the loss of such platforms and the resulting withdrawal of such platforms from within 5,000km of the front line would not be value for money for Russia?

Where are your accounts of what actually happens? It is you challenging widely known facts.

Name the last air to air engagement that occurred at more than 50km range... most modern kills have been by HATO aircraft against old model unaware targets where HATO aircraft have been vectored to the rear launch position and have launched without warning.

Was the Su-24 that was shot down by Turkey in Syria done by the book... did he accelerate to supersonic speed for that launch?

Most attacks seem to be at less than 20km so accelerating and climbing would make bugger all difference to the missile performance in respect to its effect on target.

That is an old TsAGI model. I don't know how the plane will be, but hints given by Flateric are that the delta canard presented by Piotr Butowsli was not that far off. We will see, but no need to hype every generic wind tunnel model as some potential LMFS, this is not how things work.

And if it had one engine would you say the same?

In my opinion, the nearest prospects are associated with versatility, when both manned and unmanned aerial vehicles, which are very similar in design and combat capabilities, will be able to fly in the same combat formation.

That could apply to a MiG-35 with three underwing fuel tanks or one inflight refuelling operating with a Su-35 with no external fuel tanks and not refuelling...

Different planes operate together all the time without having identical airframes with one being manned and the other unmanned.

There was talk of an unmanned Yak-130... but please list all the cases in the real world from any country you like where a manned and unmanned version of the same aircraft has ever been used... not counting remote controlled former manned aircraft used as target drones of course...

If it makes so much sense why is no one else doing it.

I understand why a company that makes planes wants to do it... it means making twice as many airframes, which is good for business... but why is the S-70 so different from Su-57s if it makes sense for them to use the same airframe?

I remember a time when experts in the aviation industry were saying non VSTOL aircraft are dead... within hours of WWIII started all airfields will be destroyed and the only aircraft operating will be Harrier types operating in cities from shopping mall carparks...

Turns out most urban places have too much loose rubbish lying around for jet engines to loosen and release into the air so the FOD march the troops make every day would never end and would shift more rubbish than they could dispose of...

Having tested these solutions on two aircraft, they can be scaled up to three, four, and so on. Then there will be no need to equip all aircraft with a full set of equipment to perform the functions of a command post - one aircraft with a pilot is able to redistribute tasks in a group taking into account machine or artificial intelligence, provide information exchange and organize the work of this so-called "swarm".

Which seems to suggest that the Su-57 wont need a two seat version and neither will the LMFS. But we also know the Su-30 will be getting all the systems and equipment and radar and engines from the Su-35 which makes a lot of sense in terms of commonality and standardisation, but it should also make it rather good for mini AWACS jobs involving lighter aircraft and if you think about it... a mini AWACS plane will be blazing away with a big powerful radar most of the time to get situational awareness... so making it stealthy is rather pointless... but by using its radar to detect targets the aircraft operating with it using AESA radar could be mostly radar silent or use it in LPI modes so even MiG-35s operating closer to the enemy will be semi stealthy in the sense of low emissions but still having a view of targets and threats provided by the Su-30.

This would be even more effective with LMFS stealthy aircraft operating with Su-30s, where the LMFS can use its superior self defence capabilities and sensors in passive mode and its lower RCS and IR signature to operate closer to enemy platforms than a non stealthy aircraft could.

The extra engine power of two engines would allow rather faster acceleration for launch and manouver...

Also along the lines of what we commented here, the possibility though the manned / unmanned versions of progressive penetration of the UCAVs even whitin the existing regiments and with a common platform that allows for more flexibility and optimized logistics / maintenance.

Making drones based on fighters means more maintenance for the drones, not less.

Also the fact that the drones will be based on standard planes will limit their performance too... on a drone you could increased control surfaces to allow much harder g turns... beyond what a human could endure... not something you want on your manned planes...

A drone can pull a 9g continuous turn and still perform its normal functions with no threat of passing out or GLOC... A drone could be made to pull 20g briefly to acquire a target for a launch and then roll and pull 20g to return to its original course... which makes some attacks by drone more practical than from a manned platform.

Yes, it is not 100% clear because the wording used ("легкого ударного самолета") seems to translate directly to "light strike fighter", but other than that, it perfectly matches what we know about LMFS. Since it would be multirole, it would indeed be a strike plane too.

Yandex translates it to be Light strike aircraft.

LMFS wrote:Wow, from a recent interview with Borisov:



Forward placed ventral DSI intake, not bad. Probably not a canard layout, but very nice regardless

Can't see the image.

I wonder if this is a VTOL fighter, and not the LMFS...
The intake looks large, with a large airflow requirement.
It looks like a substantial aircraft, with large, deep front fuselage.

I think it is fairly transparent why you would want manned and unmanned being as similar as possible. Not only helps throughout the life cycle of the program, from design to maintenance and modernization, but it helps performing missions where the wing needs to fly and fight together, otherwise the weakest link of the chain is limiting the rest.

That does not make sense...

If you think having a drone the same as the fighter it operates with where the drone carries the air to ground weapons and the fighter performs fighter services to protect the drone what we are talking about is the equivalent 40 years ago of a MiG-29 fighter operating with a MiG-27 light strike aircraft... does it really matter if the fighter does not have the same airframe? Was it really so amazinging more cost effective when it was a MiG-23 operating with a MiG-27?

I think making the airframe of a drone as expensive as that of the stealthy fighters it is operating is just silly... it is always easier to make a flying wing platform stealthy and low drag and long range higher performance than if it had a tail and cockpit etc etc.

How many operational UCAVs has Russia for instance? This trend is just starting right now, of course there are not so many examples... but they are already talking about the Su-57 being a plane that could operate unmanned.

Have not seen any other country talking about anything like this... and when the enemy has drone fighters able to pull sustained turns above 10g then what chance will manned platforms have... manned aircraft will become obsolete in terms of fighters... but that is not any time soon and perhaps might never come... new engines with more power take off could lead to laser and other directed energy weapons making dogfighting obsolete completely.

For a heavy strike platform the characteristics of Okhotnik are almost ideal, true the supersonic low level penetration is missing but most likely the very low RCS, extremely long range / endurance and lack of crew being put at risk compensate for that. For a light fighter with a multirole design (that...

I don't think light fighter is even worth the effort, and your suggestion that as the craft get smaller it means less whether they are manned or unmanned confirms my belief that light fighters will be dead meat and not very effective anyway...

1. Structure to perform 20 or 30 g maneuvers means weight. It does not come for free, it is not something you want in a plane unless you really make use of it because it will make your plane heavier and more expensive. You don't want the UCAV to have inferior performance to the manned version, do you?

Do you not understand that building an aircraft to perform 30g turns routinely would effectively make them able to dodge missiles and outmanouver any other aircraft in the sky... isn't carrying around a little extra weight worth that?

Oh the top speed and flight range will be badly effected but who cares about flight range and acceleration when this damn thing turns and gets on your tail and nothing you can do to shake him off and he guns you down with cheap 30mm cannon shells.

Your AMRAAM and Sidewinder wont connect with a target that can pull 30g... very few missiles could hit such a target... but you think being astonishingly agile is a bad thing...

2. You don't know what is the ultimate overload of say a Su-57, that has never been said. So it may already be well above the customary +9/-3g, how would we know? Why would they hide that value if it was the obvious one? See above, the Su-57 has already been mentioned more than once as a potentially unmanned platform, so maybe from a structural point of view it can do already say 12 g in prevision of unmanned operation.

Even if it could pull 40 g it doesn't matter as long as it is flown by a human... above about 5 g and he is just a passenger... not really taking an active part in proceedings.

My guess is they are talking about one and the same plane, the MiG project and the Rostec initiative.

The Rostec initiative sounds like it is fishing for export orders to help fund development. My understanding is that there is an expectation the LMFS would get funding now that the Su57 is in serial production.

Perhaps they want more funding... certainly the F-35 is not an international success... and they might think it is a chance for countries to get in early for something that might sell quite widely.

Forward placed ventral DSI intake, not bad. Probably not a canard layout, but very nice regardless

Very large looking intake for a single engined aircraft...

reminds me of the nose/intake of the x-32, but actually graceful and not retarded looking.lol

If it isn't VSTOL it has the chance to be the stealthy F-16 that the F-35 was supposed to be...

I wonder if this is a VTOL fighter, and not the LMFS...
The intake looks large, with a large airflow requirement.
It looks like a substantial aircraft, with large, deep front fuselage.

Yes, it seems to have quite a belly on it... would be interesting to see the rest of the design.

Of course designers have all sorts of models on their desks.... I seem to remember an American with a Soviet designed aircraft model on his desk...

The heavy A2G role is best covered by platforms like Okhotnik which are optimized in terms of RCS, payload and range.

The days of using light fighters as B-52s is probably over. A modern F-16 wont need anything like the 7 ton payload capacity they pretended it had.

Cheap satellite guided bombs and also precision delivered dumb bombs will render needing enormous numbers of bombs unnecessary...

To effectively defend these tactics is simply beyond the capacities of people.

From the perspective of defence... it would make sense for the manned fighters to direct the unmanned dog fighters to decimate the enemy force of fighters and drones and standoff weapons... a couple of AAMs and a built in cannon with 500 rounds or so would do the trick most of the time...

The offensive role in A2A is best covered by high-performance platforms, because they are actually difficult to counter and much more survivable

For Russia the offensive role could best be assigned to hypersonic long range missiles to take out HATO infrastructure and command and control centres.... their air force could remain in Russian airspace mostly and defend Russian targets with air launched stand off weapons annihilating HATO forces on Russian borders.

What use has a Loyal Wingman like the one presented by Boeing these days, if they can be downed trivially by the enemy? This is just an appetizer (or rather a way to gradually get more financing) for what will come, that is, high performance expensive A2A UCAVs.

You are not getting it... you don't need to be manouverable to launch a medium range air to air missile... instead of your stupid single engined types a twin engined rocket UCAV that can accelerate and climb like a rocket makes more sense than a drone designed in the shape of the F-35 which is a dog in terms of dogfighting anyway.

With twin engines and thrust vectoring engines at that... plus a very strong wing structure and bugger all else a drone could be made to outmanouver any manned aircraft... carry quite a few medium and long range missiles as well as a few short range self defence missiles and a decent cannon with a good load of cannon shells and the ability to pull 20 g manouvers.

BTW, it is not even clear that a AMRAAM fits in the Loyal Wingman at all... they are selling the dummy to the politicians yet again.

Who cares what they call it... their F-22s and F-35s can't penetrate Russian air defence and can be detected thousands of kms beyond Russian borders... any airfields within 2,000km of Russian territory can be attacked continuously day and night with hypersonic land attack missiles... any inflight refuelling aircraft can also be attacked if it is near Russian territory too... the talk of new model AAMs that have cluster self homing warheads suggests they are preparing to fight from enormous distances against large groups of targets.... a high speed high flying MiG-31 to begin with and perhaps later MiG-41 launching 4+ very large missiles into HATO airspace to chase after any targets it can spot... each missile perhaps releasing 4-6 separate independently guiding air to air missiles moving at mach 6 or so coming down from an enormous height with their own propulsion... who cares how many the Americans want to make... building big expensive stealth drones is fine... I doubt the Digital Night vision IIR missiles they launch will care what their RCS is.

UCAV =/= flying wing =/= cheap. Aero layout is one thing, manned / unmanned a different one. Manned does not imply tail...

Simple design does mean cheaper... twin engines with TVC and large control surfaces means agility... a simple flying wing means it can be made strong... and relatively stealthy...

So you need to understand at what price the "wild" maneuverability will come, you don't want the plane being 20-30% heavier and therefore being worse 90% of the time. We need data...

The price of being 50% heavier is perfectly acceptable if it means being able to out manouver any threatening missile and outfly any manned aircraft... the light drones that can't perform manouvers like this run the risk of being cannon fodder.

1) Maybe it is not so easy to create an aircraft that can outmaneuver a missile

With the right situational awareness manned aircraft sometimes already manage to do this... why do you think an unmanned aircraft couldn't manage?

It wont just be manouvering... it will be jamming and dropping decoys and the like...

2) If such UCAVs are created, then the corresponding more agile missiles will be created too.

More agile missiles will be an enormous problem... they have to be fast or you will need to fit them with wings and control surfaces and make them into mini planes... which essentially makes them drones... so why not replace their missile warhead with a cannon and make them multi use...

We will see, I hope. By now that picture felt like a nice Christmas present for me

It is just a model... I doubt the guy whose desk it was has any idea what the Russian Air Force will spend money on and what they wont.

The idea I told you about the STOVL conversion would perfectly apply to that plane (logical, since it is practically identical to my proposal)

Assumptions.... you can't even see the whole plane.

I remember that scale model speculation on some Zvezda footage, they can take as all for fools easily. But I don't know of any similar design around, so if it is a joke at least they invested some effort on it

Your computer model and a 3D printer and a week or so would do it.