5th gen light mulltirole fighter/Mikoyan LMFS

GarryB wrote:

It is a very complex issue, but most engines will have a percentage chance of failure assuming there has not been a mistake in manufacture or maintenance of that engine.

Having two engines does not eliminate the chance of failure but the chance of failure of both engines at the same time is much smaller than the chance of one or the other failing.

The MiG-29 lost at the Paris Airshow was bird ingestion into one engine... you can see it flare and stall... if the aircraft was in normal level flight it would not have been a problem but because the aircraft was flying very low at a very high angle of attack at very low forward flight speed the loss of power could not be compensated for so the aircraft rolled over and crashed into the ground.

Most of the time however at normal flight speed or at altitude or both and they would not have lost a twin engined fighter but they likely would have lost a single even with extra speed and altitude.

They can't be that bad.... China buys them for their single engined JF-14 that they sell to Pakistan... and they seem to be able to cope with reverse airflows.

In the crash I mentioned above the pilot said he restarted the engine after having a flight of birds get sucked through it, there just was not enough time to run it up to full thrust to avoid a crash.... more altitude and he would have recovered.

MiG did waste their time going for the MMRCA competition because India was always going to pick the Rafale... the whole exercise was to get the French to drop the price and certainly was a waste of time for MiG, but they have been working hard and the current MiG-35 looks very good. They are in the process of introducing it into Russian AF service, and will likely take it to Syria for a test run.
Egypt seems interested and Algeria might buy some, honestly I think Iran should licence produce the MIG-29M to replace existing MiGs and F-4s and F-5s with a more modern and capable design. I would think licence production of Su-30s would be useful to replace F-14s too.

So 250 million dollars per airframe for something with external weapon pylons that carries less than an F-15E... paying a premium for something doesn't make sense if you then ruin its primary feature that made it cost all that money in the first place.

Would be like spending all that money to make a supersonic Harrier replacement and then find mistakes in the design and structure mean you can't run the engine at full AB for more than 90 seconds or the tail comes off... so why bother combining the Harrier VSTOL design with the F-35 in the first place.

Getting rid of that huge fan would mean the aircraft could be shaped like a stealthy F-16 instead of a stealthy Buccaneer.

Not fundamentally no... but expecting a plane developed by South Korea or India alone to be better than the height of Americas cold war prowess at aircraft design.... the South Korean model will likely be a lot of American parts cobbled together so not really SK to be fair.

Most countries don't need 5th gen fighters... it is ego and prestige for most that are trying....

But that would be the problem... in the past they might promote an engineer to the job of manager... one that has good organisational skills, but these days they are not putting MBAs fresh out of uni with engineering degrees... they will be managers with degrees in management who does not understand engineering or manufacturing... to that sort of person putting a factory making parts for a plane in a poor area to create jobs where the senator in that district happens to be on the appropriations committee and who decides what gets funded at the Pentagon and what doesn't. He wont pull funding on a plane that is made in his district in an area with high unemployment.

So its funding is secure and it wont get cut or reduced funding... but what if they can't make parts well and 50% of them are duds and get thrown out or have to be remade. What if that district is miles away from where everything else is made so transporting parts and components all over the country because everything is spread out... it is bad management for a private company, but for an MIC company that relies on funding from the Pentagon it does make sense... they don't care how much the plane costs... it wont get cancelled and numbers wont get cut.

It was so successful with the C-17 the Pentagon stopped asking for new planes... they got new planes in every budget even when they didn't ask for them.

That is the definition of success for these guys... not whether the product works or is even any good.

US President Obama...

The F-35 has more than 800 problems with the design of which over 10 are life threatening, it was detected by Russia using radars in Russian territory while it was flying along the border between Iraq and Iran.... it can't run its engine for more than 90 seconds in full AB or it damages its tail structure and stealth material burns off...

I am sure the Su-57 has some problems ahead of it but it appears to be significantly better designed.

Not a lot of competition there really.

Knowing its problems and its enormous cost all I see is a dog.

GarryB wrote:Funny, I would say situational awareness and support would count rather more...

Their expectation with that aircraft is that both sides can probably defeat any AAM either side can fire, either by jamming or DIRCMS, so being able to kill the target with guns makes sense, which makes manouvering a useful feature for a jack of all trades aircraft that might be recon or strike or fighter or interceptor.

Give it a scramjet engine and an AI brain and it could loiter at high altitude along a border if needed...

Part of the Su-33KUB design included active wings that were able to be used in a high lift mode for takeoff and landing and a low drag mode for normal flight... why would future aircraft need separate flaps and aielerons to manouver if the actual wing changed shape instead... a wing with antenna built in for all sorts of things.

the thickness of the air is irrelevant in that case.

So when they bank their main wing is no longer generating lift so they fall like rocks?

Unless you are not reading what I am typing you would already have worked out I am not talking about rudder turns... differential use of tailerons to roll to an angle of bank and then return the stick to centre to stop the roll and pull back on the stick and you both turn and incur g force... the harder you pull the faster that you are going the more gs you pull for a given turn rate.

I rather suspect at their operational heights of about 18km altitude that they are not generating 2 tons of thrust each... because with aircraft close enough to 45 tons, having four tons of thrust just wont maintain a mach 2.83 flight speed which both of them can achieve...

I don't, which is why I think manned aircraft designs are a bad start for unmanned fighter drone designs.

Which means designing a manned aircraft for 120 million dollars a plane like the F-35 is a stupid basis for a fighter drone because it is going to be vastly more expensive than a drone designed from scratch for the job....

which I mentioned could be an R-77 with a ramjet engine and new photonic radar and IIR sensors and some AI and a datalink connection to the IADS.

A small light fast missile with thrust vectoring and a seeker you can't jam or fool is going to kill you... whether you can pull 9g or 12g..

You are claiming it has to be a single engined fighter or it will be rubbish.

Ironically taking your logic to its logical conclusion... for a single engined light fighter to be light and cheap it should not use one engine from a heavy fighter... it should use one engine from a medium fighter... that will make it lighter and make the difference in operational costs more noticeable and relevant.. in terms of the performance difference between the different aircraft.

I got to fly a plane on my birthday many years ago... my friend is a pilot... I know exactly how planes turn.

You are the one claiming a MiG-31 is useless because it can only fly in a straight line... its rating for 5g is for operational use at altitude... where it spends most of its time because it can't fly at mach 2.5 plus at sea level.

You are claiming it has to be a single engined fighter or it will be rubbish.

It will not be rubbish, but it will be more expensive, less numerous and provide a less flexible capability to the air force than it could.

You are the one claiming a MiG-31 is useless because it can only fly in a straight line... its rating for 5g is for operational use at altitude... where it spends most of its time because it can't fly at mach 2.5 plus at sea level.

Who is claiming it is useless?

GarryB wrote:That is just sad. Situational awareness is the most critical think in air combat... even the Red Baron knew that...

You do understand that a scramjet is a jet engine and can be throttled from idle to full power, and that a scramjet can operate at subsonic speeds like a ramjet too...

Putting it on a drone is lower cost lower risk and easier to get into use quicker.

And alcohol injection into the air intakes would increase density wouldn't it?

Most air intakes close up at higher speeds and only open as much as possible for takeoffs... the jet engine in the MiG-25 and MiG-31 burn fuel in subsonic airflows so the thin air is necessary to fly faster than about mach 1.3.

Turbojets have different performance characteristics, which is why they are often used for very fast and high altitude aircraft.

It makes more sense making missiles smarter and more dangerous than making unmanned fighters based on fighters.

You haven't offered any proof as to why it will be more expensive a lighter fighter might require numbers to achieve goals fewer heavier aircraft could achieve.

A decent medium fighter is more value for money than a plane that is too light and useless.

Using my logic light might be a little cheaper but not half the price and when you use twice as many or more to get the job done then it isn't cheaper at all.

The medium offers a good fraction of the performance of the heavier types, while being cheaper to buy and to operate... so they can operate them in larger numbers.

Most of the time the heavy fighter will be overkill, while the medium just right and the light needing big external tanks and a couple of planes where one medium would do.

GarryB wrote:

Have you ever heard of an aircraft called an Su-25.... after they installed an armoured plate between the engines even combat damage normally only effected one engine allowing quite a few to make it back to base.

I disagree, a ramjet is one of the most simple designs of jet engines, but even assuming you are right would say complex does not equal expensive to buy and expensive to operate.

The more powerful engines require exotic materials and special designs, but the cost does not always justify the improvement in performance.

Not sure where that came from... was talking about the JF-14 with Russian engines being sold to Pakistan as a cheap single engined fighter... if the engine was crap you wouldn't want it in a single engined fighter, and the crash I was talking about was a Russian pilot in a Russian plane at a Paris airshow.

The brand new fighter the US has put back into production is the F-15 which is even older than the MiG-29... do you think the F-15EX is shit as well?

The MiG-35 is as good if not better than the best model F-16 or F-18 which are both in widespread use... the former might even go back into production.

The MiG-35 was like the AK-12 or T-90AM or Su-35... it is the maximal improvement of what was already in use in an attempt to eliminate all the vices and make it as good as it can possibly be while in the background the from scratch new designed next generation replacement is in the works... in the case of the AK-12 we don't know, but for the T-90AM it is the T-14, and for the Su-35 it is the Su-57 and for the MiG-35 it is the LMFS.

I am sorry you look at the MiG-35 and see a MiG-29 but that is your problem... don't learn anything about its new features and just assume it is the same.

They have S-300, and while Germany started their nuclear power station no other country had the guts to finish them or build more for fear of US sanctions.

Egypt has already bought, though the newest stuff for the MiG-35 is only in service with Russia now so they have a MiG-29M.2.... the new technology from the MiG-35 can be transferred when it is ready.

Sanctions have forced Russian military to use no foreign parts or components and they are in the process of producing a complete range of engines in a range of power levels to replace existing engines and also create new aircraft to replace obsolete Ukrainian aircraft like An-12 and An-24 etc etc.

Foreign components would be a reason to reject something being used by the Russian military or government these days... no other country on the planet could apply such a policy...

The solution isn't training engineers to be managers, but to train managers to better understand the economics of what they do... perhaps make it mandatory for the manager of a military industrial complex company that makes weapons has to have children in the military, because saving money or making money should be secondary or even less of a priority to getting a good product to the troops that works and is safe.

I qualified my statement to "looks"

Yup, you like a weapon of war because it looks pretty to you... irrespective of all the faults and problems being found by the current users... or that it is supposed to be stealthy... that is its game changer feature over the faster cheaper longer ranged heavier payload aircraft it is replacing... it was detected from inside Russian territory flying along the border of Iraq and Iran...

They should have made two completely different planes... one a Yak-141 like stealthy VSTOL fighter much like the F-35, and the mass produced fighter should have been a stealthy F-16 and it would have been very good, but likely still expensive.

It is the most potent and effective interceptor available today bar none.

Few other aircraft go supersonic for very long let alone fly great distances at more than Mach 2.4.

And no aircraft has longer ranged air to air missiles either.

And its ability in the MiG-31K model to carry a 2,000km range Mach 9 anti ship missile is unique as well...

Survivability in combat is as important as cost of use... it makes no sense having a plane that is cheap to operate in peace time that just gets shot down easily in combat.

In the late 1980s there was a plan to replace the A-10 because the supersonic fighter jocks didn't like it. They wanted a ground attack modification of the F-16 to replace it called the A-16, and to retain performance it had no armour... it had payload and speed, but for ground attack speed is counterproductive.

It was not put into production because it was too fragile, so combat survivability is certainly an issue.

Plenty were shot down, but in your professional view... what damaged these aircraft.... they clearly managed to land again because the damage suggests a missile hit but not a crash afterwards...

And there are similar pictures of A-10s getting engines damaged to the point of them failing but have clearly landed anyway...

I appreciate what you are trying to say, but the Su-25 is probably a 3rd gen fighterbomber, and can shoot down enemy aircraft as it normally carries an air to air weapon... previously R-60MKs which were quite effective little missiles, but these days R-73s which are old but as good as it needs for dealing with enemy aircraft and helicopters.

And yet twin engined aircraft exist, so there must be some positive benefits... there are very few four engined fighters and very few three engined fighters and very few five engined fighters, yet there are probably more twin engined fighters than singles.

The fact that we are not sure of the reasons for a twin should not be dismissed because there are enough twin engined aircraft out there to suggest they are pretty important reasons.

I am saying the are conceptually simple... more countries could make ramjets than could make any other form of jet engine because it has no shafts and no blades or disks... it is essentially a hollow tube that gets narrow to compress incoming air... fuel is added and burned and thrust is created. A ramjet is a very simple engine... scramjets are much more difficult in terms of design and materials, but they are still tubes where air is sucked in and compressed and fuel is added and burned... but it needs special design and materials and some secret sauce to get the fuel to burn at supersonic speeds with stability.

It is designed to be a super cheap upgrade of a MiG-21... I would not expect it to be what an F-35 was supposed to be, but they have experience with that jet engine and they have chosen to use it in a single engined fighter... and another country has agreed to buy it.

If the engine was unreliable it would be an expensive to operate aircraft because of all the crashes, but that does not seem to be the case.

But India is still buying batches of MiG-29s... the old model ones with upgrades. Your claim is that the MiG-35 is no better than a MiG-29 you already have... if India keeps on buying MiG-29s with upgrades then buying the brand new model with its problems eliminated would make sense wouldn't it... despite you being dead against it.

The new carrier India is building are too small for American or French fighters to operate from unless you spend a few billion and buy catapults for them... or tens of billions and develop EMALS cats for them, so despite what India wants they might end up ordering more MiG-29KRs anyway.

Unless they want a Ford equivalent... (helicopter carrier).

The Russians had the choice of buying the new MiG-29M with the same new airframe but not state of the art components, or they could wait till the MiG-35 is ready with DAS and AESA radar and all sorts of flash things... they chose the latter, which meant delaying its introduction, it is still in the process of the new planes being tested, and performance confirmed before they make a large serial order.

The Russians work different from the Americans, they test their products and try to get them up to spec before handing them over to the customer... the Americans seem to have embraced beta testing for their customers... you would think that would earn reduced prices,  but no...

There can still be problems with Russian products simply because of all the potential variables but they eliminate the bugs they can find before handing it over to the customer , which I think is sensible.

I understand Americans wanting to get stuff out now so they can make some money and charge extra for fixing problems they should have found and fixed themselves.

I don't understand the customers wanting delivery of something that does not work out of the box.

I don't have a lot of money, which is why I never buy a Microsoft operating system until at least Service Pack 3 is out.

Currently I run a computer on XP and a computer on a very old linux OS.

They are not and have never claimed to be the worlds policeman. Without them Iran would not have S-300 and would be a lot weaker to threats by the US and Israel, and there would be no nuclear power generation in their country.
Whether they are using it to hide a bomb making capacity or not is another matter but the actions of Israel and the west mean she has more to gain by having nuclear weapons than by not having them and being open to attack without the ability to retaliate effectively.

According to the west Putin is a dictator... why should Russia care about how a country puts its leadership in power. The real power behind any country is its most wealthy... and no election will shift them from "power".

The Egyptians wanted MiG-35s but they are not ready for export, so they got MiG-29Ms with some of the features of the MiG-35 that are ready and will likely be upgraded to MiG-35 when the AESA radar is ready likely amongst other things that might not be ready for export.

Venezuela didn't get F-16s because it was pro Cuba or anti US... Turkey isn't allowed the F-35s they paid for and were going to make the wings for... Saddam was Americas best friend before they turned on him... he supplied cheap energy to the US in the 1970s when many other OPEC members wouldn't.... and then in the 1980s he became their best friend by fighting the Iranians who had recently kicked the CIA out of the country.
Much of the components the US uses are made in China.... ironically.

Did you not notice the 3M face masks needed for Covid were produced by US company 3M, but actually made in China so Americans actually went to China and made sure shipments of 3M masks went to the US instead of other countries that had ordered them and paid for them before the US did...

Buy all means buy them from the west, but don't expect to always be able to get them... you just need to do something wrong... Saddam invaded Kuwaite and therefore risked an oil monopoly... imagine if he invaded Saudi Arabia and declared himself leader of the arab world... we can see the houthies ripping through the best Saudi Arabia can afford so he probable could have done it easily at the time despite on paper being more powerful than his forces.

Turkey stopped being hostile to Russia and bought S-400 missiles... Venezuela simply voted in socalist leaders... Chavez and then Maduro, who tried to help the poor with cheap housing and improve life for them... the rich didn't like wasting money on people and with the US help tried to overthrow them, but the majority are poor so the rich can hire some mercs but against the majority of the population there is little they could do. One American plan was to raid a Venezuelan army base and break out prisoners in a nearby prison and arm them with the army weapons... peace loving democracy promoters... but it was never about the suffering of the venezuelan people and more about the enormous amount of estimated oil reserves in the area....

If all managers have to be engineers first the world is in trouble because most governments give departments and jobs to politicians in terms of prestige rather than competence or experience.

A person running the accounts at a shipping company does not need to know how to wield or move shipping or to have ever been a sailor.

At certain ranks in the military the job is more about administration than shooting people so if you haven't crawled through the mud with a rifle isn't critical.

Obviously managing a group of people in a job you have to understand the job, but you don't need to have done it... this is where communication skills are important, which is rather more important for a manager than an engineer.

When I was at university I had several lecturers that were terrible at communication. Their skills were computer programming and they were amazing... if you talked to them one on one they were brilliant... they would make excellent workmates, but they were not good teachers and their interpersonal skills were quite weak... they were actually a bit shy... but very clever. Almost like they expected everyone to be a bully and force them to do their homework for them...

I think with management being a separate skill and field they have become a bunch of yes men within their branch and simply wont listen to anyone in the field despite the fact that they should be listening to the people who work for them because their experience is more valuable than anything they learned on a management course.

All you can really get from a management course is communication and motivation skills, which are important, but when you get to your job the learning starts again, because of all the team cliches... everyone has to work together or you end up going in circles wasting effort and energy.

You would be surprised how many men just want to talk... apparently...

It is cheaper than a psychiatrist or a lawyer these days...  

There are superficial ways to talk about things....you don't go to a prostitute and talk about your religious morals...you can do that too. Looks are looks and I applied that constraint in my statement.
Can't remember the last time I saw the results of a government evaluation of a group of aircraft where they said these planes are all very very similar... good in some areas and worse in others... so we picked the prettiest one...

I mean I have heard the joke about the Batchelor with three women wanting to marry him... he gave $10K to each of them and so the first got a full makeover and new clothes to look pretty for him, the second took the money and bought him all sorts of stuff she knew he liked, like a motorbike and helmet and leathers, and the third one took the money and invested it and tripled his money in two weeks... gave him back $20K and kept $20K for herself.

So he thought about it, weighing up each gesture and response and the morality and ethics and idea behind each response from each woman... and then he married the one with the biggest tits.

The thing is when one side already has the antidote to something the US is paying 1.5 trillion to put into service and expects to be the main body of their future air fleet whose core feature is invisibility at a point where Russia can warn Iran of these aircraft operating near Iranian borders and they have maybe 500 of the 3,500 they were going to make produced...

The original Soviet plan was to produce 350 Whiskey SSKs... they were good subs but new technology meant the production run was dramatically cut... same thing happened to the F-22. The Commanche stealth helicopter didn't even make it into service... it is a lot of money to spend on something that wont now work as intended... but they continue to make F-35 because there was no plan B.

Think of the doo doo they would be in if they made stuff solely for looking cool...

But the problem went deeper than that... another part of the F-35s problem is their distributed development and production paradigm to make it cancel proof... it works but destroys efficiency and cost effectiveness completely... the C-17 didn't need to cost that much, and the F-35 didn't need to cost that much either... some of the time and effort in logistics they spent on the spread out F-35 production could have been spent fixing problems and just making the plane better... but no one will lose their job... America can afford it... because they are so far in the lead... but are they?

Printing money solves the cost issue for America... but not for Americas allies who suffer and will struggle to keep these aircraft in service... the UK announced it costs 90K British pounds per hour to keep their F-35s flying... that is more than the B-2 costs... a big heavy strategic bomber...

The UK can't afford to give their healthcare workers a pay raise of more than 1%... considering many of the workers that helped them out with Covid were students and retirees that probably weren't paid anyway, that is an insult, but they have to pay 90K pounds per hour to fly some planes the Russians really probably are not afraid of.

At least they wont have any problems meeting US demands to spend more than 2% GDP on weapons to meet their commitments to HATO.

They wont replace their tanks, but they will have more Tridents...

It is the most important aircraft in Russia in terms of air defence, and naval defence.

It can shoot down air targets at distances of more than 300km and sink US carriers from 2,000km with reasonable confidence... but of course most other countries are not challenged by the US, or could not expect to survive the retaliation of sinking an attacking US carrier group.

Most countries outside of the west are defence oriented...

Lurk83 wrote:What the logic behind going with a single engine? Presumably this is the MIG replacement and migs always had 2 (which I had presumed was a safety thing as much as a performance thing in) . Is it because with the izd30 the performance is so great they wont need two and can therefore save on maintenance?

Lurk83 wrote:What the logic behind going with a single engine? Presumably this is the MIG replacement and migs always had 2 (which I had presumed was a safety thing as much as a performance thing in) . Is it because with the izd30 the performance is so great they wont need two and can therefore save on maintenance?

The source noted that the new aircraft should have a normal take-off weight of no more than 18 tons, a thrust-to-weight ratio (the ratio of mass and engine thrust) of no less than 1

GarryB wrote:You are reading a lot into this leak,

Nobody has a light 5th gen fighter in service that is suitable, the F-35 is closer in weight to the MiG-29 than to the F-16.

The light fighter position is more likely to be taken by an unmanned drone than a cheap manned aircraft.

You say high expense without knowing costs, MiG is promising the MiG-35 is cheaper to operate than the MiG-29, and the percentage figures they are giving make it seem like they think operational costs wont be much more expensive than the MiG-21 was.

Like it or loathe it, the Russian military has withdrawn all its single engined fighters and light strike aircraft... MiG-15s, MiG-17, MiG-19s, MiG-21s, MiG-23s, MiG-27s, Su-9, Su-11, and Su-7/17/20/22.

Are they prepared to go for a single engined fighter... If MiG can reduce operational costs as far as they claim with their MiG-35s and MiG-29M2 and MiG-29KR, then would there be a lot of advantage demanding they make a single engined LMFS?

Promises of single engine efficiency and capability and low cost with everyone buying the same plane to replace all sorts of other types led to the F-35...

If we look at the Gripen... it seems that those countries that can afford it want Rafales... but single engined fighters are so wonderful and efficient and cheap... surely you could have four Gripens for the price of one Rafale, so why are they buying Rafales?

They could fake it... the engine in the MiG-21BIS had an overdrive mode for takeoff where it could run for a set period of time at 9 tons thrust... presumably by just pumping fuel into the AB...

GarryB wrote:Hahaha... it is a proposal from Sukhoi... the odds of them winning with it will be very low, because it would give them a monopoly that the Russian military has been trying to avoid for quite some time now.
...
Russia is already a major player in the Global Arms Market... a new 5th gen light fighter will just destroy the number of Su-57s they will export...

"Single-engine fighters are useful, too—and could sell well abroad. A Russian version of the F-35 might very well prove popular, so long as it's cheaper to buy and fly", the magazine alleged.

There you go.... who knew the F-35 is an F-16 and whatever Russia come up with now they will just be Russian copies of US aircraft designs...

GarryB wrote:None... no one has achieved such a thing yet even assuming such a thing is possible.

Some people (that is Sukhoi and Rostec) apparently think it does. I see their logic, but I don't have their numbers.

But how was it allowed to happen?

They openly used the same trick they had already used on the C-17 to ensure it was sanction or budget cut proof, but that alone provided clear evidence it was always going to be enormously expensive, because the same tactics and tricks made the C-17 expensive too.

We keep hearing about expert quality assurance and management, but it is just veneer and BS.

A thrust to weight ratio of 2 is not desirable... otherwise they would already have such aircraft.... having such a high thrust to weight ratio means high fuel burn and short range and endurance.

Having one vectoring nozzle will not give it any edge over an aircraft with two vectoring nozzles.

Here we go... FalconSki.    Hope you idiots are happy.

Russia is already a major player in the Global Arms Market... a new 5th gen light fighter will just destroy the number of Su-57s they will export...

There you go.... who knew the F-35 is an F-16 and whatever Russia come up with now they will just be Russian copies of US aircraft designs...

There has, however, been no official confirmation of what was seen on Borisov's table actually being what the new jet will look like.

lancelot wrote:The Russians could just repeat what the Soviet Union did with the Tu-160. Assign the work to MiG but force them to use the Sukhoi design.
Unlikely, possibly degrading, but not impossible.

GarryB wrote:Here we go... FalconSki. Hope you idiots are happy....

GarryB wrote:...There has, however, been no official confirmation of what was seen on Borisov's table actually being what the new jet will look like....

GarryB wrote:...Hahaha... it is a proposal from Sukhoi... the odds of them winning with it will be very low, because it would give them a monopoly that the Russian military has been trying to avoid for quite some time now....