UAVs in Russian Armed Forces: News

No wonder Medvedev said they badly needed an organisation like DARPA to
do long term technology planning that would shape the Military and bring
about RMA.

Most armies are equipped and trained to fight the last war they fought... ie most forces except Germany was ready to fight WWI style in WWII... which was why Germany dominated the start of that war.

Well the army that constantly innovates and brings in new thoughts and ideas will dominate future warfare.

I should appreciate Pentagon in that regard , they have teams across that would constantly innovate and think how future battle will be fought and how they can dominate it and they have been quite sucessful in eliminating the enemy in recent wars.

With country by country being toppled to create the New World Order, why hasn't Russia created Tiger Teams to send into countries with little cheap remote control planes for "news" footage?

Say Syria is getting taken over next, it's expected within 48 hours the US is sending in cruise missiles. Why wouldn't Russia send in a small team with cameras, little remote control planes with cameras, maybe even some helium balloons with 360* cameras hooked to fishing poles so they could be released to say 50 yards up to record what they see?

Wouldn't it be ideal for Russia to have photographic evidence/live video feeds of a cruise missile hitting a elementary school and baby kids flying all over and laying in piles of blood?

Why hasn't Russia pursued that warfare technic?....errr News gathering.

Has NATO promised Russia won't be next on the chopping block? Are Russia's elite getting things handed to them to not do anything? Not only is the world getting played right now....but the people in charge of Russia may be accepting bribes to allow country by country to be toppled.

Eventually they will get around to Russia when everyone else is taken over. Too bad Russia hasn't tried to capture video evidence to derail the One World Government. It was a cheap Psyops mission they could have done with almost no money. What's Russia's elite getting in return for their silence about what's happening?

The problem is that NATO has no qualms hitting civilian infrastructure.

A good example is the TV station in Serbia that was hit... officially it was because it was broadcasting Serbian government propaganda... unofficially it was a media source NATO couldn't control and it was revealing their lies so it had to be silenced.

I rather suspect if NATO detects lots of UAVs flying around Libyan airspace that it doesn't control it will simply go about eliminating them and trying to locate their control vehicles and attack them too.

If you try to pretend to be CNN or BBC then the US government will come up with some excuse that it makes air operations for NATO aircraft dangerous and that news media should rely on the military for their information...

The problem is that NATO has no qualms hitting civilian infrastructure.

Its simply because of the fact that NOBODY complains when a NATO strike kills innocent civilians, but if its been Russian or Chinese, you are guaranteed to expect a swarm of protests and complaints from CIA funded Human Rights groups the following day. This hypocrisy is truly disturbing.

Well clearly if NATO hits a civilian target then it is the fault of whomever they are attacking for making them attack in the first place.

If Russia, or China, or anyone else (except Israeli of course) accidently kills innocent people it is at best incompetence, and at worst a criminal act of a callous unfeeling government that doesn't respect human life and human dignity.

The really scary thing is how many in the west believe it...

In 2008 the US Senate finally ratified that Hague Treaty for the Protection of Historical/Archaelogical sites.

Why isn't Russia putting together claims for say Afghanistan and Libya against the United States for things that were destroyed that those countries need to be compensated for now?


There's no possible way NATO could take out little tiny UAV's over say Syria just before America targets them with cruise missiles. Weather Ballons are cheap and disposable, they could have camera on them as well and let loose. Tether them to the ground and release to 3,000 feet. If they get shot down..big deal. They are cheap. Maybe have tiny wire on tether string running video feed down to a cheap laptop. If the balloon gets shot, unplug the cheap laptop and disappear into shadows.

Very cheap operation. Find 5 locals and "hire them" as Russian News workers. Have them do the operation for mere rubles. If they get shot...oh well. Bab publicity for NATO...Russia doesnt spend really any money.

Russia could be making money holding America accountable to Hague Treaty on protection of Historical/Archeological sites. Russia needs to step up and make money on America blowing stuff up.

Why isn't Russia putting together claims for say Afghanistan and Libya
against the United States for things that were destroyed that those
countries need to be compensated for now?

Are you kidding?

It took them 20 years to admit that the chemicals they were spraying on plants in Vietnam might be dangerous... they sprayed in the morning and by lunchtime all that was green was brown and clearly dead... but they thought it might not be harmful to people...
After decades of complaints and action by some very dedicated people they finally admitted they might not have been right and offered some money for those americans still alive.

There has never been a question about funding the hospitals filled with kids born with no arms and legs or other deformities in Vietnam.

If you aint an american you aint worth nuthin.

Needless to say when it is alleged that a Libyan national put a bomb on a plane it costs Libya 2 billion dollars. When a US cruiser enters Iranian waters firing on and shooting down a civilian airliner was much cheaper...

Russia could be making money holding America accountable to Hague Treaty
on protection of Historical/Archeological sites. Russia needs to step
up and make money on America blowing stuff up.

The US justifies its interventions by claiming to be the worlds police force. I rather doubt the Russians want that role and even if they did there are very few things the Russians could do to force the US to start acting responsibly.

If the Russian military has any sense it will shut down its cell phone towers.

How easy would it be for a foreign power to build a cheapo remote control plane controlled by a cellphone?

You call into it and you transmit the AM signal thru the speaker of the receiving cellphone to control the aircraft. The cellphone you have displays video feed and gives you sound back. You now have an ultra cheap UAV for reconnassaince, assination, or precision strike.

Cellphone's have enabled any country on Earth to launch UAV technology at other countries, companies, people....CHEAP.

Cell phones are just another type of network. Like any other, it can be encrypted.

The Russian military controls who can use the airways in Russia and could easily selectively turn off areas if needed.

Equally cell phone detection and jamming equipment is available.


Most UAVs actually operate most of the time on a programmed in flight path. They can be manually controlled but for instance if they operate on the other side of the planet then a course will be generated and sent to the UAV to get it to a target area.

Even when it gets there it might just be commanded to orbit an area while the controller operates the cameras rather than flys the aircraft itself...

Like any aircraft in Russian airspace if you fly a UAV across their border don't expect them to not notice and when they fly a plane in to find out what the aircraft is and find it is a UAV they will likely shoot it down when it enters their airspace as there is no chance to ask the pilot to land when there is no pilot on board to communicate with.

I would say that Russian HALE and MALE UAVs are considered to be top secret projects. 2008-2011 this timeframe is big enough. When it comes to Short range low observable systems im amazed that Russia is producing very fast and qualitative results. One would expect this field to be the most hardest as it is heavily dependent on the state of the art Russian dmoestic made electronics components. However HALE and partially MALE projects include components, parts, engines, flight computers, datalink transceivers that are already used on other conventional aircrafts. So if not most, then some of the already produced parts can be reused. The main issue here would remain engines, aerodynamics, automation control, communication. I think the biggest from these 4 is communication. HALE models are the ones with huge operational range and endurance. They can monitor a relatively close area for enormous amount of time, or they can go to a very remote area to make cople of flypasses with aerial surveilance, The latter often requires sattelite communication as a form for direct communication with command center. So Russia needs to have in place military communication satellites with wide bandwidth capability. I think meridian class satellites are here for this purpose however so far there are only 4 on orbit. Im not sure if thats enough.

If you look at what the USAF actually uses HALE and MALE UAVs it actually makes me wonder why the Russians would consider them priorities right now.
These Long Endurance UAVs are mainly used for invasions or assassinations by the US, or to sneak into enemy territory to spy.

The FSB might find such platforms useful, but I rather doubt the Russian military will suddenly adopt such tactics.

The best use for HALE and MALE and with potential for LALE would be for maritime recon and border patrol. Both require monitoring of the earths surface so low flying long endurance UAVs would be more useful than high flying with regard to optical sensors.

I would think a combination of HALE and LALE with the HALE using long range radar to monitor areas and detect targets, while LALE can visually ID targets and potentially fire warning shots with the HALE flying a more efficient flight profile could be used to carry LGBs of small size... say KAB-50s with the LALE marking the targets after first positively identifying the threat.

Personally I think UCAVs make more sense because they can operate as strike aircraft but also as recon aircraft with the right equipment fitted.

The only Russian UAVs I have seen models of that look like HALE types are the ZOND series and the Sukhoi S-62.

Garry < It actually makes very much sense. Because look at this. How many up to date ELINT, ECM, AWACS, JSTARS platforms Russians have? The ones we know of are old. JSTARS system is missing in their portfolio. HALE UAV are ideal as platforms for such systems + you don't need to have crew onboard. They are kinda just remote sensors where the data might be sent to ground control stations, or they even might be processed onboard. Since you don't have crew = pilots and operators, you save a lot of space, you can save their lives and you also save on operational costs. The ZOND familly of aircrafts is reportedly being created to cover all these aspects. Now in order to fight off any possible modern threat you need to have as much information about the threat as possible. Even during peace times. So these aircrafts would be ideal for monitoring objects of strategic interrest, military excercises, military hardware testing, enviroment catastrophes, pipelines etc.
Maritime recon and border patrol are something for MALE. When it comes to UCAV - when we talk about UAV in general we don't talk about Low Observable units. However when we talk about UCAV - the concept is to have a Low Observable aircraft capable of autonomusly deliver ordnance onto enemy units. That thing Low Observable adds significantly to the cost. So having UCAVs to perform recon might not be that much financially efficient. So having UAVs separately from UCAV might be the thing.

Garry < It actually makes very much sense. Because look at this. How many up to date ELINT, ECM, AWACS, JSTARS platforms Russians have? The ones we know of are old. JSTARS system is missing in their portfolio. HALE UAV are ideal as platforms for such systems + you don't need to have crew onboard.

For suicide missions not having a crew on board is ideal.

For many recon missions you want the best equipment and so a JSTARS UAV will be very very expensive and not really expendible at all.

I think they should replace existing Elint aircraft with new models... ie Il-20 Coots with Tu-214s, and the new A-100 is already being worked on. The Il-96 platform would be ideal as a strategic tanker and as a Jstars type because of its size and performance.
I also think they should make small AWACs aircraft like the Yak-44 that can potentially be used on carriers or by export clients with smaller budgets that want to properly manage their airspace.
I also think smaller tactical tankers would be a good idea too, perhaps the Tu-214 again or another type.

I think UAVs have a great potential as recon platforms and maritime patrol and as strike aircraft where their smaller size means making them stealthy is cheaper and simpler and their small payloads are made up for with precision and stealth.

UAVs are enormous vulnerable to jamming or an electronically capable enemy taking control of your drones.

They are kinda just remote sensors where the data might be sent to ground control stations, or they even might be processed onboard. Since you don't have crew = pilots and operators, you save a lot of space, you can save their lives and you also save on operational costs.

There is potential for such designs but I think only specific areas make sense.

Remember loss rates for UAVs is higher than for manned aircraft and when those drones have complicated and expensive sensors on board like AESA radars then all of a sudden they are not cheaper than their manned equivelents.

BTW I disagree with UCAVs as fighters for the same reasons... sure an unmanned fighter can pull 20gs, but I think a manned fighter will be more capable.

The ZOND familly of aircrafts is reportedly being created to cover all these aspects.

The ZOND series is misunderstood. The model with the trangular antenna that looks like an AWACS plane is actually a relay aircraft that flys over mountainous regions to improve radio communications between units in different valleys and to HQ.

For commercial use it can provide cellphone coverage in places where there is none.

It is NOT an AWACS aircraft.

Now in order to fight off any possible modern threat you need to have as much information about the threat as possible. Even during peace times. So these aircrafts would be ideal for monitoring objects of strategic interrest, military excercises, military hardware testing, enviroment catastrophes, pipelines etc.

I agree, but I also think that manned aircraft is the better option for now for JSTARS and AWACS and the US military seems to agree with me. There is room for ELINT drones that can be sent into places where you don't want to be caught sending manned aircraft into, or for very very long missions like ones that last perhaps weeks.
The Russians have developed airships that can maintain station at 20,000-23,000m altitude for up to 4 months with payloads that can include radar and other electronic equipment that is unmanned.

Maritime recon and border patrol are something for MALE. When it comes to UCAV - when we talk about UAV in general we don't talk about Low Observable units. However when we talk about UCAV - the concept is to have a Low Observable aircraft capable of autonomusly deliver ordnance onto enemy units. That thing Low Observable adds significantly to the cost. So having UCAVs to perform recon might not be that much financially efficient. So having UAVs separately from UCAV might be the thing.

Having 7 ton supersonic anti ship missiles is not financially efficient, but at the end of the day the defence systems that needed to be breached had very good situational awareness so stealth wasn't going to cut it by going low and slow so speed was chosen as the best option to get through.

For a UCAV you also have a range of options.

The US solution we see in Pakistan is subsonic but high altitude with no stealth.
And such a solution is relatively cheap and simple.
I suspect they will have a very expensive and stealthy model in reserve if they ever needed to do the same to the Chinese because since U-2 and Gary Powers high altitude and subsonic speed has not worked over Russia or China.
Another option would be speed and speed is an alternative to stealth but tends to reduce range and endurance so stealth is seen as the best option.

The Skat is pretty much a Mig-29 with two weapons in a low drag, LO design so a low level flight into enemy territory should have a reasonable chance to get through most defences. At medium altitude it could be used against relatively unsophisticated defences too.

You would still have Su-25s and Su-34s, but for some missions the Skat might make more sense.

For suicide missions you will use cruise missiles
Since they are designed to be expedable in their task.
Well heres the thing. JSTARS is a monitoring platform used from friendly airspace. So there are no inherent threats to the platform because it can cover the area being scanned from distance. The main focus here is probably the operational cost savings from having remote control/no onboard crew. Airforce would ideally want to have 24/7 monitoring capabilities. In a manned aircraft you would need a crew that would change shifts with the ability to rest (sleep) without the need to land and change the crews. Such aircraft is only the E-3 Sentry that i know of. No other aircraft. Having a UAV without crew makes these on first glance unimportant things considerably easier. Because its "crew" is on the ground where they can change shifts without problem and aircraft can stay aloft with additional inflight refueling capability you have a true 24/7 platform that is a "dream come true" of many airforce commanders.

When it comes to reliability, Remember US guys had to make every shuttle mission manned while Russians have put Buran on orbit with stunning reliability autonomusly. So when you are looking onto UAV field globally, yes there might be more losses and accidents, but HALE UAVs like Global HAWK are not made to be expendable after 10 missions for example. I know you know it too They are reliable under extreme conditions, being able to conduct their mission after loosing connection with ground station and to land at the end safely.
Today after hours and hours of testing using testcase scenarios you can achieve enormous level of reliability. Ofcourse it would cost you initially but at the end the total cost of ownership having no crew during missions can be still considerably cheaper. When it comes to AWACS capability:

http://www.sukhoi.org/eng/planes/projects/bpla/complex/

- the first one is ATC which means AIR TRAFIC CONTROL support. Means it does need to have onboard radar to perform this role as a remote sensor. Relay of communications is its second role.
It might not be AWACS aircraft per say since the control commands will come from GCI or Fligh Mission Control centers, but that thing atop of the airframe seeems to be indeeed a radar. If you have ever seen a radio relay aircraft you would see that for radio relay role you don't need such spherical antena.
UCAV cannot be used for intercept missions since there is a possibility that BVR fight will culminate into dogfight and as such UCAV AI is not that advanced yet to be reliable in situations where you need genuine thinking and even experience from situation to situation.

When it comes to USAF. ITs not like that they agree with you, its that they haven't developed such system yet.
I think i saw somewhere a article about Northrop making a tests with UAV equiped with SAR.
Russians are no exception. Each flight hour beside of fuel and aircraft maintenance is expensive on the salaries of the onboard crew.
If you extract that from equation. Aircraft could be shrunk. You save on construction materials. You would not need to use as much powerful engines, because you save weight. Saving weight means saving also fuel, increasing fuel ecenomy. So many things that make this inherently much more efficient.
And when it comes to communication eavasdroping. Today in your car you have a memory chip inside your alarm and tranceiver containing a huge amount of key numbers in a unique order that makes stealing your car by evasdroping on the key being sent from your alarm control to the cars alarm virtually useless. And this is a common technology we use in everyday life. You can imagine how secure and advanced uplinks would be with an UAV. You could listen to the communication provided you will be stationed at the right place in the right time having decodeded the data. Which is a hard thing to do, but taking control of enemy UAV is just a science fiction. Because in order to do that you would need to know the exact configuration of that particular UAV unit. I know there was a big fuss over how IRAQi insurgets were capable of downloading an unencrypted video feed from Predator drones, but they were not able to take control of them. Its because in order to take control of the drone, it is not enough just to listen to the traffic sent to the drone. There is probably some security aspect similar to the alarm algorith used in your car. The time one particular key is send wirelessly to your cars alarm and accepted, it is discarded and any potential hacker will have in his hands a value that would be by the time he got it invalid.

So it might sound that with the proper electronics you can do the "magic", however sometimes you can't. In order to take control of the UAV you need to know its particular configuration. Which is known only to the operators at the ground. However i don't deny the possibility of acquiring valuable information by the enemy listening to the comms and decoding it with some HPC system. But then again it is not that simple as it sounds.

For suicide missions you will use cruise missiles

No, I mean for the first aircraft entering enemy controlled airspace with little idea of what is there.

A bit like the Tu-22MR that entered Georgian airspace in the 8 8 8 conflict.

It should have been able to deal with active radar threats, but when air surveillance comes over the border from a third untouchable country it becomes a duel with any air defence missile systems that open fire on you... a duel the Backfire clearly lost.

Sending a HALE UCAV to fly high and look for targets and emissions for air defence nets, communications hubs and HQs even if the targets were actually engaged by other platforms like Iskander missiles or Skat type strike drones or cruise missiles... the point is that currently Russias sat network is not up to scratch yet so airborne vehicles need to find the targets.
Something based on the M-17/M-55 could be used for example to operate in Russian or neutral airspace and do a similar job too.

Well heres the thing. JSTARS is a monitoring platform used from friendly airspace. So there are no inherent threats to the platform because it can cover the area being scanned from distance.

There is no way you could jam all the electronics of a JSTARS into a UAV smaller than a 737... and a UAV the size of a 737 would be enormously expensive and definitely not expendible. Putting all that electronic crap into an Il-96 would make much more sense including rest areas and crew sleeping areas for very long missions.

The main focus here is probably the operational cost savings from having remote control/no onboard crew. Airforce would ideally want to have 24/7 monitoring capabilities. In a manned aircraft you would need a crew that would change shifts with the ability to rest (sleep) without the need to land and change the crews. Such aircraft is only the E-3 Sentry that i know of. No other aircraft.

Even the Su-34 has a toilet, place to cook hot food and enough space to get out of your seat and lie down for a minute. AWACs aircraft like the Tu-126, A-50 and plenty of other aircraft have rest areas and even extra crews on board. Wouldn't be much point in having inflight refuelling on an A-50 if you have to land to replace the crews.

An Il-96 would have plenty of room for electronics and crew comforts.

Because its "crew" is on the ground where they can change shifts without problem and aircraft can stay aloft with additional inflight refueling capability you have a true 24/7 platform that is a "dream come true" of many airforce commanders.

I disagree. By having humans on board and also processing the data on board the modern JSTARS aircraft greatly reduces its electronic emissions to important data only, whereas a JSTARS UAV would have to broadcast everything.
The added problem with a JSTARS UAV is that without people on board it might be tempting to send it to places you wouldn't send a manned aircraft. And UAVs tend to crash a lot more than manned aircraft.

The USAF is far more advanced in their application of UAVs AND JSTARS aircraft... are there any indications they are going to replace their JSTARS with UAVs any time soon?

UAVs with a subset of JSTARS sensors could be used to enhance JSTARs operations, but I rather doubt they will replace them any time soon.

When it comes to reliability, Remember US guys had to make every shuttle mission manned while Russians have put Buran on orbit with stunning reliability autonomusly. So when you are looking onto UAV field globally, yes there might be more losses and accidents, but HALE UAVs like Global HAWK are not made to be expendable after 10 missions for example. I know you know it too Smile They are reliable under extreme conditions, being able to conduct their mission after loosing connection with ground station and to land at the end safely.

They also need proper runways and ground support comparable to that of conventional manned aircraft. They became relatively reliable when all the kinks were worked out... but they are not replacing JSTARs with Global Hawks.
A Global Hawk could not carry a fraction of the equipment and sensors and processing computers that the JSTARS does. You would need 20 Global Hawks each with different equipment to do the same job... and I really don't think it is worth it yet.

Right now a modified electronic Il-96 makes much more sense... if it is flying in friendly airspace there is little difference between having the crew in the aircraft looking at the live feed and processing it to pass it on to HQ, and having those same crews in vans receiving enormous data streams containing all the crap the UAV has detected but couldn't process...

- the first one is ATC which means AIR TRAFIC CONTROL support. Means it does need to have onboard radar to perform this role as a remote sensor. Relay of communications is its second role.
It might not be AWACS aircraft per say since the control commands will come from GCI or Fligh Mission Control centers, but that thing atop of the airframe seeems to be indeeed a radar.

You are quite right that does appear to be a radar antenna.
But... it is just a model. How far along the development path is this?
Are they waiting for funding?
Do they have any flying models?

I suspect they are fishing for clients to invest money in the development.

Each flight hour beside of fuel and aircraft maintenance is expensive on the salaries of the onboard crew.

Both manned and unmanned aircraft need crew. The difference is where they sit.
In the aircraft. Or in an expensive van with an expensive satellite datalink to allow them to control the aircraft when they need to.

Which is a hard thing to do, but taking control of enemy UAV is just a science fiction.

Jam transmissions to it and it will eventually likely return to base.

However i don't deny the possibility of acquiring valuable information by the enemy listening to the comms and decoding it with some HPC system. But then again it is not that simple as it sounds.

Certainly not as simple as it sounds, but there are people who do little else because it is their job to do it.

I am not against UAVs, but I think they have their place.

I think that claims of cheap UAVs is rubbish because most of the small ones are not cheap... you can buy a real light aircraft for the price of most UAVs of much lower performance.
There are no really large UAVs able to perform missions like a JSTARs aircraft and if there were it would be likely much more expensive than the aircraft it replaces because it would need to be designed from scratch to take advantage of the lack of crews and this would be like designing a new airliner but with everything automatic with redundant fail safes because if something fails there will not be anyone onboard to fix it or reboot it.

For the enormous expense of developing a new super huge UAV it makes rather more sense to make much smaller UAVs, including much smaller disposable UAVs that can be carried by the JSTARs aircraft and launched to get better reception of a particular signal by crossing a border and moving closer than you would dare take a JSTARs aircraft.

Make the disposable UAV out of flammable materials and set it on fire before it is captured to prevent the enemy getting anything useful.

Note the advantage of high altitude is that only a few missile systems or a functioning air force can deal with high altitude targets, and those that can are generally large SAMs and of course airfields can be dealt with.

Airfields and Large SAMs are not things that are easy to hide and so locating them and dealing with them should be reasonably straight forward.
Airfields and large SAMs are generally not particularly mobile and can be dealt with using various methods including ARMs and cruise missiles and ballistic missiles like Iskander.

Ideally what the Russians would have benefitted from was a Il-96 based JSTARs flying over the Caucasus in Russian airspace plus a couple of HALE UCAVs armed with Kh-58 and Kh-25MPU missiles and perhaps the odd Kh-31P as well.

Certainly the Kh-25MPU would be ideal as its 40km flight range should be good enough for any Georgian threat while its relatively small size and light weight should allow 5 to 6 be carried by a single medium sized HALE UCAV... at 330kg each then 5 should weigh in at about 1650kgs.

As far as i know the Tu-22 MR is pretty outdated aircraft with outdated systems. It does not have the neccessary equipment to make correct assesment of the situation and thus they had a loss.
I don't know much about the recon version but it is made mainly of optical aperatus. Tu-22 is a huge aircraft, big target and somehow not very agile and thus responsive to sudden threat appearance.

GarryB wrote:There is no way you could jam all the electronics of a JSTARS into a UAV smaller than a 737... and a UAV the size of a 737 would be enormously expensive and definitely not expendible. Putting all that electronic crap into an Il-96 would make much more sense including rest areas and crew sleeping areas for very long missions.

And here is the catch. It is possible and not just possible, today the F-22 has a more sophisticated radar than the JSTARS from the 1990s. You remember in 1996 first pentiums running at 100 Mhz and now allmost 15 years later you have on the same chip size 8 cores with 64bit capability running at 5Ghz. Which is from the performance boost like 2*8*(5000/100) -> old CPUs were 32 bit new ones are 2*32 = 64. Old CPUs had one core today you have maximum of 8 cores per single chip. Old CPUs had frequency 100 Mhz or below today a single core migh have 5Ghz. 2*8*(5000/100)=16*50 you have !!!!800!!!! times performance boost per single chip. Now the other thing is: In JSTARS aircraft most of the space is used for the crew and for the so called Man machine interface terminals. Those terminals alone are not doing the computations. They are just there to interface the operator with the system. This alone is consuming muuuuch of the space. If you take this into considerations then you would not be very surprised if the current JSTARS computational capability you would be able to put inside such UAV as Zond, Global HAWK or even smaller. There is no magic behind this, its the state of technology we have today.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=20&ved=0CFcQFjAJOAo&url=http%3A%2F%2Festo.nasa.gov%2Fconferences%2Festf2010%2Fpapers%2FLou_ARRA_UAVSAR_ESTF2010.pdf&ei=Q-HcTeqcFMu4hAeivZWwDw&usg=AFQjCNFGwqon6cg3moTWR6ZXEaQkU0mMpg&sig2=PxDQPHq8v9FglyhygOg2IA

Here is some NASA civilian research project including Global HAWK and SAR.
There you have it.
Additionally you can google out that Americans are into tons of research projects involving SAR on UAVs

Even the Su-34 has a toilet, place to cook hot food and enough space to get out of your seat and lie down for a minute. AWACs aircraft like the Tu-126, A-50 and plenty of other aircraft have rest areas and even extra crews on board. Wouldn't be much point in having inflight refuelling on an A-50 if you have to land to replace the crews.
An Il-96 would have plenty of room for electronics and crew comforts.

Su-34 does because it was designed from the very beginning as long range bomber that would fly long missions and the crew comfort was ranked very high among the features.
However in Tu-126 which is very old crew comfort features are minimal, even A-50 today is not too good in this because of the level of sound inside the aircraft it is virtually impossible to sleep there. Not to mention that A-50 would have to be significantly upgraded in order to shrunk the needed electronics for its role and save some space. It is not that big aircraft as it sounds.

I disagree. By having humans on board and also processing the data on board the modern JSTARS aircraft greatly reduces its electronic emissions to important data only, whereas a JSTARS UAV would have to broadcast everything.
The added problem with a JSTARS UAV is that without people on board it might be tempting to send it to places you wouldn't send a manned aircraft. And UAVs tend to crash a lot more than manned aircraft.

The USAF is far more advanced in their application of UAVs AND JSTARS aircraft... are there any indications they are going to replace their JSTARS with UAVs any time soon?

UAVs with a subset of JSTARS sensors could be used to enhance JSTARs operations, but I rather doubt they will replace them any time soon.

Yes by processing the data onboard you can reduce the comms trafic. But you are still able to do the processing onboard on a HALE size UAV like global hawk.
HALE UAVs don't tend to crash a lot
By the way do you know KQ-4?
It is in testing proposed tanker version.
And you do know what kind of reliability you need in such roles
So to me it looks like its only a matter of time when they will replace JSTARS, not if...

They also need proper runways and ground support comparable to that of conventional manned aircraft. They became relatively reliable when all the kinks were worked out... but they are not replacing JSTARs with Global Hawks.
A Global Hawk could not carry a fraction of the equipment and sensors and processing computers that the JSTARS does. You would need 20 Global Hawks each with different equipment to do the same job... and I really don't think it is worth it yet.

That is fine. You don't expect a HALE uav to be rail launched from vehicle or by a catapult like those tinny ones.
If you look at the E-8 there is no proposed program nor any intention to upgrade it - last was i think in 2005.
Simply because UAVs like Global Hawk are going to replace it anyway.
HAWK in standard version does have already SAR however not powerful enough for aerial scan.
But overall the electronics the JSTARS had packed inside in for example 1995 - electronics with the same performance could be packed inside global hawk with ease.

You are quite right that does appear to be a radar antenna.
But... it is just a model. How far along the development path is this?
Are they waiting for funding?
Do they have any flying models?

I suspect they are fishing for clients to invest money in the development.

HALE UAVs in Russia are very secret projects. ZOND series of aircrafts might be in their final stage of testing as much as they might still be only proposed models. But taking into account the lesson Russians have learned from the Osethia war, i doubt they are just models.

Both manned and unmanned aircraft need crew. The difference is where they sit.
In the aircraft. Or in an expensive van with an expensive satellite datalink to allow them to control the aircraft when they need to.

And there is one other significant differrence. Their salary. For one ground operator have allmost certainly much lower salary than pilot risking his own life by being onboard the aircraft in the area of operation.

Jam transmissions to it and it will eventually likely return to base.

Jam the transmission to it if you can, and it will eventually switch to autonomous mode where it will do whatever he has been preprogrammed with.

There are no really large UAVs able to perform missions like a JSTARs aircraft and if there were it would be likely much more expensive than the aircraft it replaces because it would need to be designed from scratch to take advantage of the lack of crews and this would be like designing a new airliner but with everything automatic with redundant fail safes because if something fails there will not be anyone onboard to fix it or reboot it.

Not yet, as they are in development - but we have all the indices that this is going to change soon.
There are systems that can check the status of other systems and reboot them if needed.
But you have to take into account that this kind of thing takes advantage of allmost space level of engineering. Be it mechanics, be it electronics.
We have designed sattelites that their mission lasts for years. They are designed to work flawlessly for years. And most of them did. Russian ones as well.

For the enormous expense of developing a new super huge UAV it makes rather more sense to make much smaller UAVs, including much smaller disposable UAVs that can be carried by the JSTARs aircraft and launched to get better reception of a particular signal by crossing a border and moving closer than you would dare take a JSTARs aircraft.

Again this is a discussion similar to the MLRS one. Total cost of ownership. You have to take into account not just the development but also maintenance and operational costs. And if you count together all this stuff it seems the UAV approach is more efficient.

http://www.lenta.ru/news/2011/05/25/uavs/

IAI shows first picture of Searcher II for Russian MoD.

As far as i know the Tu-22 MR is pretty outdated aircraft with outdated systems. It does not have the neccessary equipment to make correct assesment of the situation and thus they had a loss.

Outdated because they haven't spent a cent on them for the last 20+ years.

Now you are suggesting a UAV can do a better job.

I don't know much about the recon version but it is made mainly of optical aperatus. Tu-22 is a huge aircraft, big target and somehow not very agile and thus responsive to sudden threat appearance.

JSTARS is even bigger and less agile and would have had even less chance in surviving.

The problem is that we are comparing a fully funded three quarters of a billion dollar a year force that regularly invades foreign countries with a count that does not spend 1% of that and has gone through a period of 20 years of poor funding support and at least 3 economic meltdowns.

You claim the cheapest option is to design from scratch a JSTARS like aircraft and make a super UAV out of it.
I suggest taking an Il-96 airliner and putting JSTARs like material into it.

Neither will result in a Tu-22MR which is a recon SEAD aircraft so I suppose that was a bad example.

A JSTARS aircraft should have been used in the weeks and months before the attack to work out their defence etc.

And here is the catch. It is possible and not just possible, today the F-22 has a more sophisticated radar than the JSTARS from the 1990s. You remember in 1996 first pentiums running at 100 Mhz and now allmost 15 years later you have on the same chip size 8 cores with 64bit capability running at 5Ghz.

I think you are confusing capacity with performance. My digital watch is far more technically advanced than anything used to get a man on the moon. That doesn't mean that with my watch I can get to the moon.

Now the other thing is: In JSTARS aircraft most of the space is used for the crew and for the so called Man machine interface terminals. Those terminals alone are not doing the computations. They are just there to interface the operator with the system. This alone is consuming muuuuch of the space.

Space is not so important on a plane as weight. Having a UAV paked to the gills with electronics and you will have a fire within 20 minutes of turning it all on.

If you take this into considerations then you would not be very surprised if the current JSTARS computational capability you would be able to put inside such UAV as Zond, Global HAWK or even smaller. There is no magic behind this, its the state of technology we have today.

I am sorry but you are confusing the purpose and strengths of a UAV with the purpose and strengths of a JSTARS.

Here is some NASA civilian research project including Global HAWK and SAR.
There you have it.
Additionally you can google out that Americans are into tons of research projects involving SAR on UAVs

Synthetic Aperture Radar on a UAV would be useful, but not all SARs are equal.
Mig-25s had side looking SARs and so do the electronic warfare Su-24s... it doesn't make them a JSTARS.

However in Tu-126 which is very old crew comfort features are minimal, even A-50 today is not too good in this because of the level of sound inside the aircraft it is virtually impossible to sleep there.

There is such a thing as ear plugs.

Not to mention that A-50 would have to be significantly upgraded in order to shrunk the needed electronics for its role and save some space. It is not that big aircraft as it sounds.

The A-50 has had upgrades and improvements over its operational life and will soon be replaced by the A-100 which has much more extensive upgrades.

BTW if you think the A-50 lacks space how big a UAV are you talking about?

Yes by processing the data onboard you can reduce the comms trafic. But you are still able to do the processing onboard on a HALE size UAV like global hawk.

Says who?
Added processing power will not fill the gap because improved sensor technology will greatly increase the amount of data to be processed. A volume of airspace that needed to be scanned in the 1990s will now need to be scanned much more carefully now because target RCS are smaller and the distances you need to detect emissions is much greater.

With the increase in use of cellphones the ether will have a lot more emissions that need detection, classification, identification, and monitoring... all of which uses a lot more processing power.

HALE UAVs don't tend to crash a lot Smile

Currently they don't, though they lost a few early on to ice... and they don't have anything in service that could effectively replace JSTARS aircraft.

By the way do you know KQ-4?
It is in testing proposed tanker version.
And you do know what kind of reliability you need in such roles

So a proposed tanker version of a UAV is justification for Russia to skip a JSTARS aircraft and instead risk a JSTARS UAV.
Russia has nothing like the UAV experience of the USAF, nor the JSTARS experience of the USAF. Yet you think they should fly before they can walk?

A JSTARS UAV is redundant because JSTARS has been used in several conflicts and has never even been threatened let alone shot down. JSTARS is used in a way that puts no risk to the aircraft, yet provides valuable intel on the enemy... something Russian forces severely lacked in Georgia.

They have proposed a tanker UAV... when they get the necessary reliability and actually are in service then I will be impressed.

So to me it looks like its only a matter of time when they will replace JSTARS, not if...

Most of the worst accidents that occurred during the cold war for Russia did so because they were in a rush to leap ahead of the west.
There is no need for such foolishness right now.
Spending money on a JSTARS like aircraft is more important than whether it is a UAV or an airliner like the Il-96.
I think it makes more sense to have both in terms of a manned aircraft with all the electronics on board doing the job plus some UAVs that can be sent where the manned aircraft can't go for use in certain situations.

But overall the electronics the JSTARS had packed inside in for example 1995 - electronics with the same performance could be packed inside global hawk with ease.

With the obvious problem that even if that were true that Russia neither has JSTARS or Global Hawk.

Could you give me a few examples of what the Russian military would actually be doing right now if it had a Global Hawk?

Exactly what missions would it be flying with this UAV that it can't fly right now with a manned aircraft or satellite?

I can't think if a single use for such a UAV for Russia right now that would justify the expense.

HALE UAVs in Russia are very secret projects. ZOND series of aircrafts might be in their final stage of testing as much as they might still be only proposed models. But taking into account the lesson Russians have learned from the Osethia war, i doubt they are just models.

Russian companies have been showing drawings and prototypes of UAVs for 20 years or more, yet only a very few UAVs were ever actually bought and paid for. Most have been prototypes dragged out for airshows for the last two decades in the hope someone would spend money on their development.
The reality is that the Russian Military has simply not been interested as a whole about UAVs till 2008. The only part of the Russian military with any interest was the Artillery in the Russian Army that bought and developed the Pchelka for artillery spotting and it is a mature respectable system for what it is.
Problem is that since 2008 all branches of the Russian military have suddenly decided they need UAVs and they need them now. They don't know what they need them for, but they need them.
They are buying 100 old Israeli systems to equip a training unit because they don't even know what to expect from a UAV system or how to use it.

...and you expect them to spend hundreds or perhaps thousands of millions of dollars making a JSTARS UAV?

And there is one other significant differrence. Their salary. For one ground operator have allmost certainly much lower salary than pilot risking his own life by being onboard the aircraft in the area of operation.

The difference in combat pay and non combat pay is not great... and in conditions of guerilla warfare where the battle lines are blurred who is to say where the combat zone is?

You finish a day monitoring Chechen airspace for bad guys and then go out that night to a show in Moscow when half way through the play some bearded men and women covered from head to toe in black suddenly step up on the stage and start waving guns...

Jam the transmission to it if you can, and it will eventually switch to autonomous mode where it will do whatever he has been preprogrammed with.

Jamming JSTARS is unlikely an option, it should be able to use a satellite link to pass jamming information to the air defence forces to deal with it.

Not yet, as they are in development - but we have all the indices that this is going to change soon.
There are systems that can check the status of other systems and reboot them if needed.
But you have to take into account that this kind of thing takes advantage of allmost space level of engineering. Be it mechanics, be it electronics.
We have designed sattelites that their mission lasts for years. They are designed to work flawlessly for years. And most of them did. Russian ones as well.

A UAV JSTARS is too much of a risk right now... what they need is a real JSTARS and they can think about augmenting its performance with UAVs later.

Again this is a discussion similar to the MLRS one. Total cost of ownership. You have to take into account not just the development but also maintenance and operational costs. And if you count together all this stuff it seems the UAV approach is more efficient.

On paper it looks more efficient. In the real world however you will find costs increase and that cheap UAV is no longer that cheap if you actually want to use it.

The difference between this and the MLRS discussion is that I am quite familiar with tube and rocket artillery, but the capabilities of the JSTARS and any Soviet/Russian ELINT equivelent is something I am not so familiar with.

I know they have ELINT versions of the Il-20 and the Il-76 and the Il-80 has been mentioned in the C2 role, and I remember reading that a prototype jammer version of the Tu-22M was beaten by a jammer version of the Il-76 because its jammers were more powerful. What they clearly lack are ELINT aircraft and I think that in addition to new satellites they should develop ELINT versions of new aircraft, as this will improve performance and boost production figures for new aircraft... and allow the retirement of older platforms too.

Outdated because they haven't spent a cent on them for the last 20+ years.
Now you are suggesting a UAV can do a better job.

Indeed.

JSTARS is even bigger and less agile and would have had even less chance in surviving.
The problem is that we are comparing a fully funded three quarters of a billion dollar a year force that regularly invades foreign countries with a count that does not spend 1% of that and has gone through a period of 20 years of poor funding support and at least 3 economic meltdowns.
You claim the cheapest option is to design from scratch a JSTARS like aircraft and make a super UAV out of it.
I suggest taking an Il-96 airliner and putting JSTARs like material into it.
Neither will result in a Tu-22MR which is a recon SEAD aircraft so I suppose that was a bad example.
A JSTARS aircraft should have been used in the weeks and months before the attack to work out their defence etc.

You are right. Tu-22MR have a completely differrent role from JSTARS. It has to be flying in the area which he needs to scan. JSTARS can scan from far away.

I think you are confusing capacity with performance. My digital watch is far more technically advanced than anything used to get a man on the moon. That doesn't mean that with my watch I can get to the moon.

Garry you know that if you have chip with a better performance it means: 1) Either you can reduce the amount of chips to process the same amount of data. Or 2) You can significantly increase the emount of data being processed by the same number of chips but more powerfull. Those watches could take you on the moon, provided they will be part of a system capable to do so.

Space is not so important on a plane as weight. Having a UAV paked to the gills with electronics and you will have a fire within 20 minutes of turning it all on.

Yes there is a lot of heat, but don't forget... Russians had already veeery efficient cooling system back in the 60s-70s on Mig-25. With proper energy management and architecture you don't need to worry about the overheating too much. Those are UAVs flying very high at high speeds where the flow of cold fresh air is everywhere arround you. By properly designing air intakes or feeding fresh air from engine air intake you can cool down those gadets without problem. Or you can use liquid cooling and in that case you have even better cooling efficiency.

Synthetic Aperture Radar on a UAV would be useful, but not all SARs are equal.
Mig-25s had side looking SARs and so do the electronic warfare Su-24s... it doesn't make them a JSTARS.

Thats true. But what i wanted to say is this: For SAR with the capabilities similar to the JSTARS from the 90s, you would need significantly smaller antennae (sensor) with much smaller energy consumption, and the computing segmentn of the system will compensate by running many more mathematical formulas on the signal received from the sensor. I will tell you a better example. Do you know the ICBMs early warning, detection and tracking radars? In the 80s they were huuuuuge. Today they are significantly smaller, with smaller energy consumption, but altogether better performance and technical characteristics. Because they are compensated with huge computational power. You have dedicated integrated circuits called DCS = digital signal processors that are specifically designed to perform operations on such input signals like those from radar. They are widely used in AESA.

There is such a thing as ear plugs.

And there migh be such level of noise that even ear plugs won't be enough.
I have rad an article about A-50 being very inferior in this to E-3.

BTW if you think the A-50 lacks space how big a UAV are you talking about?

As said. The Actual A-50 have cabin, with pilot display intruments, it have operator terminals with seats, it have behind a walkway behind and commander seat - everything with CRT technology.
These things simply consume soo much space and weight - that UAV not having them would be significantly smaller. Thats the thing im pointing to. Because there will be higher level of automation and the operators will be on thhe ground.

Says who?
Added processing power will not fill the gap because improved sensor technology will greatly increase the amount of data to be processed. A volume of airspace that needed to be scanned in the 1990s will now need to be scanned much more carefully now because target RCS are smaller and the distances you need to detect emissions is much greater.

Well this is questionable. I mean it depends from system to system. If you increase the amount of data, that does not necessarily mean you also need to increase the size of the system.
Today you have fast multinode optical interconnects that one cable can be used for paralel transfer of many data streams each of differrent wavelength, and it is very fast.
This coupled with paralel processing capabilities of single chip with multiple cores might results into a system which is smaller, consumes less energy producess less heat or the same amount of heat, it is lighter, maybe iniatially more expensive, but is more capable and is considerably cheaper from the perspective of operational costs.

Currently they don't, though they lost a few early on to ice... and they don't have anything in service that could effectively replace JSTARS aircraft.

As said because those things are in development.
But having seen many of the photos, sketches, articles etc. this is the trend we are aproaching undoubtfully, wether you like it or not.
There are no hints or articles about future possible JSTARS based on Il-96 or any other existing conventional aircraft and i think there is a reason behind this.
On the other hand we clearly see on the UAV sketches SAR aperatus radome on ZOND, on Global HAWK and who knows where else.

Could you give me a few examples of what the Russian military would actually be doing right now if it had a Global Hawk?
Exactly what missions would it be flying with this UAV that it can't fly right now with a manned aircraft or satellite?

Well you could also ask from technical point of view what mission Army or the Navy won't be capable to perform that only Airforce would?
Recon? Well you have navy reckon ships and ground recon troops/patrols. You could send them to check onto some area, or blow up some stuff, monitor enemy comms from sea or ground as well as other types of inteligence gathering, observation and military actions (aka blow up stuff). However airforce is more efficient in some of these. So efficiency is the name of the game.
And not just me, but there is considerable proof among the experts community indicating that they believe UAVs are more efficient, even to the point they are feasible.

So a proposed tanker version of a UAV is justification for Russia to skip a JSTARS aircraft and instead risk a JSTARS UAV.
Russia has nothing like the UAV experience of the USAF, nor the JSTARS experience of the USAF. Yet you think they should fly before they can walk?
A JSTARS UAV is redundant because JSTARS has been used in several conflicts and has never even been threatened let alone shot down. JSTARS is used in a way that puts no risk to the aircraft, yet provides valuable intel on the enemy... something Russian forces severely lacked in Georgia.
They have proposed a tanker UAV... when they get the necessary reliability and actually are in service then I will be impressed.

If i would convert what you are saying into the field of 5th generation airplane technology. Russians should first build small bomber (F-117), then a larger one (B-2), and then finally move to the stealth figther concept? Nooo thats not the way it works! I know experiences are important - nobody wants to deny that, but having less experience than somebody else does not mean that you cannot jump onto some very good idea and try to work on it. What Russians are doing is that they see americans will eventually move to jstars uav, so instead of pumping money into manned aircraft platform that they will have to phase out very soon anyway in order to stay up to date, they will jump directly to UAV platform. And when it comes to KQ-4 - i believe that if the Global HAWK would not be reliable, this proposal would not come. And since they have made it to the stage where Air Force is evaluating and testing a model of such tanker, it indicates that they DO have faith in its reliability, effectiveness and usefullness.

Most of the worst accidents that occurred during the cold war for Russia did so because they were in a rush to leap ahead of the west.
There is no need for such foolishness right now.
Spending money on a JSTARS like aircraft is more important than whether it is a UAV or an airliner like the Il-96.
I think it makes more sense to have both in terms of a manned aircraft with all the electronics on board doing the job plus some UAVs that can be sent where the manned aircraft can't go for use in certain situations.

True - accidents happened because things were not been designed into the detail enough. However today you can much more easily jump into military segments in which you don't have too much expertise or none at all. Why? Because you can buy consulting services or the actual intelectual property of companies that do have this expertise and experience. Like israel. China was doing the same with their aircrafts buying consulting and ip from Russia when they designed its very formidable J-10. It was a giant leap between their previous designs both technologically and from performance point of view as well. Why do you think Russians would not be able to produce up to date reliable HALE UAV, when today they have all the means to do so?

Russian companies have been showing drawings and prototypes of UAVs for 20 years or more, yet only a very few UAVs were ever actually bought and paid for. Most have been prototypes dragged out for airshows for the last two decades in the hope someone would spend money on their development.
The reality is that the Russian Military has simply not been interested as a whole about UAVs till 2008. The only part of the Russian military with any interest was the Artillery in the Russian Army that bought and developed the Pchelka for artillery spotting and it is a mature respectable system for what it is.
Problem is that since 2008 all branches of the Russian military have suddenly decided they need UAVs and they need them now. They don't know what they need them for, but they need them.
They are buying 100 old Israeli systems to equip a training unit because they don't even know what to expect from a UAV system or how to use it.
...and you expect them to spend hundreds or perhaps thousands of millions of dollars making a JSTARS UAV?

The difference between US MIC and Russian one is this: In USA very few companies fund a project that is not sponsored by goverment, but it is deemed to be promising for future potential customer needs. Be it on home market or outside. Russians were doing this very often. Black Eagle tank, Arena active protection, Su-37, Su-47, Mig 1.44 tons of examples. Now we don't know how much money sukhoi have invested into zond and where they are with the project. But the lone fact that russian armed forces were not interrested in this till 2008 does not mean that company did not lead the project to certain more advanced status than just a sketch. They might be closer to finish it than we think. When it comes to the requirements: I think it would be naive to think they don't have enough idea what to expect and demand from domestic uav manufacturers. Military intelligence (GRU) is the right thing to collect intelligence data about foreign UAV, and some of them are even freely accessible. Additionally you can hire consulting guys, or buy IP. So many things you can do... thinking that they don't know what to expect is really naive as you might have seen that they have rejected couple of domestic designs because they KNEW that foreign ones had better technical characteristics.

The difference in combat pay and non combat pay is not great... and in conditions of guerilla warfare where the battle lines are blurred who is to say where the combat zone is?
You finish a day monitoring Chechen airspace for bad guys and then go out that night to a show in Moscow when half way through the play some bearded men and women covered from head to toe in black suddenly step up on the stage and start waving guns...

Well i don't exactly know because i haven't experienced it. But one of my familly members (my uncle was in Bosnia as engineer) told me that the area of operations is usually divided into zones and within that zones depending what you do. Be it more peacefull work or more combat oriented the differrences might be big. Especially if you are a pilot - meaning you have one of the highest salaries in the armed forces.
Anyway usually you have the UAV operator staff on airfield which is hell well protected and considered to be very safe.

So overall i think they know what they are doing and that they have a perfectly valid reason why they don't plan to have manned aircraft as JSTARS, rather than UAV. They need to develop airframes for HALE UAVs anyway. And when they need them for Reckon, why not to use them for JSTARS and AWACS role, when America is indicating that the HALE UAV segment has matured enough, to start thinking about using them in roles and situations where reliability is crucial. Simply because technology we have today is so much differrent from what we had in the 1990s.
Thats the world we live in today

Edit: I have found that GosNIIAS is working on some JSTARS like aircraft study for Russia.
But i haven't found too much info.

Indeed.

I am sorry, but I disagree.

You know what HALE stands for... the Long Endurance doesn't just fall from the sky... by weight most of the MTOW of a HALE UAV will be fuel, and the propulsion will be optimised for fuel efficiency not as a power generator to support tons of electronics.

Garry you know that if you have chip with a better performance it means: 1) Either you can reduce the amount of chips to process the same amount of data. Or 2) You can significantly increase the emount of data being processed by the same number of chips but more powerfull. Those watches could take you on the moon, provided they will be part of a system capable to do so.

I don't think you appreciate the process a chip has to go through to get into service.

It is not a case of Intel have a new 8 core 4 Ghz processor... lets fit it into all our electronics.
Hardware needs to be tested and made rugged... most of the problems they had with HALEs was electronics freezing and failing.
There is EM sensitivity and compatibility and of course it has to endure weeks and weeks of vibration and heating and cooling.

In many ways for a JSTARs role I am starting to think a large airship would be a better option than a drone HALE aircraft.

Those are UAVs flying very high at high speeds where the flow of cold fresh air is everywhere arround you. By properly designing air intakes or feeding fresh air from engine air intake you can cool down those gadets without problem. Or you can use liquid cooling and in that case you have even better cooling efficiency.

I rather doubt a UAV will have the excess power generation capacity to power all the electronics the UAV will need.

Thats true. But what i wanted to say is this: For SAR with the capabilities similar to the JSTARS from the 90s, you would need significantly smaller antennae (sensor) with much smaller energy consumption, and the computing segmentn of the system will compensate by running many more mathematical formulas on the signal received from the sensor.

The problem there is that the things the new aircraft will be listening to will also be newer and more capable from signal encryption on cellphones through to processing an enormous number of targets and of course these targets will be using newer technology to evade or disguise their communications, and of course all the noise from all the other technology transmitting too.

A JSTARS like aircraft will always need state of the art new electronics to cope with the enemies use of state of the art electronics.

A little UAV alone will not do the job.

I think a JSTARS built around something like an Il-96 with the support of UAVs and satellites could do a good job. I don't trust UAVs on their own.

I do understand what you are trying to say and in some cases I agree.

When Russia gives the Kuznetsov an upgrade/overhaul I hope they do fit catapaults and rather than putting steam cats on it I would prefer to see them put electromagnetic cats on it because there is no point wasting money developing old technology that is about to be replaced with new.

Steam catapaults are tricky to get right and have no guarantee of success.
EM cats have a lot of advantages but will need money to get right.

For heavy AEW at sea the Russian navy needs aircraft carriers with cats, the defence of a carrier group needs that effective outer layer of AEW and fighters to see and strike at decent distances.

In this case however I think the benefits of UAVs... ie penetrating enemy airspace without serious problems of captured or killed crew... "It was off course" really doesn't cut it because these types of aircraft operate at a standoff distance.

Regarding cost the enormous cost of electronics on board this aircraft makes the savings in crew costs negligible, but the risk of handing enemy intel worth its weight in gold makes it a bad idea in my opinion.

If the Il-96 is not possible then I think an airship designed to operate at high altitude makes rather more sense with enormous antenna arrays... and it really doens't matter about processing power... the biggest antenna is always the best.

I will tell you a better example. Do you know the ICBMs early warning, detection and tracking radars? In the 80s they were huuuuuge. Today they are significantly smaller, with smaller energy consumption, but altogether better performance and technical characteristics. Because they are compensated with huge computational power. You have dedicated integrated circuits called DCS = digital signal processors that are specifically designed to perform operations on such input signals like those from radar. They are widely used in AESA.

The transmit receive modules of an AESA include digital signal processors. Part of what makes them useful.
Problem is they are active and therefore able to be jammed or deceived.
The best antennas on a spy plane are passive... and as big as you can make them.

And there migh be such level of noise that even ear plugs won't be enough.
I have rad an article about A-50 being very inferior in this to E-3.

And the Tu-126 was supposed to be useless too. Indians found it rather useful however.

The point is that the A-50 is based on the Il-76 transport plane, while the E-3 is based on a commercial airliner airframe (747). The Tu-126 is based on the Tu-95 Bear and made rather more noise than either the 747 or Il-76.

I think what you read was probably about the Tu-126 because of ignorance.

The Bear, when revealed in the west was seriously underrated because it was seen as being a WWII propeller driven aircraft and not a modern new jet like a B-52.

The thing is that propellers were seen as being slow, while jets were the new thing.

The irony is that the Bear is a jet. It is a turboprop, which is a jet engine powering a propeller.

The problem with propellers is that when you start going for high speed you start getting problems.

Anyone who has been near a UH-1 Huey helicopter, or a Texan/Harvard trainer will know when they wind up the engines their blades make enormous noise because the blade tips of both aircraft become supersonic and the tips make a lot of noise which reduces thrust and power for the sake of making a sharp thumping noise.

Westerners assumed the Bear would suffer the same problems at high speed flight, but the Bear uses a constant speed propeller that doesn't go faster or slower as the throttle is moved. The angle of the blades changes and to go faster the blades turn to a sharper angle and dig more into the air to increase thrust.

Most prop driven aircraft have straight wings because drag is not a problem.

The Bear is the worlds fastest propeller driven aircraft and needs its swept wings to reduce drag at top speed... which is only about 50km/h slower than the B-52 Jet at high altitudes and it is actually faster than the B-52 at low level, and of course more fuel efficient with half the number of engines fitted.

There are plenty of claims the Bear is noisy in the west, yet there are only complaints about the noise the Blackjack makes by crews.

As said. The Actual A-50 have cabin, with pilot display intruments, it have operator terminals with seats, it have behind a walkway behind and commander seat - everything with CRT technology.
These things simply consume soo much space and weight - that UAV not having them would be significantly smaller. Thats the thing im pointing to. Because there will be higher level of automation and the operators will be on thhe ground.

I would expect LCDs by now, and all that empty walkway consumes space but not weight.

To be effective you want the biggest antennas you can manage and a big aircraft to hand them on. The crew stations would not be that big a deal because human operators are still better than extra computers. No UAV is big enough to carry those antennas, all that electronics, the required power supply and all the fuel and still remain light enough to be high altitude and long endurance.

An airship on the other hand trades speed, which is not important in this role, for enormous space for antennas and electronics, solar panels and batteries can keep it up for months or it could operate from lower altitudes on a tether feeding power and drawing data on a fireoptic connection that can't be tapped.

It wouldn't need to be manned either.

Well this is questionable. I mean it depends from system to system. If you increase the amount of data, that does not necessarily mean you also need to increase the size of the system.
Today you have fast multinode optical interconnects that one cable can be used for paralel transfer of many data streams each of differrent wavelength, and it is very fast.
This coupled with paralel processing capabilities of single chip with multiple cores might results into a system which is smaller, consumes less energy producess less heat or the same amount of heat, it is lighter, maybe iniatially more expensive, but is more capable and is considerably cheaper from the perspective of operational costs.

At the end of the day what is needed is 3-4 super computers each tasked with a particular related set of antennas... not going to fit in a UAV but will fit in a large wide bodied airliner like the Il-96 or an airship.

As said because those things are in development.
But having seen many of the photos, sketches, articles etc. this is the trend we are aproaching undoubtfully, wether you like it or not.

The Russian military has admitted it sorely lacks in areas of C4ISR and that areas of priority are C2 systems unified amongst all branches.

Once the communication and command structure is up and working they will need recon and elint assets to feed info into that system.

I have read talk of high altitude platforms like aircraft (M-55/M-17 based aircraft) and airships mentioned operating at 100,000ft plus, and of course satellites.

UAVs are simply not a mature technology in Russia yet for such an ambitious program... now or in the next 10 years at least.

There are no hints or articles about future possible JSTARS based on Il-96 or any other existing conventional aircraft and i think there is a reason behind this.

Because it is secret and they never talk about such critical info unless it is for export... which this most definitely will not be?

On the other hand we clearly see on the UAV sketches SAR aperatus radome on ZOND, on Global HAWK and who knows where else.

It is advertising for something looking for money. If they had full sized models they would show them in competition to the Dozor series models.

Well you could also ask from technical point of view what mission Army or the Navy won't be capable to perform that only Airforce would?
Recon? Well you have navy reckon ships and ground recon troops/patrols. You could send them to check onto some area, or blow up some stuff, monitor enemy comms from sea or ground as well as other types of inteligence gathering, observation and military actions (aka blow up stuff). However airforce is more efficient in some of these. So efficiency is the name of the game.

Actually I disagree. I think when properly developed the Russian Navy is the only branch of the Russian military except the strategic rocket forces that actually has global reach.

With USUK vertical launch tubes in their new subs they can operate with a range of cruise missiles that can attack land and sea targets globally.

And not just me, but there is considerable proof among the experts community indicating that they believe UAVs are more efficient, even to the point they are feasible.

The usefulness of UAVs is not in question, they are more than just cruise missiles with a TV camera instead of a warhead.
However they are still a new technology and not really mature within the Russian military.
They have huge potential in some areas, but those areas are danger and boredom.

When it is too dangerous to send a manned aircraft into enemy airspace send a UAV or UCAV and watch what happens to it and what it can see.
If an enormous area of land has to be monitored then send a high flying long endurance drone with powerful sensors to fly preprogrammed flightpaths to cover the area looking for things of interest... lost sailors, lost hikers, lost skiiers, drug smugglers, illegal immigrants, illegal fishermen, illegal poachers, etc etc
If you want to set up a refuelling point in safe friendly airspace with a tanker to just fly an orbit till it gets a hookup after which it will fly straight and level till the aircraft disconnects and then return to its orbits till its onboard fuel is used up then that makes a lot of sense.

Personally however I think a JSTARS like aircraft will be incredibly expensive whether it is manned or unmanned, it will be safe enough in either case because it is too expensive and secret to risk losing.
I think it will spend more time listening than transmitting and that is good for its safety too.
A UAV will transmit a lot more than a manned equivelent and for that reason alone I think it should be manned... or an airship out of reach at 300,000 ft.

If i would convert what you are saying into the field of 5th generation airplane technology. Russians should first build small bomber (F-117), then a larger one (B-2), and then finally move to the stealth figther concept? Nooo thats not the way it works!

I disagree.

I think what you are saying is that computing power has advanced so far that Russia doesn't need a JSTARS aircraft... because the T-50 should be able to do it.

A stealthy JSTARS that can defend itself. It is already reported to have at least 5 AESA radar antennas and the design of the brake chute suggests it might have a rear facing radar too.

Why bother with a manned T-50 because the man takes up space and increases weight and cost and volume and imposes limitations on the aircraft like g limits.

The simple fact is that air combat is about situational awareness... knowing where the enemy is and bringing your weapons to bear on him before he can do the same to you.

Anybody who has played a computer game about fighter aircraft knows the enemy computer controlled aircraft can be very effective and they are limited by the model created for the game to try to make the enemy planes mimic enemy human fighter pilots.
Imagine a UCAV with 20 R-37M and R-77M missiles and 360 degree AESA able to pull 30 g turns and fitted with an IRST system that allows it to track incoming missiles and out fly them.

And since they have made it to the stage where Air Force is evaluating and testing a model of such tanker, it indicates that they DO have faith in its reliability, effectiveness and usefullness.

The USAFs confidence in a USAF UAV means nothing to Russia.

The USAF needs systems that allow it to project power.

It needs to be a portable war machine that can go to places and blow stuff up.

The Russians don't need that. They have very different needs. They have the largest country with the largest border to defend.

This is not about having the same presents the USAF got for Christmas, it is about getting the job done.

The difference between having JSTARS and not having JSTARS would likely be much fewer aircraft losses in Georgia.

There is no reason to believe a UAV JSTARS could have done a better job than what JSTARS could have done.

A UAV JSTARS does not warrant the extra costs because such an asset is never expendable.

The USAF will not use a UAV JSTARS to protect its own borders... it will use it to accidently fly off course into Chinese airspace to record where all the airbases are and their interception communications and radar frequencies and response times, and of course which HQ hubs light up, and which communications routes take those communications etc etc.
If the drone survives it will also lose its way over North Korea and Iran and most likely Syria and Libya depending on how that last one turns out.

Why do you think Russians would not be able to produce up to date reliable HALE UAV, when today they have all the means to do so?

I am sure they will make a very good HALE, they have territory that requires long range and long endurance and high altitude flights means it is less of a problem for civilian air traffic along with the benefits of reduced fuel consumption and extended view.
What I don't think they will do is try to shoehorn the contents of a JSTARS type platform into a UAV when the platform doesn't fit the role.
They are clearly spending money on the A-100 replacement for the A-50 and they have already revealed that it is not based on a UAV, but an Il-476 airframe.

Considering they already have an AEW system based on a platform that doesn't have onboard processing (Ka-31 AEW helo) and that if the ZOND model with the large antenna was anywhere near mature would make an ideal platform for high altitude operation as a naval AEW it could be next... but clearly isn't I will go out on a limb and suggest that UAV technology and military confidence is not high enough in Russia to warrant even thinking about such things.

In USA very few companies fund a project that is not sponsored by goverment, but it is deemed to be promising for future potential customer needs. Be it on home market or outside. Russians were doing this very often.

That is simply not true.

Russian companies never had money to throw on gambles and in practise rarely gambled on things the Russian military was not interested in.
The only successful program I can think of would be the Su-25 and it was not a huge gamble.

Black Eagle tank, Arena active protection, Su-37, Su-47, Mig 1.44 tons of examples.

Black Eagle was a program to develop and upgrade to improve existing model tanks to eliminate their major errors without developing a new tank. In many ways the Black Eagle was the competition for the T-90AM but it had the misfortune of being based on the T-80 whose underfloor autoloader design was flawed and had to be removed completely.
Arena is just a further evolution of active defence systems paid for and tested by the Soviets in the 1980s. Drozd was tested in Afghanistan and if there was no economic collapse Arena would be in service now having replaced the previous Shatory system(Spelling).
The Su-37 was a test bed with thrust vector engines in an Su-35 (old Su-27M)... the equivelent of the Mig-29OVT. A test model to prove the concept and try to sell the program.
Su-47 and Mig 1.42/1.44 were part of the MFI program that while not fully funded it was expected for each company to partially fund military programs from their own funds.

None were made for export in mind.

Now we don't know how much money sukhoi have invested into zond and where they are with the project. But the lone fact that russian armed forces were not interrested in this till 2008 does not mean that company did not lead the project to certain more advanced status than just a sketch.

They will not have funded a military model too far because before 2008 there was very little chance of any money at all, and after 2008 they demand a full system.
Any hardware will be oriented to civilian use if it even exists... this branch of Sukhoi is not making money so it will receive little funding till there are real prospects. It is hard enough to make a profit with no money in the system... there is little benefit in gambling the little money you get from the ultra conservative military.

They might be closer to finish it than we think. When it comes to the requirements: I think it would be naive to think they don't have enough idea what to expect and demand from domestic uav manufacturers.

They certainly could be well on their way to developing a capable system, but there has never been any suggestion of a JSTARS capable UAV... this is an airborne radar system to aide air traffic control... it isn't even an AWACS in its proper terms.

So many things you can do... thinking that they don't know what to expect is really naive as you might have seen that they have rejected couple of domestic designs because they KNEW that foreign ones had better technical characteristics.

Yet they didn't know what specifications to give the UAV developers to meet before hand, they just asked for UAVs.

They have had a little play with older generation Israeli UAVs and they will buy about 100 for a training facility they have already set up. No point buying lots of UAVs if their officers don't know how to use them in planning and operational roles, so operational manuals need to be made up and the UAVs need to be tested to see what they can and cannot do, and the interface needs to be looked at so any conscript can operate it without breaking the damn things.
The required UAVs range from hand held gizmos that will show a soldier what is behind the building in front of them, though Skat type strike models and HALE recon vehicles that grunts wont get anywhere near.

Anyway usually you have the UAV operator staff on airfield which is hell well protected and considered to be very safe.

In very low intensity conflicts hard targets like airbases are relatively safe, but if the UAVs are effective then the other side might decided to drive a truck full of explosives into that airfield over there near that group of vans...

No body in the air force is getting rich by flying planes into combat zones.

So overall i think they know what they are doing and that they have a perfectly valid reason why they don't plan to have manned aircraft as JSTARS, rather than UAV.

Do you have any evidence at all that this is true?

Yakovlev have a picture on their website showing all sorts of proposed variants of their Yak-130... and the Russian Airforce is only buying the trainer model AFAIK.

when America is indicating that the HALE UAV segment has matured enough,

Excuse my language but WTF does America have to do with this?
If the US decides it is ready to start making 200,000 ton super carriers with EM catapaults and EM artillery guns able to fire artillery shells thousands of miles does that mean the Russian Navy should start doing the same?
Really?

There is a huge difference between not having a JSTARS like aircraft and having one of whatever design.
The difference between having it in a large airliner and a small UAV however is not so large or important.

At the end of the day I suspect the Russians will radically upgrade their satellites and start working on airships instead.

It represents a succesfull develoopment of KAB-500S and its integration with Su-34 by GosNIIAS institute. The institute studies netcentric capability required for KAB-500S to work effectively(you need to discover enemy positions and transmit its coordinates to strike platforms to use sat guided bombs), as you can see they are seeking to develop a JSTARS like plane with broader ELINT,SIGINT and command post capabilities - pretty interesting.

http://russiadefence.forumotion.com/t16-vvs-air-force-videos

The Su-34 would be a more survivable platform and could certainly go places an airliner or an airship couldn't.

Garry < For some reason you seems to be "mislead" in several things:

The best antennas on a spy plane are passive... and as big as you can make them.

- Bigger does not necessarily mean better. Again im pointing to the current ABM defense radars - in the past they tend to be huuuuge, today they are significantly smaller and significantly better in performance. The size of the sensor is determined by the state of the material technology used and also state of the underlying electronics used. For the past decade this technology made an exponential boost in performance gain and was made significantly smaller. So today if you see SAR antena smaller, you might think its coverage is smaller as well, but in fact it is waaay better than the old one. And saying you need to have as big radome as possible because of advanced enemy ECM features is baseless as well as i will explain further below.

I don't think you appreciate the process a chip has to go through to get into service.
It is not a case of Intel have a new 8 core 4 Ghz processor... lets fit it into all our electronics.
Hardware needs to be tested and made rugged... most of the problems they had with HALEs was electronics freezing and failing.
There is EM sensitivity and compatibility and of course it has to endure weeks and weeks of vibration and heating and cooling.

- Problems American faced with their electronics, will be the problems Russians will face as well. Take into consideration also fact that each US Shuttle planned mission had some sort of problem before scheduled liftoff. I don't remember the time when they didn't had problem. Im not saying they are not capable to make good electronics, im saying that they are much less capable to make it on "first delivery", and many times over they need thorough testing and evaluation/patches/rework. This is much less the case to our Russian comrades. Although they don't have very big domestic electronics industry, they are far more capable in terms of delivering rugged and reliable avionics that simply works. Why? Because they are using allmost the same approaches designing space avionics for use on satellites - and they DO have to be reliable as hell. And today you don't have embargo between former foes. When Russians are deisning HALE UAV electronics or any other subsystem, they could contract either France, Israel or American guys to get some knowledge. Im fairly sure they won't share their knowledge cheap, if they will share it at all - but this means you don't have to reinvent the wheel totally from scratch and it saves you a lot of time and problems as well. Remember the F-35 VTOL? They used consulting from Yakovlev to design the vertical engine and this way they have made it in record time and without too much of hassle.

I rather doubt a UAV will have the excess power generation capacity to power all the electronics the UAV will need.

- ELINT processing needs a "nuclear power plant" as a source of energy. Again what makes you think so? Because the E-8 JSTARS is like such power plant? But do you know that the displays inside the terminals are consuming (a whole lot) more power than the processors needed for the signal processing? They are sooo many elements in a JSTARS aircraft crew related that are consuming so much electricity, that if you would throw them out you would be able to save ATLEAST 50-60% of energy and not counting space and weight.
And lets not forget about lights, lets not forget oxygen system, pressuring system, do not forget terminal elements like sound card and graphic card electronics. Garry you have no idea how much power you could save by not having these systems on UAV and having truly only the core electronics and sensor suite. Coupled with new efficient APUs... and ofcourse there is still a possibility to carry some solar cells.
If you look at your most recent smarthpone. What part do you think consumes the most energy? Your cpu, microphone or speaker, camera? No... it is your display.
JSTARS airplane is no exception. Ofcourse there are electronic subsystems consuming more than a display, but when energy management comes to play they are much more energy efficient than display which have nearly constant high energy consumption.

I think a JSTARS built around something like an Il-96 with the support of UAVs and satellites could do a good job.

- Having everything centralized on single platform is better. It might not be. You know what netcentric capability is about? It is about hundreds or thousands of its elements acting as one. When one see an enemy, it can share his info with the second one which can attack that enemy. Having a cetralized ground forces intelligence gathering onboard a JSTARS aircraft might not be that good of an idea. What i mean is it can be shot down and then without HALE UAVs flying or covering enemy territory you are blind. Another possible approach might be several JSTARS UAVs flying or covering areas partially redundantly. So if one is show down somehow, it would be a great loss but it won't be a total loss of JSTARS aerial capability since the other one still flying can take it over. The same approach might be used with manned aircrafts, but you know the operational costs and maintenance costs would be muuuuch higher. Not to mention when you'll loose one together with its crew. So the redundancy might be another good feature which would be more efficient on UAVs. But as said HALE UAVs were not designed to be expendable - and they are not.

I think a JSTARS built around something like an Il-96 with the support of UAVs and satellites could do a good job. I don't trust UAVs on their own.

- You don't trust UAVs but you trust satellites (which are - if we take out the airframe and jet engine also autonomus vehicles)? Many of the autonomus guidance architecture designs, experience and even subcomponents were reused from satellites. In Russia many companies that are in space business are actually in aircraft business as well. They are the same companies producing electronics for both.

- Consuming space does not mean consuming weight - it does and very much in case of terminals.
Here check out an console tech spec example:
http://www.barco.com/en/product/2110
In general by weight one console = one man crew member. Now count all the operators onboard E-8 and you have a significant number.

The problem there is that the things the new aircraft will be listening to will also be newer and more capable from signal encryption on cellphones through to processing an enormous number of targets and of course these targets will be using newer technology to evade or disguise their communications, and of course all the noise from all the other technology transmitting too.
A JSTARS like aircraft will always need state of the art new electronics to cope with the enemies use of state of the art electronics.

- So maybe you are suggesting ECCM is done today by burning trough noise levels produced by enemy ECM? - it isn't.
Today ECCM is done mostly on the computational part of the subsystem by utilizing newer invented algorithms on signals input and then determining if you have catched a valid target or it is just a noise. For this you don't need redicolusly huge sensors.

The crew stations would not be that big a deal because human operators are still better than extra computers.

- Human operators are still better than extra computers. What makes you think so? You know Russians are experts in reducing crew. Ka-50, T-80, T-90, their diesel subs.
All this and more, a perfect exampels of automation in place. You WANT to reduce the crew as much as possible. Because first: computers are muuuch faster and two: they don't make mistakes. Im not saying that it is good to put out the human element. But leave humans as sort of overseers and reliably automate as many things as is feasible.

I think when properly developed the Russian Navy is the only branch of the Russian military except the strategic rocket forces that actually has global reach.

- So their long range aviation does not have a global reach? Ah c'mon. When refuelled in air, they could go anywhere in the world within 24 hours. The question here would be, who will refuall them, where, and to which airspace they would be allowed to fly. So again we are at the roots -> effectiveness.

- A-50 is not having high noise level problems? I was suggesting it does have this problem:
http://www.spyflight.co.uk/mainstay.htm
This is just an example article i found, i have read this on several differrent sources.

The USAFs confidence in a USAF UAV means nothing to Russia.

- It means a WHOLE LOT. Actually it means a WHOLE MUCH than a whole lot. Russia and America are allways looking onto each other what the other one have in its arsenal. And they are allways trying to catch up with each other within their financial limitations. You would say that America have the biggest naval force. And it does, however Soviet Union planned to catch with with the proposed construction of OREL class carriers which were planned to be as big as Nimitz class. But Soviet Union disintegrated and financial meltdown came. Russia is financially currently not that good than America. But then again america is spending muuuuuch more than they are earning. So it is a trip straight to hell, but anyway you see many times over and over from history that when someone came with a good idea and implement it, it would not take long before the other one gets the same idea into reality. Be it jet engines, be it scramjet, be it aesa, be it cruise missiles, be it i don't know what else... there are simply too many examples to mention and saying that it means nothing to Russia - now sorry but thats a complete bullsh*t. To them it means that Americans have developed systems that are for now reliable, that can do their job efficiently and without risking their own crew. Now it would be naive to think that Russians that needs all this and something more would not tell to themselvs "For christ sake, americans did it, why we shouldn't be able to?". And in order not to sound it only one-way, Americans took the T-95 Russian autonomus turret idea and are developing the M1A3 based on this idea. So it very well works both ways.

Russian companies never had money to throw on gambles and in practise rarely gambled on things the Russian military was not interested in.

- But they did had projects they developed on their own without goverment interrest. The ultra long range Novator K-172 is another project of this kind. And now they have Indian fundking to further bruise the missile to the Indian needs. And there are other such examples.

A UAV JSTARS does not warrant the extra costs because such an asset is never expendable.

- HALE UAVs are expendable? No HALE UAV was made to be expendable, if it is SAR equipped or not.

- Bigger does not necessarily mean better.

In antenna size it does.

Again im pointing to the current ABM defense radars - in the past they tend to be huuuuge, today they are significantly smaller and significantly better in performance. The size of the sensor is determined by the state of the material technology used and also state of the underlying electronics used. For the past decade this technology made an exponential boost in performance gain and was made significantly smaller. So today if you see SAR antena smaller, you might think its coverage is smaller as well, but in fact it is waaay better than the old one. And saying you need to have as big radome as possible because of advanced enemy ECM features is baseless as well as i will explain further below.

One of the features that the USAF likes about the F-15 that may result in a new model called the Silent Eagle is its larger nose size which allows a larger radar antenna.
The larger a radars antenna is, the sharper its sight becomes.
It is like mirror sizes for telescopes... if you can make them as efficient then bigger is better.
That is not to say you want a 12m mirror telescope in your back yard...
Obviously there are limits imposed... once you get to a diameter that is big enough there is no reason to continue making it bigger.
ABM radars are smaller in aperture because space based sensors are now used for the role because they can directly monitor the launch sites.

- Problems American faced with their electronics, will be the problems Russians will face as well.

So why add to the potential problems and at the same time actually spend money on a Russian designed airliner instead of creating a new UAV?
A commercial airliner like the Tu-214SM would be a good platform for JSTARS like applications, and if terminals and crew space is such a drag on the design why not just have two flight crews with a rest and sleeping area for them without the specialists positions?

It will get the Tu-214SM into full production (along with other military orders for tanker and other types based on the same plane) and at the same time offer growth potential and spend money on an aircraft that could compete with this sort of investment in it.

- ELINT processing needs a "nuclear power plant" as a source of energy.

I never said that. You are talking about a UAV weighing 10 tons at operational weight doing the job of JSTARS which tips the scales at over 150 tons.
Do you really think the electronics weighed that much in the 1990s?
Probably 4-5 tons of its weight is fuel, so with a dry weight of maybe 3 tons we are probably talking about 2 tons for payload and comms.

Garry you have no idea how much power you could save by not having these systems on UAV and having truly only the core electronics and sensor suite. Coupled with new efficient APUs... and ofcourse there is still a possibility to carry some solar cells.

Call me Mr Skeptical but I don't agree that the savings are that great. LCD screens use bugger all power and when mounted in an airliner sized aircraft like the 707 the JSTARS is build on there is plenty of excess power generation from four large jet engines with plenty of capacity for electricity generation without APUs... and oxygen generation too.

If you look at your most recent smarthpone. What part do you think consumes the most energy? Your cpu, microphone or speaker, camera? No... it is your display.
JSTARS airplane is no exception. Ofcourse there are electronic subsystems consuming more than a display, but when energy management comes to play they are much more energy efficient than display which have nearly constant high energy consumption.

JSTARS is not a smart phone. Display screens will use an insignificant amount of the available power.

The point is that all the electronics for a JSTARS platform... whether it is manned or not will require a significant and reliable power supply... a four jet airliner like a 707 can manage that easily... powering LCD screens is no big deal on a 707 which will have lots of power fro the four large jet engines it has... a 10 ton UAV on the other hand with its single small engine optimised for long endurance high altitude flight might not have the capacity to manage a large amount of electronics.

- Having everything centralized on single platform is better. It might not be. You know what netcentric capability is about? It is about hundreds or thousands of its elements acting as one. When one see an enemy, it can share his info with the second one which can attack that enemy. Having a cetralized ground forces intelligence gathering onboard a JSTARS aircraft might not be that good of an idea. What i mean is it can be shot down and then without HALE UAVs flying or covering enemy territory you are blind.

The Purpose of JSTARS is standoff recon. It is not supposed to go anywhere near enemy airspace and so having it all centralised makes a lot of sense because one sensor might detect something of interest that might need a different type of sensor to check. Transmitting that out on the ether might make the target go to ground, but on a JSTARS aircraft another sensor can be brought to bear without emissions and the target checked.

Net centric is about networking multiple elements, but it is not about sharing noise, it is about sharing information.

The point of combining JSTARS with UAVs is to enable the UAVs to take the risks and for the JSTARS to remain safe and not get shot down.

Another possible approach might be several JSTARS UAVs flying or covering areas partially redundantly. So if one is show down somehow, it would be a great loss but it won't be a total loss of JSTARS aerial capability since the other one still flying can take it over. The same approach might be used with manned aircrafts, but you know the operational costs and maintenance costs would be muuuuch higher.

With the huge improvements in electronics and sensors surely a new JSTARS with modern electronics should be able to operate even further back from enemy territory than the 1990s JSTARS.
In addition to restoring their satellite recon/intel network a manned JSTARS should be enough.

But as said HALE UAVs were not designed to be expendable - and they are not.

So they lose their primary benefit.

- You don't trust UAVs but you trust satellites (which are - if we take out the airframe and jet engine also autonomus vehicles)? Many of the autonomus guidance architecture designs, experience and even subcomponents were reused from satellites. In Russia many companies that are in space business are actually in aircraft business as well. They are the same companies producing electronics for both.

There are only a handful of countries that can shoot down satellites... compare that figure with the number that can shoot down light subsonic aircraft.

In general by weight one console = one man crew member. Now count all the operators onboard E-8 and you have a significant number.

Yet it manages to get off the ground on a regular basis.

JSTARS aircraft are incredibly expensive things... the cost of having them manned is not the reason they cost so much.

A UAV would not be significantly cheaper to buy or operate.

- Human operators are still better than extra computers. What makes you think so? You know Russians are experts in reducing crew. Ka-50, T-80, T-90, their diesel subs.

The extra crewmen in T series tanks were not replaced by computers.

The Ka-50 was found to be useless in night operations because flying at night is a full time job. Hense production of the Ka-50 was stopped at less than 20 aircraft.

All this and more, a perfect exampels of automation in place. You WANT to reduce the crew as much as possible. Because first: computers are muuuch faster and two: they don't make mistakes. Im not saying that it is good to put out the human element. But leave humans as sort of overseers and reliably automate as many things as is feasible.

Replacing crew whose role can be efficiently replaced makes a lot of sense, but replacing too many is a mistake. Look at the popular two crewman tanks that started WWII where the commander was gunner and loader too. The Germans crushed them with tanks that had a man for each specific role so each man could concentrate on their own role all the time.

A French Char tank on the other hand will have a commander looking for targets, but when he spots a target he becomes loader... searching for the correct shell type and loading it and then he becomes the gunner and aims the gun and fires and keeps looking to confirm a hit and to look for signs of a kill.
In the German tank the commander also looks for targets but when he spots the target he tells the loader what shell to load and tells the gunner where the target is, how far it is and issues the order to open fire while looking for other targets and threats.

These days the loader can be efficiently replaced with an autoloader and there is talk of reducing to two crew but no one will do it any time soon.

- So their long range aviation does not have a global reach? Ah c'mon. When refuelled in air, they could go anywhere in the world within 24 hours.

Hahahahaha... even the USAF has problems getting to some locations when denied the necessary overflight permissions and landing rights. Inflight refuelling is OK as long as you can get tanker aircraft to where you need them when you need them.

Much easier to sail an Oscar or other sub to an area and launch a few Kh-555s.

The question here would be, who will refuall them, where, and to which airspace they would be allowed to fly. So again we are at the roots -> effectiveness.

And there is a difference between letting some planes overfly your territory for an exercise and letting them fly over with real weapons on a combat mission.

Subs on the other hand can sail most of the oceans without transit permission requirements.

- A-50 is not having high noise level problems? I was suggesting it does have this problem:
http://www.spyflight.co.uk/mainstay.htm
This is just an example article i found, i have read this on several differrent sources.

The last para says it all...

With this in mind, I very much doubt that any advanced western technology will be exported to China, particularly as, like Russia in the past, they tend to steal western technology and then copy it, without ever actually paying the companies who actually own the copyright.

A bold statement. When western technology is available for purchase the Russians have a long history of paying for it... from the Gatling gun and the Maxim machine gun through various Ford truck designs, Christie tanks, DC-3s... etc etc all paid for.
The only exceptions I can think of would be the Sidewinder missile and the B-29.
The sidewinder missile was copied because it was so fundamentally different from other Soviet missiles that it would have taken too long for its lessons to filter through development to production. The sidewinder was a simple basic design that was modular, whereas the AA-1 was a mess... a tangle of mixed components in comparison.
The B-29 was a four engined bomber with long range... something the Russians had ignored during WWII because such a thing was not necessary for WWII.
Post WWII it became important and there was little time to do anything about it.

Ironically it was the Russians that saved the B-17 bomber in the mid 1930s as it was about to be cut from the budget by the US Congress. Then an ANT-25 lands in the US after a non stop flight from Russia and its funding is saved.

Back to the link given... sounds like a stereotype to me.

A bit like the stories about one armed tank crew in the Russian military because the auto loaders rip their arms off.

The Il-76 was a transport plane and not an airliner so the sound reduction materials used in its design will not be so efficient, but to suggest it is a threat to the crew is nonsense.

It is a bit like ground crew complaints about the Blackjack because of excessive noise during maintainence. It later turns out that they had been issued faulty hearing protection, but ever since there persists the rumour that Blackjacks are "loud".

Clearly repeated by people who have never been near a B-52 or other large jet aircraft while it is testing its engines.

- It means a WHOLE LOT. Actually it means a WHOLE MUCH than a whole lot. Russia and America are allways looking onto each other what the other one have in its arsenal. And they are allways trying to catch up with each other within their financial limitations.

You misunderstand.

USAF confidence in the reliability of the Global Hawk UAV means nothing to Russia unless the USAF is willing to sell Global Hawk UAVs to Russia.
What you are trying to say is that because Russian liquid fuelled ballistic missiles are reliable and powerful that the US should suddenly drop their solid propellent rockets and ignore the solid fuel technology they developed and use the inferior liquid rocket fuel they were using before because Russia has proved that it can be made much better than the old US developed stuff.

You logic is faulty.

You would say that America have the biggest naval force. And it does, however Soviet Union planned to catch with with the proposed construction of OREL class carriers which were planned to be as big as Nimitz class. But Soviet Union disintegrated and financial meltdown came.

There were all sorts of naval plans... and that is their job... to plan.

The Kuznetsov is nothing like western carriers... how many western carriers have 12 supersonic anti ship missiles in vertical launch tubes under their decks?

The Soviet strategy was to use missiles for strike and anti ship missions. For the west they wanted to use aircraft for that.

For the Soviets the threat was US carrier groups. For the US the solution the carrier groups offered was a mobile air and land force that could intervene anywhere in the world. For that they needed fighters and strike aircraft and marines with their own air power and carrier support. The Soviet Naval Infantry was a much more limited force that was more designed to take a port or piece of ground and hold it till the ground forces got there. It wasn't really expected to operate completely on its own globally.

and saying that it means nothing to Russia - now sorry but thats a complete bullsh*t.

The Russians are no longer interested in "keeping up with the joneses". The soviet Union couldn't afford it and Russia can afford it even less. If the US decides to put its JSTARS stuff in UAVs the Russians wont do the same... they will further develop their ability to shoot down UAVs from longer ranges.

Now it would be naive to think that Russians that needs all this and something more would not tell to themselvs "For christ sake, americans did it, why we shouldn't be able to?".

The US designed and built JSTARS as part of their net centric military and have spent trillions on it and on the development of UAVs. That is why Russia will not be able to do it overnight. If you could just sit and watch development and then simply emulate the results in one step the Chinese would currently be the most powerful military on the planet. They are not. It is not that simple.
Very simply the USAF spent a lot of money and time developing and testing JSTARS. They spent a lot of time and money on UAVs. Now they have decided that they are ready to shoehorn a JSTARS into a UAV.
Well that is nice, but it means nothing to Russia who has really only seriously started looking at UAVs.
They are working on JSTARs type platform because now they are also working on a net centric environment for it to be part of.

Trust me... even if they wanted a UAV the size of Global Hawk as a JSTARS platform it will not happen this decade.

They will certainly be working on HALEs and in many ways a HALE is already type of JSTARS in that it gathers intel, but it will having nothing like the performance of JSTARS and they will likely develop a manned JSTARs platform before looking at their unmanned options.

And in order not to sound it only one-way, Americans took the T-95 Russian autonomus turret idea and are developing the M1A3 based on this idea. So it very well works both ways.

It has already happened in the Bradley... the early prototypes had one man turrets and the driver and commander in the hull beside the front mounted engine. When the BMP-2 was revealed the Bradley design "changed".

- But they did had projects they developed on their own without goverment interrest. The ultra long range Novator K-172 is another project of this kind. And now they have Indian fundking to further bruise the missile to the Indian needs. And there are other such examples.

The KS-172 was developed for the same long range anti AWACS anti JSTARS anti troop transport role the R-37M was developed for. It lost and is looking for export clients to fund its development.