PAK FA, T-50: News #1

GarryB wrote:

So you think India are contributing a lot of money... so they can buy whatever the Russians develop for themselves?

Indian money would also go towards establishing production in India, buying Russian components, price per airframe, making whatever indigenous components they want and integrating them...and the rest can just make whatever system the RuAF already specified for the PAK-FA go faster.

To take the Flanker example you think the Indians want a Su-35BM?

Well, it would certainly seem they do (aside from 2 seats) if we look @ the Super-30 modernization!

If the Indians want maximum all round stealth and really don't care about having a very manouverable aircraft flat engine nozzles make a lot of sense.

Flat engine nozzles don't preclude very maneuverable aircraft.

In fact they have said they want more engine power... is that because they expect it lose power with the flat nozzle design?

They said they want more engine power back when they planned for a two seat desighn. Let's read between the lines...the heavier two seater would need more engine power to stay @ required levels of performance. PLUS we can look at it as more power over current PAK-FA. We already know the definitive engine will be more powerfull, and there is no proof the Indians want more power than THAT. Also, there is a big question of will the top engine even be cleared for export.

So. They already have Su-30MKI in service and are upgrading them as we speak. There is no urgency to get the FFGA into service by 2015. Most of the Indian timescales I have seen say at least 2018 or later.

Yes, but 2018 is probably also in line with the time the RuAF will be getting the definitive model.]

Design choices involve penalties and capabilities... the Indians seem to place greater emphasis on stealth than on manouver capabilities, and the Russians seem to be focussing on the reverse.

Is there any explicit proof of that? I see none!

The Mig-21 is a cheap and simple fighter and with a few upgrades could actually be more appealing than early model Mig-29s. The eastern european nations seem to prefer to keep their 21s operational over their 29s.

That is because they are broke, and usually had small fleets of MiG-29s not worth keeping. Also, wasn't it only Roumania that kept its MiG-21s while retiring MiG-29s? Cost is one thing, but performance wise, you could do a light modernization of the MiG-29, and no MIG-21 would approach it.

If the Russian AF demands super small RCS then they will pay for it. The FFGA program is basically an Indian funded program with the Russians, French, and Israelis as subcontractors.

Right, but I see it as basically Indian indigenization to whatever degree achievable of the PAK-FA. I don't think anything fundamentally unique will be fitted to it. The foreign components are not clear as of yet btw, so we don't know how substantial they will be. Russia won't allow the Israelis full access to the PAK-FA for example. I think India will try to stick their equivalents into the plane more than 3rd party stuff.

If they develop some super new dodecahedron shaped engine nozzle that offers 3D thrust vector with a 1% thrust reduction at full deflection that is as stealthy as flat nozzles then I am sure the Russians will look at that technology for their T-50 too.
India's accomplishments so far in aviation are exactly what makes me doubt they will be making any breakthroughs in the FGFA program.

Very simply the FFGA program is like the MKI program... it is Indian driven and funded and the product will be Indian. The Russians will definitely learn something, and might take some things and use them as they are or perhaps might even explore them for different reasons and take them further.

The difference is during the MKI program, RuAF was broke and unable to fund its own advanced Flankers. The PAK-FA is a priority for Russia, well funded and the state of the art as far as Russian combat aviation is concerned. The MKI program helped fund some Russian en devours that yielded fruit for the RuAF later (like Irbis)....I don't think the same can be said of FGFA, which is program contemporary to the PAK-FA, not an advanced variant.

And that is the critical thing... a FFGA with a smaller RCS than the T-50 does not make it more or less advanced. It just makes it different.

True, but that does not change that there is no explicit proof regarding the matter! I would be willing to admit I am wrong if the evidence was there.

Russian hasn't got 1.5 billion taxpayers to fund such things so it has to think about protecting an enormous area with as few toys as possible... and hopefully toys that last as long as possible.
Russia may have less taxpayers, but they are richer tax payers . Plus, just from a defense budget perspective, Russia's will remain larger than India's for the foreseeable future.

To summarize I see a lack of actual evidence that the Indian version will be any stealthier then the RuAF bird.

The Indians have stated that stealth is a higher priority than for Russia.

Where? No actual sources involved in the program have said anything of the kind. There have only been generalities that can be explained as develooping the PAK-FA from what it is today- BUT that would have happened with or without India in the program.

GarryB wrote:

How much do you think they are contributing?

This is full joint development of an aircraft for India... the FFGA program is linked to the T-50 program but they are not inseparable.

When they decided to buy Rafales for their MMRCA program they had no say in the development of the aircraft or its evolution. They could pick foreign components to go with it, but at the end of the day it is a french aircraft.

FFGA is not a codename for an Indian licence produced T-50.

If they just wanted to licence produce a T-50 they could simply put in an order with the first 10 built in Russia, the next 100 in kits assembled in India and the rest built in India.

Well that is what I question, how much is India actually contributing? I think they will have quite a few indigenous systems on their birds, but for actual design, or overvall system capability? Big questions, but the current state of Indian aerospace industry is not encouraging.

There are no Israeli parts in the Su-35BM.

RIght, but they are going with a Russian sourced Super-30 upgrade, one that has many similarities to SU-35BM program

A biplane is a very manouverable aircraft. If there were no benefit to 3D thrust vectoring then why would anyone bother?

Of course there is, but it doesn't mean the RuAF won't settle for a 2d TVC solution, which is still very capable.

Hey... you are assuming the Indians want a Russian engine...

Lets be honest here- they have no choice.

The definitive model of the PAK FA... not FFGA.

IMO the FFGA will be an Indianized final model PAK-FA

How much explicit proof would you expect for such an important program?

Well, like I said, anything that backs up the assertion that India has a higher RCS req. I have seen zero in that sense.

I think you are underestimating the Mig-21 quite a bit... rather like the Americans did. Cheap to operate and able to surprise an enemy...

I like the Bison, but reality is reality. Even with the upgrade, it is a stop gap measure that should have been replaced long ago.
But my original point about it was, the argument that some people put foreward (no one on this forum mind you) that the IAF will get a better FGFA, because supposedly it is a better funded air force. Yet this is an air arm that flies something as outdated as the MiG-21, and has been in one long saga to replace it. Hell, people were predicting India would operate more of the bird than RUssia would. Nice that reality is setting in on THAT front.

I doubt Russia will allow any access to French or Israeli engineers to the PAK FA, but we are talking about the FFGA. The plane India is paying for.

Well we disagree here. Let's just wait untill we see the birds. My bet? The FGFA will be a whole lot closer to the PAK-FA than people think. Most of the FGFA will still be very much a Russian product/design.

India and Russia got together and developed the Brahmos from the Yakhont that was a Russian missile.
India and Russia got together and developed the Su-30MKI from the Su-30MK that was a Russian upgrade of an Su-27UB.

All true- but lets look @ the details shall we?
Brahmos is basically repackaged Yakhont. It has a land capability that was never developed, because Russia did not need/want it.
How can you say the same for PAK-FA and stealth? The aircraft is design AROUND a weapons bay that was made SPECIFICALLY to hold 4 Kh-58UKShK, and air defense suppression weapon- you are going to tell me the plane isn't made specifically to tackle AD networks?
The SU-30MKI was developed because India wanted a cutting edge plane, and the Russian defense industry offered to develop one- the RuAF at the time did not have such a modern plane on order or in production! That is not the case with PAK-FA, where the RuMOD is clearly developing and ordering a cutting edge combat jet.

The PAK FA will likely be in service first, the FFGA second...

Who can say more than that right now?

TR1 wrote: Lets be honest here- they have no choice

TR1 wrote: Russia may have less taxpayers, but they are richer tax payers Wink. Plus, just from a defense budget perspective, Russia's will remain larger than India's for the foreseeable future.

TR1 wrote: Well that is what I question, how much is India actually contributing? I think they will have quite a few indigenous systems on their birds, but for actual design, or overvall system capability? Big questions, but the current state of Indian aerospace industry is not encouraging.

TR1 wrote: IMO the FFGA will be an Indianized final model PAK-FA

We still do not know what [our] final version will be like until we finish. What I can say is that it will be very different from the Russian version, including weapons, avionics and sensors.

TR1 wrote: My issue is not so much with "whats more advanced" but the deductions that people are making, from what I see as a lack of defensible proof.

Yes Russians want more balanced aircraft then Raptor, including true multiroling. The Indian variant of T-50 (ie FGFA) will be rather different from the variant for RuAF. So if IAF really wants more stealthiness at the cost of maneuverability it can insist on this, for example on flat nozzles.

TR1 wrote: The SU-30MKI was developed because India wanted a cutting edge plane, and the Russian defense industry offered to develop one- the RuAF at the time did not have such a modern plane on order or in production! That is not the case with PAK-FA, where the RuMOD is clearly developing and ordering a cutting edge combat jet.

SOC wrote:If I recall correctly the Su-35 thing turned out to be incorrect.

SOC wrote:Furthermore, going after the S-400 is entirely logical as it upgrades the regions (Beijing, Shanghai, the Taiwan Strait) that rely on Russian-provided air defense equipment.

SOC wrote:But, how is the J-20 not "cutting edge"?

Doesn't the Hornet have relatively short intakes... and it has fairly good performance

Even with S shaped intakes the radar waves still hit the fan blades

If it lacks engine power then it does not make sense to design the aircraft to fly faster than it is able.

The F-22 and F-35 would be in trouble in such a combat regime too

In a one on one combat with an F-22 that has maybe 6 AMRAAMs and 2 Sidewinders the Chinese fighter still has 12 AAMs left and the F-22 pilot is in real trouble

it was not designed to fight stealthy aircraft and is not designed for the dogfighting required for fighting stealthy aircraft.

All Hornets have short air intakes and they are not criticised for engine problems.

There are plenty of corrective measures that can be applied... S shaped intake ducts are not magic... the Tu-154 has one for its tail engine.

It hardly makes sense to delay an aircraft design for an engine you might never get.

Why waste money and time developing a high performance engine when what you want is a stealthy weapons platform?

For the Chinese supercruising might not be important because their enemy will likely bring stealth aircraft that wont be able to be detected or engaged at long range so supercruising suddenly becomes a meaningless luxury.

Who told you that? I would expect they got flight simulators with their Flankers, which could easily be adapted for the purpose. Heck... they could buy some of the commercial flight simulators if they wanted.

A canberra bomber is a large plane with a fairly big takeoff weight but was an excellent high altitude aircraft... acceleration is irrelevant to a high altitude aircraft..

A Mig-31 weighs about 50 tons and its engines are less powerful than the F-22s yet it flys faster and higher than the F-22.

Doesn't matter. A modern IIR guided missile could detect and engage an AMRAAM.

But perhaps their aircraft are actually big and heavy because they need long range and a large capacity of AAMs because they are designed to fly to Taiwanese airspace and operate there for long periods shooting at any aircraft that might take off.

In what way exactly are the J-20 intakes short? The damn thing is huge. The distance from engine to intake is the almost the length of an entire J-10 (sarcasm)

Now you are fudging the issue... I know the SHornet has a revised intake shape... the older Hornets were speed limited to mach 1.8 so they could use simple fixed air intakes, which made the aircraft cheaper and simpler to buy, to make, and to operate. A hornet might go its entire life and never fly faster than mach 1.5 or so because flying really fast burns up an enormous amount of fuel and can't be sustained for very long periods anyway. For the same reason the F-16 has a curved fixed air inlet that limits its top speed to mach 2 despite being a relatively light low drag fighter with a huge engine.
The SHornet has relatively short air intakes, just like the older model hornets and it also has different engines and in neither model do they have problems with engine stability, flameouts or stalls.
The real reason they went for square intakes was to reduce RCS.

It hasn't got its final engine either... shall we btch because it is underpowered and the current engine is not a true 5th generation engine yet?

More importantly it probably isn't cleared to carry weapons and probably doesn't have a functioning gun fitted either so it will be a dead duck in a real combat situation.

You assume they will equip it with new engines and weapons... do you think as part of their RCS reduction efforts they might do something about the intakes?

That is why AMRAAM suddenly was fully funded and became such a priority in the early 1990s.

What makes you think that?

So the Mig-31 has a 5th gen engine.

But your mistake is to assume that no progress in the past means no progress ever

So big and heavy things can fly fast, and it has less to do with weight as to do with drag? That is not what you said before.

No it doesn't... all it requires is something like DAS that will pick up the IR signature of the incoming missile, or the nose of the missile as it flys at mach 4 and is heated by the atmosphere it is pushing through.
The IIR missile will be lock on after launch and could rapidly detect such a target.

For all we know they might plan to pay Russia to develop a nice AESA radar for them,

or they might have already stolen the schematics for a US AESA.

Lets not get upset.

I doubt they will cancel their stealth program if they can't get a hold of a decent 5th gen engine

...how can you fault something when you don't even know what it is for?

It is an excellent engine that has performed well in interceptors, transports and even amphibious aircraft, but that doesn't make it a 5th gen engine

I think the ground reality in China actually proves the opposite... they are clearly able to embrace technology and are buying all sorts of new technologies or stealing them from all sorts of sources. They have a lot to catch up, certainly, but a lot of progress is being made.

So they can order 500 Su-35BMs and also order an extra 500 engines and DAS systems... I am sure the Russians will oblige with such an order... and the Chinese can certainly afford it.

Especially when the so called criticisms are actually just things that don't look like the equivalent things on the F-22 and F-35.

As if the solutions applied to the F-22 and F-35 are the only solutions that work or make sense.

Very glad to hear that..

I realise I can be quite frustrating too, and if I am then I apologise.

You are assuming they want an F-22 when they might actually be trying to make an F-117.

There is no reason why China can't do the same... no one will give away 5th gen engine technology, but many might be interested in selling it if the price is right.

The US has banned Chinese solar panels... imagine the threat to the US economy... cheap solar panels

A lot of it might be myth and legend. The F-22 has a RCS of 0.0001 sqm peak stealth is one myth propagated through the internet... if it was so wonderful why isn't it fully deployed and actually being used?

Sujoy wrote:a) The air intakes are remarkable short and this will hinder the smooth airflow with desirable parameters at the entry to the J 20s engine's fan.

Sujoy wrote:b) The air channels are not S shaped therefore radar waves can very easily detect the fan blades.

SOC wrote:

Sujoy wrote:a) The air intakes are remarkable short and this will hinder the smooth airflow with desirable parameters at the entry to the J 20s engine's fan.

They don't appear any shorter than those on the F-22?

SOC wrote:

Sujoy wrote:b) The air channels are not S shaped therefore radar waves can very easily detect the fan blades.

They have DSIs which provide a small benefit, and they also have to be canted inward to some degree given the weapons bays on the outer intake walls, and upwards to some degree to clear the ventral weapons bay.

Which is no longer working for them. Do you not think they might realize that to move forward they will have to bite the bullet and buy the technology licences they need and just try to apply that knowledge as widely as they can so they can make as much money as they can to justify the initial expense.

I hope they remember to paint them white before they deliver them... and I hope they get all round those big ears and that long trunk and that ropey tail...