PAK-FA, T-50: News #2

like i said pak fa is a complex ,1 seat/ 2 seater, L-band radar/no L band radar ,square nozzles/round nozzles ..

I haven't see any evidence they want a two seat model, and flat nozzles are only speculation so far.

L band radar will be fitted to the Russian PAK FA as standard... from the start they have said they will have 5 AESA radar antenna... including a main X band AESA in the nose, two side ways looking AESAs also in X band and two shoulder mounted AESAs in L/N band.

what does shoulder mean exactly?

On a plane like an F-16 where the wing joins the fuselage is called the wing root.

On the PAK FA the wing doesn't really join the body as such as there is an aerodynamic surface in front of the engine intakes.

like this:

Differences crop up with Russia over fighter jet deal
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2013/20131006/nation.htm#1
Ajay Banerjee
Tribune News Service

New Delhi October 5

Difference of opinion has cropped up between long-term partners India and Russia over the prestigious project to jointly develop and produce the next generation fighter planes.

The two countries had agreed in 2010 to develop the fifth generation fighter aircraft (FGFA), which at $ 30 billion USD would be the biggest defence deal ever in the world.

The preliminary design contract (PDC) phase costing $ 295 million was completed on June 19. However, New Delhi and Moscow will take at least an year more to take the next step -- that is signing of the final design Research and Development (R&D) contract worth $ 11 billion. The draft contracts for the proposed R&D were exchanged in mid-2012. India’s share is $ 5.5 billion.

Since then, developments have lost pace. Sources said India wants access to technical data and be a contributor in the R&D as that will enable its teams to get experience. Also, India is seeking a ban on the sale of the plane to other countries. Indian planners accept in private is that Russia, or any other country, would never part with engine design specifications and metallurgy. “India is looking to be more than a monetary contributor in the deal”, said the source.

The IAF Chief, Air Chief Marshal NAK Browne, confirmed yesterday that brakes had been put on the FGFA project, at least for now. “We are still working on the R&D contract. It will take one more year. Technical discussions are on. Till we get technical details, which we need to know, we cannot even get to the issue of discussing financial terms and conditions”, the IAF Chief said.

The first hint of delay was when Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Delhi in December last year but the R&D contract was not signed.

The first induction was planned for 2022, but the assessment within the MoD is that it will be delayed. Four prototypes of the code-named ‘PAK-FA’ are already flying in Russia.

The plane has stealth features enabling it to be somewhat masked from enemy radars. It will have advanced features such as super-cruise, ultra-manoeuvrability, highly integrated avionics suite, enhanced situational awareness, internal carriage of weapons (that is under-carriage weapons will not be visible) and network centric warfare capabilities.

Only when the R&D contract is signed, the FGFA prototypes will be available in India. The first is slated in 2014. It will be flight-tested by Indian pilots and monitored by Indian engineers. Two more prototypes will follow in 2017 and 2019. The last will be the final version on which the FGFA will be based.

What India wants

Access to technical data and be a contributor in the research & development
This will enable its teams to get vital experience.
Ban on the sale of the plane to other countries.
The two countries had agreed in 2010 to develop the fifth generation fighter aircraft (FGFA)
At $30 billion, it was the biggest defence deal ever in the world

that is a levcon , simmilar to that used in indian tejas, tailless delta fighter-bomber.but i understand, like you say we shall see.

FFGA was always going to be a collaboration with India... much the same as the Su-30MKI was and for all the same reasons.

India will get the basic design... ie airframe and engines and radar, and then they will use their input to change the design to suit their needs.

What they change and how they change it is up to them really... Russia wont be using the plane, though obviously if India wants to spend lots of money on getting something better... say a new sensor array or increased stealth and the money invested pays off for an increase in performance then that technology will likely be applied to the T-50 at some later date.

I am sure Russia will be happy to agree not to pass such technology to China or Pakistan...

Do we have the interview with Russian Chief Designer of 117 Engine that powers the PAK-FA and where they had mentioned 117 uses 80 % new component and is engine of 5th Gen ?

I rememeber there was such an interview in Russian but now cannot find the link.

Basically India wants, know how's- to make stealth planes.. how to make Pak-FA's.and all its secrets revealed .
Nothing wrong with what they want.. who doesn't like a candy.

But is not a good deal for Russia..That their reveal everything about their best technology that will be the backbone of Russia air force in the future. Russia should better WAIT ,and not rush and fund it alone even if that means a delay of 5 or more years ,Later they can easily later recover the money India planed to invest in the project later ,since most countries in the world will want to buy Pak-fa in as many quantities as possible.

India main problem is collaborate a lot with Russia biggest competition and potential enemies.
IF Russia teach everything about Pak-FA to India ,including its most sensitive information , there is a big risk
the information will be passed away by bribed indian engineers to US ,NATO or Israel teaching them everything they need to know to properly make a stealth plane. Since everyone knows F-22 have serious design flaws
too long to cover here.  

Also i do not see Russia urgency for Pak-FA now or in the near future. They will do more than fine with their SU-35's using Irbis-E radars with thermal sensors. And with the assistance of S-400's and S-500s and very low band Radars stations nothing will escape from their airspace.


In my opinion Russia instead should save its money and ramp the production of Su-35s and Su-34.
While at the same time continue working/testing PAk-FA for 3-5 more years , and Improve the 'stealthiness" of its airframe
a bit more ,specially the back of the plane ,the rear of the engines.. which is the major negative critic about Pak-FA.. also if possible have full 360 radar coverage , and continue developing its Plasma technology and thermal sensors. That is delay Pak-FA program 5 to 10 years.. and fully fund it alone.  Later they can sell it to anyone they want.

Ill rather see Russia
1) Starting the construction of 2-3 brand new stealth cruisers , perhaps call it Kirov-2 ,using state of the art
technology with latest modern weapons ,and perhaps with naval version of S-500s..  ,
or...
2)a new aircraft carrier.. or..
3)Accelerating the construction of their stealth very long range Bombers  and...
4)Improving Pak-FA airframe and technologies and fully fund the program alone, without having to share the how's
   to ,of their technology so that later any potential enemy manage to get the information.

than releasing pak-fa now ,that is not needed for anything other than airshows and demonstrations.
With latest Radars advancement and S-400 and S-500 and Irbis-E radars on combat jets ,Russia have nothing to fear about stealth planes at all or being caught by surprise anywhere in the next decade..

In my opinion Russia instead should save its money and ramp the production of Su-35s and Su-34.
While at the same time continue working/testing PAk-FA for 3-5 more years , and Improve the 'stealthiness" of its airframe
a bit more ,specially the back of the plane ,the rear of the engines.. which is the major negative critic about Pak-FA..

There is no point in "fixing" up the rear of the PAK FA till the final engines are installed... no point in perfecting the rear now if the new engines turn out to be wider than those currently installed.

Increasing the stealthiness of an aircraft is governed by the law of diminished returns.

Take an existing fighter and for a few hundred thousand dollars you can make some radical reductions in RCS on an aircraft designed for aerodynamics and nothing else. If you want better performance however you can spend ten times more but you wont get ten times greater RCS... in fact because most of the easier and cheaper changes have already been made you will actually spend ten times more but get one hundred times less reduction in RCS. The next time you spend money to reduce RCS it is even worse you have to spend hundreds of times more for much much smaller increases in stealth... and you will need to spend even more money to retain that level of performance while the aircraft is in service.

No matter how much you spend you will never get the aircraft to the same level of stealth as a plane developed from scratch with stealth in mind.

Internal weapon carriage as well as shaping and even larger panels to reduce the number of edges and corners need to be part of the design at the start.

The question from an operational point of view is what is good enough... how much is enough?

I rather suspect the Russians will try to balance the level of stealth with the cost to ensure they are stealthy enough to do the job yet cheap enough to buy in the volumes required and cheap enough to operate so the ones in service are of use.

flamming_python wrote:Maybe the US are trying to tempt the Indians away with the F-35 or something else

That post is a classic example of "Paid News" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paid_News)that we have become all to familiar in India .

Last year a section of this same Paid news media told us that the Army Chief was planning a coup against the Central Govt .

My two Cents ....... avoid such news like plague .

flamming_python wrote:India has to consider that Russia itself doesn't need the FGFA as such

Not true . Work on the PAK FA had started even before India joined the project . What Russia required was the extra dollars to not jut complete the project but to make it a viable product economically once completed . This is how similar projects are carried out across the world , so basically the agreement that Russia & India has is just part of a normal convention .

Re ToT in sharp contrast to the half baked comments about total ToT to India that some posters routinely post in this forum ,  truth is , India gets nothing.

More importantly , India never asked for total ToT .
Like I said , India joined the project much later . The design was already completed by then .


All that will happen in India is systems integration and in the years to come MRO .

This project is no different from the SU 30 MKI contract .

India doesn't have the technology to develop a SU 30MKI from scratch . All that India does is it assembles CKD units in house and obtained  the rights to carry out MRO as and when required.

This is what the fine print of the contract on PAK FA states as well .

It would be nice to have Brasil on board

Russia will propose Brazil joint development of the T-50

Viktor wrote:It would be nice to have Brasil on board

Russia will propose Brazil joint development of the T-50

Russia had made this proposal way back in 2009 to Brazil .

Forecast International - April 2009 wrote:On April 13, various Russian and Brazilian press sources reported that Russia had offered Brazil the chance to opt into the PAFKA program as a component producer if it would defer placing orders with western aerospace firms and instead place firm orders for the untested PAKFA.

This development follows reports that Russian aircraft, including the Su-35 and Su-34 were excluded from the Brazilian Air Force's (FAB) upcoming fighter tender. The FAB instead opted to select from proven fourth-generation fighters: the Boeing F-18C/D, Dassault Rafale, and Saab Gripen.

Though successive Governments have tried Brazil is still under huge European & US influence , due largely to it's own European roots.

Going by their past records, they would rather go for off the shelf products that invest in a new technology.

If Russia wants more JV partners for the PAK FA project it should look into Africa , Middle East and South East Asia .

Forecast International - April 2009 wrote:On April 13, various Russian and Brazilian press sources reported that Russia had offered Brazil the chance to opt into the PAFKA program as a component producer if it would defer placing orders with western aerospace firms and instead place firm orders for the untested PAKFA.

This development follows reports that Russian aircraft, including the Su-35 and Su-34 were excluded from the Brazilian Air Force's (FAB) upcoming fighter tender. The FAB instead opted to select from proven fourth-generation fighters: the Boeing F-18C/D, Dassault Rafale, and Saab Gripen.

I found it funny that part.. since The Rafale and Saab have never seen combat.. Russia have much more experience than european companies designing solid combat planes. SU-35 is an evolution of SU-27 with 5th generation upgrades. The SU-27/Su-30 have defeated in RedFlags all 4th generation combat plane. There are reports of having 10-0 record vs the F-15 .  But it seems that most western countries prefer always the looks and appearance over functionality and performance. None of the europeans 4th generation planes will edge the Su-35's  in majority of cases in long or close fights ,with thrust vector engines,advance jamming,thermal tracking sensors and superior BVR weapons capabilities.

Vann7 wrote:

Forecast International - April 2009 wrote:On April 13, various Russian and Brazilian press sources reported that Russia had offered Brazil the chance to opt into the PAFKA program as a component producer if it would defer placing orders with western aerospace firms and instead place firm orders for the untested PAKFA.

This development follows reports that Russian aircraft, including the Su-35 and Su-34 were excluded from the Brazilian Air Force's (FAB) upcoming fighter tender. The FAB instead opted to select from proven fourth-generation fighters: the Boeing F-18C/D, Dassault Rafale, and Saab Gripen.

I found it funny that part.. since The Rafale and Saab have never seen combat.. Russia have much more experience than european companies designing solid combat planes. SU-35 is an upgraded SU-27 with 5th generation upgrades. The SU-27/Su-30 have defeated in RedFlags all 4th generation combat plane. There are reports of having 10-0 record vs the F-15 .  But it seems that most western countries prefer looks and appearance with fancy displays over performance. None of the europeans 4th generation planes will edge the Su-35's  in majority of cases (skills being the same). in long or close fights ,with thrust vector engines,advance jamming,IR sensors and superior BVR weapons capabilities.

Quite a funny post. Russia has more experience than Europe designing 'solid' combat aircraft? Seriously.

Vann7 wrote:I found it funny that part.. since The Rafale and Saab have never seen combat..

Rafale has been used over Afghanistan and Libya.

Their three choices seem to indicate they want something smaller and possibly carrier-capable (there is a navalized Gripen variant being studied). Sao Paulo is CATOBAR so they can't just buy a bunch of MiG-29Ks or Su-27Ks, either.

BlackArrow wrote:

Vann7 wrote:

Forecast International - April 2009 wrote:On April 13, various Russian and Brazilian press sources reported that Russia had offered Brazil the chance to opt into the PAFKA program as a component producer if it would defer placing orders with western aerospace firms and instead place firm orders for the untested PAKFA.

This development follows reports that Russian aircraft, including the Su-35 and Su-34 were excluded from the Brazilian Air Force's (FAB) upcoming fighter tender. The FAB instead opted to select from proven fourth-generation fighters: the Boeing F-18C/D, Dassault Rafale, and Saab Gripen.

I found it funny that part.. since The Rafale and Saab have never seen combat.. Russia have much more experience than european companies designing solid combat planes. SU-35 is an upgraded SU-27 with 5th generation upgrades. The SU-27/Su-30 have defeated in RedFlags all 4th generation combat plane. There are reports of having 10-0 record vs the F-15 .  But it seems that most western countries prefer looks and appearance with fancy displays over performance. None of the europeans 4th generation planes will edge the Su-35's  in majority of cases (skills being the same). in long or close fights ,with thrust vector engines,advance jamming,IR sensors and superior BVR weapons capabilities.

Quite a funny post. Russia has more experience than Europe designing 'solid' combat aircraft? Seriously.

Yeah the USSR put quite a bit more resource into combat aircraft production than Europe did, I would say it is a fair statement.

flamming_python wrote:
Indeed it does; and it has ever since the start of the Cold War; where Europe fell behind in military technology and started hanging onto the coat-tails of the US and USSR which took the lead.

Europe certainly didn't fall behind the USSR during the Cold War and you could say that Europe didn't even fall behind the USA. In propulsion, avionics, aerodynamics, and material science 'Europe was in most cases ahead of the USSR and not far behind the USA.
Seriously, was the MiG-23 a more 'solid combat aircraft' than the Mirage F1, for instance?

BlackArrow wrote:

flamming_python wrote:
Indeed it does; and it has ever since the start of the Cold War; where Europe fell behind in military technology and started hanging onto the coat-tails of the US and USSR which took the lead.

Europe certainly didn't fall behind the USSR during the Cold War and you could say that Europe didn't even fall behind the USA. In propulsion, avionics, aerodynamics, and material science 'Europe was in most cases ahead of the USSR and not far behind the USA.
Seriously, was the MiG-23 a more 'solid combat aircraft' than the Mirage F1, for instance?

Lol, no. It was most certainly not in most cases ahead.

And yes, the MiG-23 was a more solid aircraft than the Mirage F1. For one it actually had useful BVR. I am sorry you've been reading Cold War Western fantasies though.

Why are we comparing entire continent with single nation state?

Either way , look how much money , time and nerves were spent just for A-400 project...

Europeans don`t have anything that could even scratch TU-160 , TU-22M3 etc. Speaking frankly , overall Russia indeed enjoys supremacy in aviation , there is no point in denying it.

Seems like Brazil may join PAK-FA/FGFA program

Brazil is interested in cooperation with Russia to develop a fifth-generation aircraft
http://www.itar-tass.com/c134/915287.html

BRASILIA, October 16. / Spec. corr. ITAR-TASS Igor Varlamov /. Brazil is interested in cooperation with Russia in the sphere of development of advanced models of aircraft of the fifth generation. This was stated by the Minister of Defence Celso Amorim, the South American country after today held a meeting with Brazilian capital on a visit to Brasilia, the head of the Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

Deep Throat wrote:QUESTION : Why did Russia choose NOT to develop a Vertical Take Off version of the PAKFA ? They could have used this on the MISTRAL LPH as well ?

Size, probably. You'd need a lot of lifting power to get the aircraft up or down vertically. If you use lift jets or a fan like the F-35 you're also eating into your internal weapons or fuel capacity. Plus you'd need to rework some of the airframe to accomodate the lifting system, and that plus the system itself likely adds a lot of weight which may be detrimental to performance. And of course this would all be extremely expensive to develop and test.