How do we know the byelka isnt BS?NIIP lied about it having GaN modules ready, but afaik the byelka in the only Su-57 still uses GAs.
Russia has all sorts of new AESA radars entering service from ships down to portable ground based radar, to the radar mounts for artillery to track outgoing shells to check trajectory and speed to calculate flight path for accuracy. Their helicopters are all getting radar, and they are fitting radar to drones including ground penetrating radar.
How do we know what radar materials are being used?
After all phazotron lied for a decade that they had an AESA ready with their zhuk yet it turns out its barely ready hot garbage?
Who said they lied. It might not have met the customers requirements for the cost so it might have been ready 10 years ago but 20 million dollars a radar set for a system slightly better than the system they are already using... of course it wont go into production or service... but over time it gets smaller and lighter and cheaper and performance improves.... except it is easier to improve performance when something is in production because it is in production where you work out faster easier cheaper ways of making things... a lot of innovation happens on the factory floor so when things are not in production things can stagnate... and of course their existing radars are not that bad which means their new radars have to be so much better to warrant their increased price.
Ofc all theories about AESA performance of other countries is irrelevant since everything is classified.
There are lots of aspects to radar performance and having an array of active elements is one option or design choice, and ironically that can improve performance simply because some noise can be eliminated from the signal at the antenna level so you get a much more pure and clean signal.
They have been using NEBO for quite some time and it uses AESA radars in several frequency ranges together to form a much better end result than any of the frequency antenna alone could manage... they do the same with the Su-35.
The MiG-35s will likely be operating with Su-30s upgraded to Su-35 level so much of the time the MiGs will likely operate with their radars turned on to listening mode...
For example there is 0 evidence that western TR modules have high failure rate outside of wishful thinking and speculation, just how the west wishfully thinks Russian Lband is just for IFF.
There is clear evidence that AESA radars of the west drive the prices of the aircraft to rather high levels and is a major reason they are so often so expensive.
Sweden's Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) reported that Egypt ordered 24 Su-35s that will be delivered by 2023. The Su-35 is an evolution of the Sukhoi Su-27 equipped with new avionics, including the Irbis radar with a range of 400km, and a more powerful engine. The new fighters will supplement Egypt's MiG-29M/M2 fighters as well as replace older fighters.
Well that is a good response to the claim the Su-35 wont be bought by anyone else... Egypt is risking the ire of the US for which they rely on to keep a lot of their military equipment running, so this order is very very significant....
They have lot to prove and are still far behind russian or western technology.
Which is not to say they have not made enormous progress and shown impressive capabilities... it is only half jokingly that I suggest the Chinese might make a better F-35 than the Americans simply by doing it right and making sure the damn thing works before putting it into mass production.
If thats true then the MiG-35 wouldve had it installed long ago, but no, until the late 2010s it just had a shitty 80km range mechanically scanned pulse doppler radar, and thats one of the main reasons why there was almost zero customer interest in it.
The MiG-35 is not in service anywhere... about 4 have been delivered to operational units which means it is probably being in testing and tactics units that test the systems and then develop tactics to use the aircraft and the manuals the ground crews will use to service the aircraft which will be printed out and distributed to new units as new serial aircraft are built. For the last 10 years they have had MiG-29s in service and the locations it is being operated in probably don't require any better. For all we know a new AESA radar would cost more than the old aircraft itself, while the increase in performance would be irrelevant for a fighter that operates radar silent most of the time with ground based radar normally being used to direct and coordinate its attacks.
The main difference between the MiG-29M and the MiG-35 is the AESA radar and a few sophisticated avionics bits and pieces... if they weren't interested in an AESA radar there would be little purpose to wait for the MiG-35.
AFAIK they are not buying any MiG-29Ms... only MiG-35s.
Also the zhuk AESA has pathetic range for a radar its size. In all metrics, its a garbage AESA and does more to proove russians are lacking technologically in AESAs.
Yeah, their radars are crap, which is why HATO flys through Russian air space all the time... those Russian idiots don't know what they are doing.
Maybe they focused on useful technology that is a generation ahead of current radar which might just render all stealth useless and improve radar performance by an order of magnitude... so there is no point in perfecting something that will soon be rather obsolete...
Ofc whatever gap there was, it has been bridged by the byelka, but the MiG-35 is in the dustbin of history because of phazotron's technological backwardness.
They are in production and slowly entering service... the fact that so many western experts have written them off is amusing and honestly rather ignorant... an air fleet consisting of only large heavy fighters is not sustainable... even the US needs F-35s and F-16s and F-18s in addition to their F-22s and F-15s and F-14s.
It is not an accident that the Su-57 is smaller than the Su-35 and closer in size to the MiG-35...
We dont know anything abot the 1.42 other that it exists, so this is a baseless claim.
We know what the 1.44 looks like... like this:
The 1.42 probably has a slightly different wing shape...
The amusing thing is the denial... some people think the Chinese are stupid... when you are tasked with designing something you always closely look at existing solutions to the problem... look at how they work and how they perform... they might have had different constraints or requirements that forced their design choices that might not apply to you so changes might be useful, but the basic layout and plan could save you a lot of time and money and energy where you would probably end up with a similar design anyway.
Technology and materials limit your options and choices and production technology also limits alternatives.
By that logic gripen is a copy of rafale.
Technically they are all copies of the Ye-8 MiG-21 variant and test aircraft which predates them all...
Thirdly you can’t deny the gains made by the Chinese and some of the advantages they have.
Very true, their progress has been amazing... but there was a lot to catch up, and I think a few people have trouble believing information from China simply because there is little in the way of information about operational experience with all this new stuff... perhaps if it was tested in war and proven against other kit to be effective that the opinions might improve... and it was no difference with Russian stuff... few western experts gave their calibre land attack missiles much second thoughts because having the missiles is only a tiny piece of the puzzle... but as the Russians showed in Syria they have the recon and intel to find and identify enemy targets deep in enemy territory and be able to attack them with precision guided long range cruise missiles fired thousands of kms away...
Also most of their other gear has been rotated through Syria to test it and they have faced ISIS, but also western supported and funded forces with rather sophisticated drone attacks which they appear to be easily capable of stopping .... not to mention that western cruise missile attack for which Syrian forces with individual air defence systems were able to block most of without an IADS at the time. 71 threats out of 103 shot down, those weapons that were not shot down, some were spoofed into flying into the ground, and others hit old chemical labs that are disused and therefore now undefended... and then very successful attacks on Saudi Arabia by Iranian supported Houthies and then Iranian ballistic missile attacks on US bases in Iraq that were unable to defend themselves despite getting an hours warning...
Lots of things have been proven, but China has yet to step up to the plate so of course there will be questions... I am sure the Chinese designers will be keen to get experience to make their products better.
Many of the first Russian drones were terrible too... weak datalinks... low powered poor resolution cameras that were all shaky... etc etc, but with experience and looking at what Israeli drones can do (even old gen Israeli drones like four post) and they have gotten much much better.
Although I don’t expect another Sino-Soviet split if you will, the Russians should really be keeping an eye on them as they aren’t your best friends and have proven to be crafty with the plagiarism that was the J-11 project.
It is a game everyone plays... just don't remain still so they are only copying what you have in production and in service... they are copying what you had on the design board 20 years ago... what is on there now...
The Brits along with US still tout Russia as main opponent. But they are increasingly seeing China as the real threat. While I believe China imposes a threat on West's dominance in terms of economics. But otherwise, I don't think China poses the military threat (neither does Russia) that the west seems to insinuate.
The only threat China and Russia pose to the west is independent voices that don't do as they are told when they are told.... the west has to realise it is not the centre of the universe... it is not the only adult in the room and does not have the right to tell any other countries what they should or should not or can or cannot do. The west needs to learn to treat other countries... whether less powerful than they are, or more powerful than they are with a bit of respect... or they can **** off is pretty much the message from BRICS.
The west most likely will continue to play its little power games and continue to decline.