Russian Air Force numbers and procurement plans

George1 wrote:We must probably have new contracts for additional Su-35, Su-30, Su-34 this year

As I read, Putin signed last year the State Defense Order (GOZ), in the amount of several trillion rubles

The contracts are finalized with a defined price and quantity of aircraft

Only the signature and publication remain, when this is necessary

For the moment we have 76 Su-57 , 98 Mi-28NM anf 10 Mi-8AMTSh-VN signed in the Forum Armiya 2019

Probably in the MAKS´19 more contracts will be announced

At this moment the most necessary is the Yak-130, which is expected at the base of Kotelnikovo this year

The Su-34 and the Su-30 are probably waiting for the next version.
The Su-30SM were announced for Yerevan in 2020, and the Navy cannot receive more aircraft at this time, given that it has neither the technical staff nor the pilots needed to operate more squadrons.
Probably in 2019 the two remaining Su-30SM will be received in Kaliningrad, 4 at most for complete the squadron, .

The year is coming to its end. How many aircrafts has been deliverd in 2019?

Russia is really slow making planes. China makes planes 10 times faster than Russia does. China built China's half of Amur bridge within months. Russia built Russia's half of Amur bridge in years.

ultimatewarrior wrote:Russia is really slow making planes. China makes planes 10 times faster than Russia does. China built China's half of Amur bridge within months. Russia built Russia's half of Amur bridge in years.

Strange formulated. Russia doesnt "make" planes. The industry is constructing aircrafts accourding to state orders. The number of new aircrafts is low becouse the orders has been filled. Russia needs to order more aircrafts thats the main problem.
What China is producing a year is hard to tell. But since 2005 they have constructed almost 400 J-10s, ~200 J-11/J-11B, 20-30 J-20, ~200 JH-7.

ultimatewarrior wrote:Russia is really slow making planes. China makes planes 10 times faster than Russia does. China built China's half of Amur bridge within months. Russia built Russia's half of Amur bridge in years.

They make new military airplanes as fast as they need them.

Russia has also built the Crimean bridge and It's building a lot of additional infrastructure.  It is possible that they decided to divide the spending in different years.
As far as the air force is concerned, they already acquired a lot of planes in the last few years, and probably will acquire more later. Maybe they plan also to acquire a decent number of mig35, we don't know.
In addition there will be probably no new delivery of  the "base" version su30sm, as the new models will have all the engines, radar and avionics in common with the Su35.

Edit: in addition you need to ensure possibly an even load of the plant as much as possible. It does not make any sense, unless there is a hot war and you need new planes now, to produce 40 new airplane a year una factory and then to close it afterwards due to lack of orders. And last: irkuts (that assembles the su30sm) has also had a lot of work recently to prepare for serial production of the new civil airliner MC21, so it's not like they were sitting on their back

ultimatewarrior wrote:Russia is really slow making planes. China makes planes 10 times faster than Russia does. China built China's half of Amur bridge within months. Russia built Russia's half of Amur bridge in years.

China also has about 10 times the population of Russia.

Comparing the two isn't best imo.

Russians have experience and various technology practices that just work for past century while it is modernized. China on other hand has the benefit where they were able to use cheap labor for longest time to help produce newer technology and manufacturing capabilities at significantly better prices. Combine that with their blatant IP theft of the past, they managed to really boost their capabilities over the years. And with all this, they were able to mass produce goods much quicker than nearly anyone else. Cheap labor, mixed in with massive population and you can get ahead of course.

With it, came substandard quality. Now not all Chinese goods are poor quality. Hell, ton of newer vehicles made in China are of higher quality. Competing against most other major brands. I would say possibly with their own military goods too. Space industry is doing very well in China. That doesn't mean it translate to all industries and factories. Their tanks are apparently very substandard quality. Some of their jets too. But its OK, if it works for their needs then why not? They have the upper hand compared to most other nations besides Russia and USA - logistics. They can supply for their own needs.

Ideally Russia should order more Su-35 and Su-34 and completely replace Su-27 and Su-24. China and the US are churning out J-20 and F-35 like hot cakes in an oven. Russia is getting left behind now that Su-57 crashed and no Su-57 until at least a few years from now.

ultimatewarrior wrote:Ideally Russia should order more Su-35 and Su-34 and completely replace Su-27 and Su-24. China and the US are churning out J-20 and F-35 like hot cakes in an oven. Russia is getting left behind now that Su-57 crashed and no Su-57 until at least a few years from now.

in what Russia is getting left behind? they have still quite a bit of su27 (some of them SM2 and SM3 versions, with modernised radar and avionics) in service, plus at least a couple of hundreds in reserve (and that could be probably upgraded  and put to service in case of an hot war). Same things for the mig29.

Russia does not need to produce new fighters at the same rate that america is producing F35.

They just need to continue to gradually modernise their air force and never stop developing new products.

Anyway in the last 10 years they received about 200 new fighters (su35 and su30)and more than 120 su34 fighter bombers.

In addition the Russian air force has also mig31, that do not have an equivalent in the USAF.

They do not need to completely replace aircrafts that can still be effective in some roles. Su 24 are doing a very good job in Syria, as an example, and they still have some life on them. Maybe they could later phase them out and/or offer them at a discount to client nations, but at the moment there is not the need to completely replace them and or giving them for free to other nations.

Finally Russia (as any other country) has a finite amount of resources to be spent each year and there are a lot of competing projects, or uses for them. Not everything can be made at the same time.

Rodion_Romanovic wrote:

ultimatewarrior wrote:Ideally Russia should order more Su-35 and Su-34 and completely replace Su-27 and Su-24. China and the US are churning out J-20 and F-35 like hot cakes in an oven. Russia is getting left behind now that Su-57 crashed and no Su-57 until at least a few years from now.

in what Russia is getting left behind? they have still quite a bit of su27 (some of them SM2 and SM3 versions, with modernised radar and avionics) in service, plus at least a couple of hundreds in reserve (and that could be probably upgraded  and put to service in case of an hot war). Same things for the mig29.

Russia does not need to produce new fighters at the same rate that america is producing F35.

They just need to continue to gradually modernise their air force and never stop developing new products.

Anyway in the last 10 years they received about 200 new fighters (su35 and su30)and more than 120 su34 fighter bombers.

In addition the Russian air force has also mig31, that do not have an equivalent in the USAF.

They do not need to completely replace aircrafts that can still be effective in some roles. Su 24 are doing a very good job in Syria, as an example, and they still have some life on them. Maybe they could later phase them out and/or offer them at a discount to client nations, but at the moment there is not the need to completely replace them and or giving them for free to other nations.

Finally Russia (as any other country) has a finite amount of resources to be spent each year and there are a lot of competing projects, or uses for them. Not everything can be made at the same time.

Russia is generally very slow. It took Russia 10 years to build a single new frigate. China been pumping out more than 50 new frigates and destroyer in the same time frame.

ultimatewarrior wrote:Russia is really slow making planes. China makes planes 10 times faster than Russia does. China built China's half of Amur bridge within months. Russia built Russia's half of Amur bridge in years.

These are the just the newly built but the "deeply modified ones are to be put in account also: 130 Mig-31BM+  20 Mig-31K, 24 Su-27SM3, 76 Su-24M2, su-25 modernization is already started... up to the 5 original Su-30 actually being converted into Su-30M2.
We are talking in many cases of planes of the same tech level of newly build ones, just build using already disponible frames kept in reserve or even not completed.
All those are however planes with very low flight hour spent due to the Eltsin era crisis so they would last another 10-15 years without excessive costs.
Thank to them, Ru air forces have surpassed the desired 70% modernization threshold already in 2018, so they have slowed down now waiting for Mig-35 and Su-57 to be ready.

ultimatewarrior wrote:

Rodion_Romanovic wrote:

ultimatewarrior wrote:Ideally Russia should order more Su-35 and Su-34 and completely replace Su-27 and Su-24. China and the US are churning out J-20 and F-35 like hot cakes in an oven. Russia is getting left behind now that Su-57 crashed and no Su-57 until at least a few years from now.

in what Russia is getting left behind? they have still quite a bit of su27 (some of them SM2 and SM3 versions, with modernised radar and avionics) in service, plus at least a couple of hundreds in reserve (and that could be probably upgraded  and put to service in case of an hot war). Same things for the mig29.

Russia does not need to produce new fighters at the same rate that america is producing F35.

They just need to continue to gradually modernise their air force and never stop developing new products.

Anyway in the last 10 years they received about 200 new fighters (su35 and su30)and more than 120 su34 fighter bombers.

In addition the Russian air force has also mig31, that do not have an equivalent in the USAF.

They do not need to completely replace aircrafts that can still be effective in some roles. Su 24 are doing a very good job in Syria, as an example, and they still have some life on them. Maybe they could later phase them out and/or offer them at a discount to client nations, but at the moment there is not the need to completely replace them and or giving them for free to other nations.

Finally Russia (as any other country) has a finite amount of resources to be spent each year and there are a lot of competing projects, or uses for them. Not everything can be made at the same time.

Russia is generally very slow. It took Russia 10 years to build a single new frigate. China been pumping out more than 50 new frigates and destroyer in the same time frame.

here we were talking about the air forces, and Chinese new planes are not without problems.

China is pumping on the navy a lot, that is true. As far as the frigates,  however, they are decent, but nothing exceptional (admiral grigorovich frigates are a bit better than the chinese 054A, admiral Gorshkov are a generation apart). Concerning the destroyers (both 052D and 055, on paper they are quite good, but I do not know enough about the quality of the weapon system. Finally, it has been discussed to the death about the admiral Gorshkov frigate. There has been a lot of issues and mistakes, but the main problem was that they used it as a platform to put and test all their new modern naval systems, that were still in development when they laid down the ship and that were not tested before in unison.  Furthermore, at least Russia is honest on that and does not admit in service ships or airplanes that are not ready and cannot be used operationally.

However the Navy, while important, is the last priority for the russian military,  coming after the strategic defense, the army and the air force.

Rodion_Romanovic wrote:

ultimatewarrior wrote:

Rodion_Romanovic wrote:

ultimatewarrior wrote:Ideally Russia should order more Su-35 and Su-34 and completely replace Su-27 and Su-24. China and the US are churning out J-20 and F-35 like hot cakes in an oven. Russia is getting left behind now that Su-57 crashed and no Su-57 until at least a few years from now.

in what Russia is getting left behind? they have still quite a bit of su27 (some of them SM2 and SM3 versions, with modernised radar and avionics) in service, plus at least a couple of hundreds in reserve (and that could be probably upgraded  and put to service in case of an hot war). Same things for the mig29.

Russia does not need to produce new fighters at the same rate that america is producing F35.

They just need to continue to gradually modernise their air force and never stop developing new products.

Anyway in the last 10 years they received about 200 new fighters (su35 and su30)and more than 120 su34 fighter bombers.

In addition the Russian air force has also mig31, that do not have an equivalent in the USAF.

They do not need to completely replace aircrafts that can still be effective in some roles. Su 24 are doing a very good job in Syria, as an example, and they still have some life on them. Maybe they could later phase them out and/or offer them at a discount to client nations, but at the moment there is not the need to completely replace them and or giving them for free to other nations.

Finally Russia (as any other country) has a finite amount of resources to be spent each year and there are a lot of competing projects, or uses for them. Not everything can be made at the same time.

Russia is generally very slow. It took Russia 10 years to build a single new frigate. China been pumping out more than 50 new frigates and destroyer in the same time frame.

here we were talking about the air forces, and Chinese new planes are not without problems.

China is pumping on the navy a lot, that is true. As far as the frigates,  however, they are decent, but nothing exceptional (admiral grigorovich frigates are a bit better than the chinese 054A, admiral Gorshkov are a generation apart). Concerning the destroyers (both 052D and 055, on paper they are quite good, but I do not know enough about the quality of the weapon system. Finally, it has been discussed to the death about the admiral Gorshkov frigate. There has been a lot of issues and mistakes, but the main problem was that they used it as a platform to put and test all their new modern naval systems, that were still in development when they laid down the ship and that were not tested before in unison.  Furthermore, at least Russia is honest on that and does not admit in service ships or airplanes that are not ready and cannot be used operationally.

However the Navy, while important, is the last priority for the russian military,  coming after the strategic defense, the army and the air force.

And don't forget China built a carrier with much less time it took Russia to build a frigate. Admit it, Russians are slow even if Russia has 10% the population of China.

Very bad numbers. The future of the Russian air force looks grim.

they said they will buy more Su-35 and Su-30SM (after the upgrades). We just have to wait till either end of this year or MAKS.

Isos wrote:

miketheterrible wrote:they said they will buy more Su-35 and Su-30SM (after the upgrades).  We just have to wait till either end of this year or MAKS.

Putin ordered 76 su-57 while the expected number was lower to allow more su-35/30 and mass production will start this year. I doubt they will invest more in flanker family since they never expected 76 su-57 to be ordered at once.

And the fact they ordered 76 su57 isn't just a matter of number. It also means they think it is much better than su-30/35 and worth investing money.

They do but its a different plant altogether (KnaAPO). Irkutsk plant is producing the Su-30SM and they already made demands for fitting Irbis radar and Su-35 electronics/engines on it. This demand was made by MoD themselves. So they will for sure end up purchasing more.

Plus the 76 Su-57 are till 2028. That is a long time from now. They will invest in more Su-35 to accommodate the low acceptance of Su-57.