Su-47 Berkut and MiG 1.44

I don't think it needs a huge amount of money or genius to figure out that planform alignment is the starting point of a stealth design. It is quite probable that Russians have not historically invested the same effort in developing stealth as the Americans, but you can be pretty sure they have invested much more effort than them in defeating it, which is demands pretty much the same kind of theoretical knowledge since their models of Western planes and the ultimate possibilities in the area need to be accurate enough and even to overestimate them for the sake of being future proof. If all, I find the almost miraculous RCS values given by the West about their planes more questionable for a real plane subjected to airframe twist and use wear or all aspect multiband illumination than the apparent Russian refusal to provide similarly optimistic ones. We know the trick about Russian AD is more radar algorithms than missiles so I think those claims of F-35 coming into 20 km of S-400 to be BS, not to talk about Nebo-M or even less Konteyner. The evolution of US tactical weapons and tactics tells a very different story about stealth from what PR people do.

The Pyotr Ufimtsev article on planar surfaces US scientists used to compute RCS in order to design the F-117 was just one article.
He later wrote articles on computing RCS for curved surfaces. Allegedly this was used in the B-2 design and later designs.
Without those mathematical formulas you needed some intense compute power for approximating curved surfaces with lots and lots of little planar surfaces.
Those formulas make computing RCS for curved surfaces easy.
So the Soviets could basically compute RCS with a much easier to compute model for years.

The fact they did not see a military use for this on their aircraft back then I think reflects different design philosophies.
I think a lot of people underestimate the degree of stealth the Su-57 will have when it becomes operational.
If it was not for stealth the Russian state might as well continue ordering Su-35s until infinity.
Sure the Su-57 will also be more agile but it's not just that.

secretprojects wrote:

kvs wrote:Funny how the people who literally wrote the book on stealth (i.e. the mathematics based on the physics) are supposedly
unable to design stealth aircraft.   Westerners should listen to themselves talk, you sure sound like chauvinist retards.

The F-35 is an example of the inanity that permeates western "thought".   For the longest time we had whining fanbois
piss all over the place about how circular nacelles defeat stealth.   Yet for the F-35 they are fine.   No, you fanboi clowns
do not get to conveniently forget your retarded spew.

Presumably you mean Pyotr Ufimtsev. His treatise was a very technical one on a way to calculate one class of radar reflections in a specific use case which was highly useful to Lockheed engineers when calculating the RCS of their faceted aircraft designs. This is not in any way like 'writing the book on stealth'. 

Over and over with the same non-sense....PTD has been MUCH more essential for subsequent US air Force design (among all just B-2 "Spirit") than it was for the initial F-117 concept.

I repost for you a mine old response in the pak-fa-t-50-news-4 thread (post 639) to this recurring idiocy


"That is completely false.

For one PTD has been much more fundamental for B2 Spirit program than for F-117; in facts ,as anyone can easily understand, capability to compute re-radiating cones both for shadow boundaries and caustic diffracting regions (where OTD mostly fail) was literally critical, above all for designs incorporating asymptotic curved edges, including the subsequent US fighter type designs.

As said by the same Kenneth Mitzner (the Northrop theoretical seminal and development mind, togheter with F. Oshiro, behind B-2 and Tacit Blue) B-2 program would have been practically impossible without the PTD:

"I cannot imagine the B-2 having been designed without the influence of his work," Dr. Mitzner added. "Let me put it this way: without Ufimtsev, today's stealth aircraft would probably have looked the way the speculative artists portrayed them, before their real shapes were publicly disclosed"
Also today the most advanced solution system of equations for computing diffraction fields generated by, so called, VLO and ULO aerodynamics objects are kept in Federation's Institutes, not US ones , with a theoretical understanding edge that in those decades even widened.
What US brands can instead surely boast is the large scale production mastering, with all the related making and maintenance engineering know-how cumulated, of similar complex LO vehicles.

The ridiculous story, likely created, from thin air, by part of some westener with very small knowledges and instead a very big grudge about the fact that this true "allowing" technology for all western stealth designs was coming from directly Soviet Institutes (a thing that deeply worry them......and at reason i can add) circulating about how the, supposedly, "less evolved" F-117 faceted design was created using PTD because of the limits in processign capabilities of computers of the times while the "most advanced" B-2 ,F-22 and F-35 designs has been created using different, unspecified, "US-developed theoretical basis" is a true offense to human intelligence.

П. Уфимцев works was deeply examined in two instances by two different Soviet military Scientific Commissions and rightly considered publicly releasable .
Hard radar data (in the latests years coming also from Syrian airspace control) most than 50 years later, give today perfect reason to the correctness of the scientific assessment of the time."

About instead its importance for, at the time, the over-ocean scientifical community of the field it WAS much more than merely what you define 'the book on stealth' (at least for western approach to aircraft designs with reduced area of dispersion in high frequency radar regimes) it was the true "Rosetta Stone breakthrough for stealth technology" as said directly by Ben Rich -the Director of the team at SkunkWorks charged to carry on the XST program-.

The Pyotr Ufimtsev article on planar surfaces US scientists used to compute RCS in order to design the F-117 was just one article.
He later wrote articles on computing RCS for curved surfaces. Allegedly this was used in the B-2 design and later designs.

He essentially developed the mathematical model needed to predict and model the propagation of waves... I remember in the 1980s playing with ray tracing programmes... it was on an Amiga 500 and you essentially set up a few very basic shapes and a few light sources and camera positions and you set it going over night by which time it will have rendered a single frame after spending the night calculating each individual light ray from every light source placed in the image and their effect on different surfaces and angles and on different textures and materials... the sort of thing modern computers do in real time for new 3D games...

The thing is that the Soviets weren't interested in sneaky beaky first strike aircraft to penetrate strong enemy air defences for a first strike... the US is just too far away for that to be useful, so the Soviets largely ignored his work and allowed it to be published internationally.
Of course one might argue that a time traveller might go back in time and say let them work on stealth... it will be much easier to counter than other technologies they might otherwise spend their money on...

The Soviets took an interest when they realised what the US was doing with this information... the difference between the straight lines and flat surface faceted design of the F-117 and the smooth curves of the F-22 and YF-23 is computer processing power... with facets it is far easier to calculate reflections because the flat surface area has a relatively uniform reflection, whereas a steadily curved surface has billions of discrete angles to calculate... the old computers of the 70s used faceted models of planes just like the first flight simulators like Interceptor used blocky shaped aircraft models to get frame rates up, but as processing power improved they got more facets and soon they applied textures to models with tens of thousands of polygons that almost looked smooth.

I would think the US military did not use Amiga 500 computers... they would be using super computers at that time...

So the Soviets could basically compute RCS with a much easier to compute model for years.

Except their focus of defence meant they were more interested in anti stealth systems, which needed a lot of work to get them to where they are today.

They were already using IRSTs as standard on their fighters as well as nose mounted radars... any technology that helps gets money spent on it, so they might find early on that their radars might have trouble tracking B-2 bombers but IR guided BVR missiles and IRSTs and even cannon means it is not a huge problem.

The fact they did not see a military use for this on their aircraft back then I think reflects different design philosophies.

The Russians and Soviets are much more defence oriented than the west ever gives them credit for...

Also today the most advanced solution system of equations for computing diffraction fields generated by, so called, VLO and ULO aerodynamics objects are kept in Federation's Institutes, not US ones , with a theoretical understanding edge that in those decades even widened.

It is just common sense that theoretical models are going to be much more precise than any manufacturer on the planet could match... so super stealthy designs can't be made in practical terms because of the limits of materials and manufacturing.

circulating about how the, supposedly, "less evolved" F-117 faceted design was created using PTD because of the limits in processign capabilities of computers of the times while the "most advanced" B-2 ,F-22 and F-35 designs has been created using different, unspecified, "US-developed theoretical basis" is a true offense to human intelligence.

When they made the F-117 they simply didn't have the manufacturing capacity and capability to make F-22s and B-2s let alone design them...

So in a sense it was true... but the idea that the F-117 was based on the Soviet information that was then perfected by the US into the more sophisticated and aerodynamic later aircraft is bullshit. When the smallest thing you can measure is 10 square centimetres, then everything you make is based on 10 sq cm sized blocks... when you can measure down to microns then surfaces and angles can become curved and smooth.

Can Russia also claim to have designed the F-35 and X-47B

Why not.... they designed the F-15.... a MiG-25 copy...

I disagree with the view that the Soviets did not appreciate a need for stealth. They just knew that radar systems could
be improved to counteract its "advantages". This is something that stealth fanbois fail to understand completely as they
engage in their ignorant chauvinist drivel-smear.

Just as stealth designs involve computation of reflection and absorption of manifolds, radar design is just as complex where
the antenna characteristics for efficient gain in various EM bands needs to be determined. Some rotating partial dish design
is not the end of radar technology and even the term radar is not valid since radar is a specific narrow band of frequencies.
So the "backward" Soviets could model the coupling of the "radar" system (components since more than one type of antenna
is involved) and the stealth target.

This sort of co-evolution of military technology is universal. For every measure there is a countermeasure. Of course,
the Devil is in the details.

The word "theory" has a BS common usage where it is defined as "hunch". That is not what theories are even if they
start out with humans having hunches but based on some objective information to guide them. So the Soviet theoretical
work is not trivial compared to the super duper wunderwaffen being designed by American supermen.

IMO the Chinese purchased the Mig 1.44 in 2005. But they were in the running to co-produce the Pak fa. But India won that in 2007. And it was only after that, when China went full speed ahead with the J-20 in 2008. This also explains why it took 4-5 years less time for China to build the J-20 than it took for the US or Russia to build 5th gens. Because they started with a jet that already flew

The design influence is pretty clear, but I would suggest the contents of the MiG was basic and not yet developed, so likely the contents of the Chinese model wont be as good as a MiG PAK FA could have been if also funded.

Essentially I would expect the Chinese probably got a bit of design assistance from MiG, which likely speeded up the development of the physical external shape and aerodynamics, but I think the engines and avionics are probably not up to 5th gen levels yet.

If they had 5th gen bits to put in this aircraft then they would also be putting those same bits in Su-27s and not need to buy Su-35s.

I am not dissing the Chinese in this regard... Europe doesn't have a 5th gen fighter either.

China should get some credit. They are likely to have fully researched the problem and produced sufficiently advanced modeling
software to be able to test the EM interaction characteristics of their stealth jet prototypes.

In many ways, modeling the stealth characteristics of jets is easier than figuring out the metallurgy of jet engine turbines.
Some things come from long term experience.

GarryB wrote:The design influence is pretty clear, but I would suggest the contents of the MiG was basic and not yet developed, so likely the contents of the Chinese model wont be as good as a MiG PAK FA could have been if also funded.

Essentially I would expect the Chinese probably got a bit of design assistance from MiG, which likely speeded up the development of the physical external shape and aerodynamics, but I think the engines and avionics are probably not up to 5th gen levels yet.

If they had 5th gen bits to put in this aircraft then they would also be putting those same bits in Su-27s and not need to buy Su-35s.

I am not dissing the Chinese in this regard... Europe doesn't have a 5th gen fighter either.

Yeah. Something along those lines. Nothing else can explain the speedy development. (minus the engines)

kvs wrote:China should get some credit.   They are likely to have fully researched the problem and produced sufficiently advanced modeling
software to be able to test the EM interaction characteristics of their stealth jet prototypes.  

In many ways, modeling the stealth characteristics of jets is easier than figuring out the metallurgy of jet engine turbines.
Some things come from long term experience.

I agree. China should get some credit.

But its crazy when people in the western defense media, claim that China is further ahead in aircraft development than Russia.They still give China the underdog treatment I guess. Whenever some developmental news comes out about the J-20, check the comment section on any western article, and you will see the articles are met with glee because China is supposedly ahead of Russia now.

There's also some Chinese accounts on Twitter, who think the J-20 is above the su 57 because the canopy looks like the F-22 when its lifted up.

The Chinese are doing a good job of marketing the J-20. I'll give them that. There are some nice shiny pictures that gets everyone excited. The J-20 is an interesting concept but its never going to stand the test of time like the su 57 will. Russia is an aviation power. China isn't. China's strengths lie elsewhere.

We can see this with the MC-21 breezing through EU certification while the Comac 919 is stalled.

China’s twin-engine airliner has suffered another blow after COMAC engineers miscalculated load factors. Four people familiar with the development of the plane told Reuters that Chinese engineers sent the wrong mathematical data to the engine manufacturer CFM International.

If they are making mistakes like this on the civil side, then I dont think China will be passing Russia in aviation anytime soon. But a lot of ppl in the west cant see this

The MiG and the J-20 are heavy fighters with delta-canard layout, but even if they wanted, Chinese could not directly copy the design for several important reasons IMHO:

- The VLO design of the J-20 imposes some very big changes re. the MFI
- MiG uses close-coupled canard on a elevated plane while J-20 uses long coupled at the same heighth with LERX. Some people criticise that such arrangement causes detrimental interaction between foreplane and wing airflows.
- Ventral and side intakes completely different with effect on internal layout and aero
- MFI engines were substantially bigger
-...

Backman wrote:
If they are making mistakes like this on the civil side, then I dont think China will be passing Russia in aviation anytime soon. But a lot of ppl in the west cant see this

Yeah it is remarkable, China is accepted to be "superior" to Russia because they apparently apply Western way of doing things, particularly in LO design, so it must be better than Russian way. But that is hardly a compliment, since they are considered mere copycats. The implicit sense of superiority in the West is simply mind blowing, they think they are the only ones with a brain and capacity to invent something while the rest are basically left to search in Google for ways to copy them without even understanding the theory... the level of arrogance and stupidity is just embarrassing

When you design something the very first thing you do is look at the problem and then look at existing solutions to the problem.

A case in point is the American Space Shuttle.

When the Soviets got the task of designing their own they could have started testing all sorts of far out designs and they might have... but they knew NASA spent 2 billion dollars refining the design they chose, which they chose based on materials and design capability at the time to be the best they could possibly make it.

The Soviets would be idiots to ignore the US space shuttle design, but what likely happened was that they split into groups with one group getting the US design as a basis and the others having to come up with unique designs.

It means there is a chance you might get a better design but you have as good as the american engineers could manage with their super computers and advanced models etc etc.

In the end the external shape of the Buran was very similar to the US design... there was no point in spending billions of dollars on trying to make something different... what was important was to make something better and if it couldn't be better then the same is good enough.

The real irony is that many westerners look at the Buran and think copy.

Fundamentally it is a different type of craft.

Think of the US Space Shuttle as being a C-130 transport aircraft with its own engines... it is a rocket in its own right.

The problem is that its size and weight means it needs an enormous fuel tank bigger than the whole aircraft itself to carry enough fuel to get into space and when that huge fuel tank is fitted it is too heavy for its own engines to move it let alone take off, so a couple of enormous solid rockets are attached like giant RATO or JATO bottles to get the whole thing moving.

Problems with that include once the solid rocket motors are lit you can't throttle them or shut them down... they are enormously expensive, and can't be reused.

Having the liquid rocket engines in the shuttle itself means they are dead weight for the flight... about 10 tons of dead weight you carry everywhere.

The payload capacity of the shuttle is about 10-20 tons and is pretty much limited to the cargo bay on the shuttle in terms of physical dimensions... OK for deploying or recovering a satellite but not great for space station construction.

The Buran on the other hand is totally different... it has no big powerful liquid rocket engines, which means it can carry more payload... the all up weight of the Buran was 105 tons. That includes a payload capacity of 30 tons. The numbers for the US SS are harder to come by but from what I can find it is 120 tons for the Shuttle but not the external fuel tank and solid rocket boosters with a 20 ton payload (actually 18 tons).

The fundamental difference is that Buran is a glider... it sits on an Energya rocket and is blasted off into space on the back of a missile.

If you are launching satellites or recovering them Buran can do that, but if you are building a space station you can take the Buran off and put a 120 ton payload on the back of the Energya and build your space station much much faster... the current ISS weighs about 350 tons so four or five missions could take up all the bits and pieces needed... assembling stuff in space is a pain in the ass so having complete modules you can simply link together and perhaps one launch with all your solar panels in a big flat pack that folds out on command would be a much quicker and much cheaper and much safer way to build a space station.

The Space shuttle is not terrible, it led the way but the idea that reusing it would lead to it being used a lot and therefore become cheaper never panned out.

GarryB wrote:When you design something the very first thing you do is look at the problem and then look at existing solutions to the problem.

A case in point is the American Space Shuttle.

When the Soviets got the task of designing their own they could have started testing all sorts of far out designs and they might have... but they knew NASA spent 2 billion dollars refining the design they chose, which they chose based on materials and design capability at the time to be the best they could possibly make it.

The Soviets would be idiots to ignore the US space shuttle design, but what likely happened was that they split into groups with one group getting the US design as a basis and the others having to come up with unique designs.

It means there is a chance you might get a better design but you have as good as the american engineers could manage with their super computers and advanced models etc etc.

In the end the external shape of the Buran was very similar to the US design... there was no point in spending billions of dollars on trying to make something different... what was important was to make something better and if it couldn't be better then the same is good enough.

The real irony is that many westerners look at the Buran and think copy.

Fundamentally it is a different type of craft.

Think of the US Space Shuttle as being a C-130 transport aircraft with its own engines... it is a rocket in its own right.

The problem is that its size and weight means it needs an enormous fuel tank bigger than the whole aircraft itself to carry enough fuel to get into space and when that huge fuel tank is fitted it is too heavy for its own engines to move it let alone take off, so a couple of enormous solid rockets are attached like giant RATO or JATO bottles to get the whole thing moving.

Problems with that include once the solid rocket motors are lit you can't throttle them or shut them down... they are enormously expensive, and can't be reused.

Having the liquid rocket engines in the shuttle itself means they are dead weight for the flight... about 10 tons of dead weight you carry everywhere.

The payload capacity of the shuttle is about 10-20 tons and is pretty much limited to the cargo bay on the shuttle in terms of physical dimensions... OK for deploying or recovering a satellite but not great for space station construction.

The Buran on the other hand is totally different... it has no big powerful liquid rocket engines, which means it can carry more payload... the all up weight of the Buran was 105 tons. That includes a payload capacity of 30 tons. The numbers for the US SS are harder to come by but from what I can find it is 120 tons for the Shuttle but not the external fuel tank and solid rocket boosters with a 20 ton payload (actually 18 tons).

The fundamental difference is that Buran is a glider... it sits on an Energya rocket and is blasted off into space on the back of a missile.

If you are launching satellites or recovering them Buran can do that, but if you are building a space station you can take the Buran off and put a 120 ton payload on the back of the Energya and build your space station much much faster... the current ISS weighs about 350 tons so four or five missions could take up all the bits and pieces needed... assembling stuff in space is a pain in the ass so having complete modules you can simply link together and perhaps one launch with all your solar panels in a big flat pack that folds out on command would be a much quicker and much cheaper and much safer way to build a space station.

The Space shuttle is not terrible, it led the way but the idea that reusing it would lead to it being used a lot and therefore become cheaper never panned out.

Yep. It was an intelligent thing to do for China to build off of the Mig 1.44. I remember reading that the Mig and airforce brass were quite bullish about the performance of the 1.44 at the time too.

Well that is another thing too.... I remember there was a 1.42 and 1.44 version... one of which was revealed to the public as the flying model that anyone could see... to test it they couldn't keep it hidden... but the the other model was the stealthy model that was kept secret and hidden presumably until they were ready for serial production and then the stealth changes would be made with the proven and tested systems and equipment and avionics for serial production...

Have we ever seen the other more stealthy secret model... or perhaps is that what the Chinese bought and developed?

The chin intakes of the MiG revealed to the public look like the chin intakes of the experimental Ye-8 which was a modified MiG-21 with chin intakes and canard foreplanes etc etc. MiG was actually experimenting with canards during WWII with the MiG-8...

I just had a look on wiki (not the most reliable source of course) and it seems to suggest talk about the 1.44 and 1.42 interchangeably, and describe the new light 5th gen fighter programme (LMFS) as being what both designs have evolved into... though they would need to have lost a lot of weight because they were quite big.

It should be interesting when the next gen light Russian stealth fighter is revealed.

The 1.44 was a demonstrator while the real MFI would be the 1.42, from what I remember. Paralay did some very nice drawings and there is also mock-up of the front fuselage

The 1.44 was a demonstrator while the real MFI would be the 1.42, from what I remember. Paralay did some very nice drawings and there is also mock-up of the front fuselage

So is that because the 1.42 had secret shaping and details they didn't want to reveal with the prototype but would be needed on the final aircraft to make it stealthy, or was it just a code thing... 1.44 is the development airframe and when ready for serial production it is renamed 1.42?

GarryB wrote:So is that because the 1.42 had secret shaping and details they didn't want to reveal with the prototype but would be needed on the final aircraft to make it stealthy, or was it just a code thing... 1.44 is the development airframe and when ready for serial production it is renamed 1.42?

My understanding is that they were actually different, you see the new intakes and the cranked delta wing, for instance. I think this aero layout has not been yet surpassed...

LMFS wrote:

GarryB wrote:So is that because the 1.42 had secret shaping and details they didn't want to reveal with the prototype but would be needed on the final aircraft to make it stealthy, or was it just a code thing... 1.44 is the development airframe and when ready for serial production it is renamed 1.42?

My understanding is that they were actually different, you see the new intakes and the cranked delta wing, for instance. I think this aero layout has not been yet surpassed...

Do you think the design could adapted to PAK-DP?

magnumcromagnon wrote:Do you think the design could adapted to PAK-DP?

The MFI was supposed to be a supreme supercruiser and very fast in maximum speed, but still a fighter (hence the canard and the big delta wing, wide separated tails and other elements for high AoA / high lift), if the PAK-DP is such a extreme plane as we are being told, it would need a design specific for speeds up to 4 M. The canard may not be necessary, wing would need to be smaller, fineness ratio should be maximized and the wing should be as small swept and thin as possible. The MiG-31 already ticks most of the boxes in that regard, but I have not way of knowing if the DP will be directly comparable or completely different

I have never really been a huge fan of canards.

GarryB wrote:I have never really been a huge fan of canards.

Both Europeans than Chinese producers are instead and for damn good reasons.
However  Canards are not a stand alone thing, so when they come coupled with a pure delta wing, they are the real deal but when they are put on a plane that already has a conventional tail they became just a way to correct some design imbalance.
So probably they used the 1.44 and the 1,42 as a proof of concept to evaluate the whole idea of a canard delta but in the end they decided to keep on with their own trademark blended wing/podded engine  design and they had 100% reason into doing it as both the success of the 4+ and 4++ version of Flanker and the development of Su-57 have clearly demonstrated.
Now, they come with an added bonus as LEVCON developed with the Su-57 program + TVC engines would allow to have a viable alternative to canards themselves on future deltas also.

marcellogo wrote:
 Canards are not a stand alone thing, so when they come coupled with a pure delta wing, they are the real deal but when they are put on a plane that already has a conventional tail they became just a way to correct some design imbalance.

Canards do not solve today the same problems than before, when planes had static stability. Back then the canard was a way of pitching up the nose without creating downforce, now with unstable designs this is not necessary anymore and conventional tailed planes are quite ok in that regard. That does not mean that the canard serves no purpose or is a minor thing:

> It helps keeping the airflow attached to the wing under high AoA
> It expands the aircraft's capability for trimming CoG at different flight regimes and loadings.

A great example is the use of the canard by Sukhoi in tri-plane arrangement (canard + wing + tail), which provides the best CoG compensation possibilities so no matter what flight regime or load, pitching and trimming is done without reduction of lift.

The MiG 1.44 went also that road, notwithstanding the canards, the plane had some very interesting control surfaces between the vertical tails and the nozzles, which would have worked in very much the same way as Sukhoi's layout, though I think that idea is best implemented on a single engine plane where those control surfaces can be bigger and therefore compensate better for the lack of conventional tails. Also MiG's raised, close-coupled canard would have given the best performance at high AoA and avoided negative influence in the wing's airflow when using them to pitch up the nose.

So probably they used the 1.44 and the 1,42 as a proof of concept to evaluate the whole idea of a canard delta but in the end they decided to keep on with their own trademark blended wing/podded engine  design and they had 100% reason into doing it as both the success of the 4+ and 4++ version of Flanker and the development of Su-57 have clearly demonstrated.
Now, they come with an added bonus as LEVCON developed with the Su-57 program + TVC engines would allow to have a viable alternative to canards themselves on future deltas also.

The demonstrator and the definitive model should not be a proof of concept of exactly the opposite idea to that you want to implement...

MiG's approach was clear, then MFI got axed then Sukhoi came up with a different layout. The biggest advantage of their approach is bigger bays space and maybe better stealth, aerodynamically I don't think it is superior. For instance the LEVCONS fulfil in the PAK-FA the roles of helping attach the airflow to the wing at high AoA (not as well as the canard there) and minor trim adjustments, it does not deflect upwards and so does not help pitching the nose up. The more compact placement of the engines close to each other has also some good advantages vs. the podded design, like smaller roll moment, friction + interference drag and weight.

Yeah, I just think the future will be Thrust Vector Controls and that horizontal tail and canard surfaces will go... they will keep the main wing and the vertical tails will even go to minimise weight and drag... the levcon emulates a canard to the point of making it redundant...

LMFS wrote:

marcellogo wrote:
So probably they used the 1.44 and the 1,42 as a proof of concept to evaluate the whole idea of a canard delta but in the end they decided to keep on with their own trademark blended wing/podded engine  design and they had 100% reason into doing it as both the success of the 4+ and 4++ version of Flanker and the development of Su-57 have clearly demonstrated.
Now, they come with an added bonus as LEVCON developed with the Su-57 program + TVC engines would allow to have a viable alternative to canards themselves on future deltas also.

The demonstrator and the definitive model should not be a proof of concept of exactly the opposite idea to that you want to implement...

MiG's approach was clear, then MFI got axed then Sukhoi came up with a different layout. The biggest advantage of their approach is bigger bays space and maybe better stealth, aerodynamically I don't think it is superior. For instance the LEVCONS fulfil in the PAK-FA the roles of helping attach the airflow to the wing at high AoA (not as well as the canard there) and minor trim adjustments, it does not deflect upwards and so does not help pitching the nose up. The more compact placement of the engines close to each other has also some good advantages vs. the podded design, like smaller roll moment, friction + interference drag and weight.

!00% agree with you there.
I never intended to say that the Su approach was superior (but neither inferior) than the one of MFI for what it come to flight parameters but instead for the same points you also have noted.
More than all it is a proven design they have a deep knowledge into, so they had half of work already done.
Obviously nothing bar that some of the solution used in the MiG Demonstrator would be used in future,
I am instead a big fan of the blended wing/podded design so I'll would apply it anywhere, anytime is possible, obviously coupled with other innovations if they are compatible with it but never as an alternative.

One of the best reasons for my predilection for such a formula is surely in my previous posts about engines:while the Americans, constrained by the fuselage dimensions had to modify heavily the engines of their own legacy planes in order to increase their thrust, ending up with just a modest increase of the final T/W ratio but completely screwing their own bypass ratio, the pod configuration allowed instead russian to increase the fan diameter of the Al-41-117S in order not just to retain but even to increase the Bypass ratio together with the T/W one compared to the original engine.
Same will happen with the Al-51 on Su-57: they would have a way better engine that would actually be even more compact than the actual one