CV/Ns & TAKRs also have "short runways" more commonly called flight decks.
Yeah, but would you not agree that designing an aircraft to take off from a short runway so it could take off from a short strip of motorway, or perhaps their home runway with a large bomb crater half way down it, is really not the same as being able to land on a heaving runway in the middle of the Atlantic ocean in the middle of the night?
In a rolling sea the deck can be moving up and down several metres in each direction... a high sink rate for the landing aircraft added to a deck rising 5m could create a very hard landing... really not something a land based aircraft has to deal with...
About the time & later the Soviets were developing TAKRs & knew that a CTOL fighter to replace the Yak-38 will be needed for future larger TAKRs.
They did, but if the vanilla MiG-29 could operate from a carrier, then why bother with the MiG-29K or the Su-33 if they were both designed to operate from short air strips too.
BTW the Yak-41 could not operate from land airstrips in a short take off mode either... during a short take off run at Farnborough it damaged the runway when its main engine vectored down to assist a short take off.
It needs special heat resistant tiles to operate from short air strips let alone vertical take off and landings.
Then they would absolutely need to obtain a MiG-29K in that scenario.
Or they could analyse the design and structure and work it out themselves, but actually buying some MiG-29KR aircraft would be much faster and much safer because the work has already been done. (note the MiG-29KR and MiG-29M2 and MiG-35 share the same airframe and basic design... the MiG-29K is from the mid 1980s and is not as sophisticated or capable.)
But they failed with the J-15 even with having 1 SU-33 in their possession + many SU-27/-30/J-11s being assembled & flown.
Structural strengthening is not a simple business... sometimes it is different thicknesses, or different materials or different shapes that make some areas stronger... China have the capacity to make german diesel engines, but the breakdowns in Russian service suggest they haven't gotten the materials right just yet... and that is why it is not the case that everyone can make a decent diesel engine... operational experience and they will realise what bits need to be made of harder material, and the question is... do you want to develop it yourself or buy off the shelf?
Following ur logic, the J-20 (~the size & weight as the F-111 that was too heavy for a CV/N) can also be easily & successfully navalized, surpassing all those SU-33s, J-15s, F-18/-35s & MiG-29Ks!
The carriers they were attempting to operate F-111s from were rather smaller than today and with new EMALS catapults offering a more sophisticated launch, you could probably get away with an F-111 weight aircraft on a really big carrier. In fact on a catamaran design with two decks you could have an EMALS the full length of one deck and a landing area the full length of the other deck for rather heavy aircraft... it would be bloody expensive, but I really don't see the point.
The Su-57 is smaller than an Su-35 or Su-33 so bigger is not necessarily better... remember the F-18 replaced the F-14D, so smaller aircraft do replace larger aircraft occasionally... the F-14D is not a small aircraft.
With steam catapults you set it up for an aircraft type and its current fuel and weapon weights and when you fire it generates a takeoff force to get that aircraft in that configuration airborne in the space available... you can't change it during launch... so if there is an error and an AWACS aircraft with full fuel is launched with a setting for a small light unloaded aircraft, that AWACS aircraft is likely going in the drink.
With EMALS during the launch the system can detect the acceleration and weight of the aircraft so mid launch it could increase or decrease force levels to get the aircraft moving fast enough to get airborne or to prevent damage... A tiny little lightly loaded aircraft with steam cat settings for a heavy fully loaded F-14A with full fuel will get its nose gear ripped off... conversely a fully loaded F-14A with full fuel and weapons with a light unloaded aircraft setting will gently roll forward and drop into the water.
An EMALS system with the wrong setting will immediately notice a problem and adjust the force level to get the aircraft airborne.
This will be more important in the future when some aircraft will be 5 ton UAVs, and others will be 30 ton AWACS aircraft...
Only after navalization, which btw will result in different performance.
Nope.
The MiG-29KR, MiG-29M2 and MiG-35 share an airframe... so increasing structural strength should not be necessary... they are all two seater structure designs with the single seater option with an extra fuel tank in the rear replacing the seat and cockpit instruments.
Folding wings and tail hook is all they would need and could be fitted with them as standard.
If ~ the same sized F-111 was not suitable for the USN CV/Ns, then how the J-20 & Su-57 could be suitable for a 80-90K ton CVN? And how many could fit on a 100K ton CVN to leave enough room for other a/c? Producing just a few of them isn't worth it.
The Su-57 is smaller than the Su-33, and is reported to be lighter too, and with no external weapons normally carried it should be much lower drag... even with a weapon load.
You are only ever going to produce a few of them unless you are planning a 20 carrier fleet, so it makes rather good sense to base 90% of the design on something that is already designed and in service on land. We are talking about 5th gen fighters... do you really think spending a trillion dollars developing a new 5th gen stealth fighter just so you can put 30-40 on 2-3 carriers makes any sense at all?
The two best options is to use an existing design... which means the Su-57, or incorporate the requirements in a new design you are working on now... ie light 5th gen fighter from Yak or MiG... or both Yak and MiG.
You can make the same mistake the US did and end up with an F-35, or you can use some common sense and eliminate the vertical takeoff necessity and just have a better 5th gen fighter with STOL performance... much like the Su-57 already has.
The F-18s were designed for the USN from the start & will be used till 2040, if not longer, while the SU-33s & J-15s came from the land based SU-27. They r effectively "stop gaps" pending a better plane.
An Su-27 aircraft could be upgraded to Su-35 level which would waste any F-18 easily, so why do you call the Su-33 a stopgap aircraft?
Neither the Hornet or Flanker are stealth aircraft, and the Flanker has better performance and rather more potential being a bigger aircraft.
That's why those F-B/Cs r so expensive, having been designed with near universal Swiss army knife-like capabilities.
If you are talking about the Super Hornet, that is what you get trying to make a not stealthy design into a semi stealthy one.
In practical terms it is not stealthy... especially when actually armed... but it ends up costing a large fraction of an actually stealthy aircraft... which is actually rather bad.
By all means reduce RCS but don't be silly enough to think you can make it actually stealthy...
In February 2011, BAE debuted a navalised Typhoon in response to the Indian tender.
It might reduce the Typhoons performance to be navalised, but the real question is... does that actually make it worse than the alternative... the enormously expensive F-35 in the vertical take off version?
Plus, if the Typhoon had several customers who wanted a navalised version then it would be more affordable, and likely easier to manage... there are no doubt features a naval Typhoon does not need that the land based model does that could be changed.
More engine power could also compensate for the extra weight too... really an extra 500kgs shouldn't effect flight performance that much... that is the average weight of the crew on a USN twin seat aircraft isn't it?
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