Su-57 Stealth Fighter: News #5

Azi wrote:Sorry, but safety is not the reason for a twin engine design. It's only perfomance! One of the best western fighter designs is the cheap and light F-16 and it's in general not more or less safe than a F-18 or F-15. All single-engine fighters of USSR were death-traps? Not safe enough?

Well, there is an obvious increase in survivability of the plane due to the redundancy of twin engines. All current CAS jets have two engines for instance.
In a single fighter an engine failure equals loss of the plane, in a twin engine it does not. While this argument stands, applying it to a combat situation may be tricky, since a twin engine fighter would not go very far being attacked with one engine lost and would merely be able to fly and hope to escape with lots of luck.
There is an additional factor which is the increased complexity of the twin engine design. Apparently, near misses at the F-15 have been significantly more than in F-16, many of them due to engine ancillaries. But due to the twin engine nature of the aircraft, they didn't develop into complete losses of the planes.

So in the end I could see Russia having preference for twin engine fighter, mainly for safety in peace time operations and basic survivability in combat. But I tend to agree that if the reliability of the single engine was enough they would field it too.

The whole concept of the F-35 is based on a light (single-engine) multi-role fighter. To have a few thousands light multi-role fighter or have not a single one, because of stupid "safety-reason" is a big difference.

What would be the difference between procurement costs of single and twin engine? I guess 30%, no more, and then I am considering a the single engine being quite smaller than the twin engine. For instance, if a Su-30SM is less than 30 $ mill, do you really think an hypothetical single engine would be less than 20 million? All the components would be essentially the same but airframe and one engine...

For russian forces future will be maybe 250 great Su-57, a few hundreds remnants of the Su-27 series and maybe 100 Mig-31 against THOUSANDS of F-35  and hundreds F-22, F-18 and so on.

That is exactly the key issue here. Russia is NOT going to field thousands of fighters, regardless of them being single or twin engine. So you have to compensate a new development effort in the equivalent of billions of dollars with modest savings for at best a few hundred fighters. If you could export single engines in (really big) numbers that you would not export with twin engine models, you could improve your economies of scale. But the case remains weak and uncertain nevertheless at the moment of committing a budget for the development, unless you manage to force feed them from the start to your allies like US has done with the F-35, selling the plane before actually having a product to show. We are not in Soviet times anymore, so this is not a practicable way for Russia.

And you will for sure tell me now, that the kill ratio of Su-57 against F-35 will be more than 10:1?

Well, it may be even worse depending on the circumstances  

But this is not what VVS should count on and they surely don't do. F-35 would be supported by F-22 and many other assets and that should level the (really hypothetical) fight.

It's not about a conflict defending Russia, that scenario will go maybe nuclear very quick so not realistic, but a scenario like Syria, to project power and defend allies.

I think in this case the deterrent value of the weapon systems is not so much in the numbers, because any conflict would start really small. What counts is that aggressor knows trying anything silly may end up bad for him, and that calls for deploying capable weapons and leaving no weak spots in your defence that could be exploited for political gains of your adversary. This is what we see in Syria. But of course, if the conflict would develop conventionally beyond that point (very determined stances from both sides), numbers count because they would greatly determine who has control of the escalation.

There is much bla bla about the future belongs to UCAV, but it won't. Maybe in 50 or 100 years. The AI of UCAV'S can't compete with humans, so remote control is the option, but in a heavy EW zone complete useless. Best example is Iran landing high tech UAV of USA a few years ago ;D LOL

Well I would check the real advances of AI compared to what the historic forecast were... it would probably send a shiver down your spine, it has been nothing short of terrific (or terrifying, depending on how you see it!)
We've talked about this somewhere else. AI has some unassailable advantages vs. human intellect that are starting to show up only recently but will appear in the next 10-15 years in full force, rendering many (most) human intellectual functions essentially obsolete. Military are neither philosophers nor idiots, they want effectiveness and therefore they are the prime promoters of the technology.

The cost of 1 F-35 is about 100 million US-$ and the cost of 1 F-135 engine is 13 million US-$. That's quite more than "nothing"! For 100 fighter this means 1,3 billion US-$ only for the engines, and hypothetic 2,6 billion US-$ if the F-35 would be a twin-engine fighter with the same engine.

Yes, but then the plane would be twice as big as the F-35... completely different capabilities would come in the pack, that would need to be accounted for.
As Singular_Transform points out, the smaller engines of a twin-engine F-35 would be cheaper than the F135. Even when in the case above, the F404 is in another different technological level, I think the core of the argument stands.

Everything you wrote is correct! Avionics increased in weight, but power and thrust of engines increased the same way Wink

Well, thanks! With the increase of weight, the newer engines have not produced in every case an increase of performance vs. 4G models being replaced, rather the opposite. This may be an isolated case due to very special requirements set of the F-35, but in any case what you need is to be better than previous models, also dynamically. For the record, I think currently a single engine fighter can be done which is true multirole, LO and still close to dynamically analogue to a Su-57.

Yes of course a single engine fighter costs not 50% of a powerful twin-engine design, but if you can save only little money this will stack. If you go for huge numbers there is a difference to pay a few billion US-$ more or less.

Like said above, there are no huge numbers in the Russian case I think.

I'm not against twin-engine designs, I want both, the perfect mix between them Wink But from my opionon RuAF makes a great mistake procure only twin-engine fighter. The USA did the mistake with F-35 making it too much multi-role, without a proper specialization, so every F-35 is completly overloaded with too fancy shit.

Let's see how this ends, we will still be waiting for some years until induction of Su-57 as fully developed 5G plane with second stage engine. And since this is the project that revived the Russian fighter industry, I guess the rest of what is going to happen in terms of new models will follow only when the new technologies and competences are fully implemented and the lessons of developing Su-57 evaluated. I am surely wrong in countless regards but if I were to make a call I would research very seriously the potential of unmanned aircraft before committing resources for developing a new manned fighter at least over the next decade and possibly compromising the RuAF for the foreseeable future with a failed approach that missed the ongoing transformation of the air power.
Regarding F-35, I would agree the overload of conflicting requirements harmed it severely so it may not be a perfect example of what can be expected of a 5G light fighter (it is not even light to start with). In particular the aerodynamics, weight and internal carriage of weapons were badly impaired IMHO stacking the USMC STOVL requirements on top of the already demanding requirements from USN and USAF

Singular_Transform wrote:Anyway, USA can deploy only hundreds of f35s for the invasion of Russia, not thousands. That expecting to withdraw every aircraft from every other theatre , and leave the USA mainland naked against the Chinese/ Indian / Russian / European cruise missiles.

They could try to send all those hundreds of planes and get many of them destroyed by Russian missiles in a matter of hours while trying to build up forces. Geography does not favour US in their wish of conventionally crushing Russia, too bad for them and a huge relief for the rest of the world...

Don't misundertsand me please, I was not writing about NATO/USA attacking Russia, more destroying a Russia Expeditionary Force. For example, if USA go really crazy they can try to attack russian forces in Syria with Russia in dilemma go all in or only a small retribution and let USA win. RuAF has not enough backup for a medium scale war outside of Russia, they are not able to assist China, Serbia or any other country with modern fighter, letting Russia vulnerable to attacks itself. I know were it comes from, the dark ages of 90ies, but this is reality even now.

Yeah, maybe all write im crazy and know nothing, but just compare the unit cost of many 4gen single-engine fighter vs. twin-engine fighters (F-16,Gripen vs F-15, F-18, Eurofighter etc). They are in general muh cheaper, but on other side not so fancy and sophisticated. And now the question...needs Russia only expensive sophisticated twin-engine fighter, or could  a single-engine fighter be a good addition? No replacement, only addition. Most people think that the aircraft is the weapon, but the weapons are the missles and the gun, so a not so extreme sophisticated light fighter equipped with good medium and short-range missles is for sure deadly.

And as I wrote, you will save a few millions per fighter for the abstinence of a second engine. Maybe you need not every fancy sensor possible and go for a bit cheaper avionic. For a single fighter this savings makes no sense you would go for the best personally, but but but for 100 or 200 fighters it will go in billion! That's the point.

---

And please forget UCAV, a computer can never overlook the complexity of a battlefield, most humans have problems with this. Maybe a UCAV is fine for bombing some terrorists in the desert, that's all! How to distinguish between civilians and military forces? Military hardware must be hardened against EW, so forget every dream about building a supercomputer in a UCAV. And an autonomous UCAV will be me maybe more expansive, than a manned aircraft. All autonomous killing machines (UCAV, tanks, etc.) were complete disasters till this day. So now we have only the remote option, wich benefits from high g-tolerance and is still human controlled. Great, but in heavy EW conditions you will loose the connection.

Here is a good article in NI (sometimes NI is full of bullshit ;D ), that future conflicts will look like the conflicts of the past, but only with more fancy gear and equiptment. NI - why robot wars might not be our future

So never compare pc-games wih reality! And what about ethics? Is it okay that a KI can kill thousands or millions of people in war? Is it okay that a emotionless KI will decide about the life of your wife, children, sister, parents? So maybe we will see a ban of autonoumus warmachines, many politician worldwide fighting for this. So it's possible to see in far futue a ban, like the worldwide nuclear test ban.

F-16's, F-15's, etc are all much more expensive than Su-35 for example while not having the same capabilities.

Anyway, Russian government made it clear IF war is near or inbound, they would repurpose thier factories for full military production capabilities.

While currently Russia's capabilities outside of its borders are indeed limited, it wouldn't take much or long for them to acquire the necessary trained personnel and equipment for a full fledge conflict.

They were significantly less ready during World War 2. Yet look at end results? Now add in a nation that is partially ready with an arsenal to attack from within russia's borders, thousands of KM away.

It's not a secret to them that their base in Syria couldn't do much against a NATO attack. The thing is that russia could answer in the baltics, in east-south europe, take all ukraine and moldavia and so on, and give some nuks to iran or north korea to open new fronts of tensions.

Isos wrote:It's not a secret to them that their base in Syria couldn't do much against a NATO attack. The thing is that russia could answer in the baltics, in east-south europe, take all ukraine and moldavia and so on, and give some nuks to iran or north korea to open new fronts of tensions.

Not just short range ballistics but with long range cruise missile launches. That is the real headache.

While attacked too, they could use their Iskanders supposedly spotted in Syria against US/NATO targets in the region.

An often overlooked aspect of twin engine designs is that thrust vector engine control is more effective with widely spaced twin engines as it can be used for differential roll control.

The separation also means damage to one is less likely to effect the other...

BTW any attack on Russian Forces outside of Russian territory would be very short sighted and the aggressor would need to be aware that this would make their forces legitimate targets too...

Part 2 of the PAK-FA special by Zvezda:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ7V78zz7c0

@Azi:

of course a lighter, simpler fighter is a way of having a more numerous force. Only discussion is to what extent it is the most effective way of achieving this and if it suits the current state of things in Russia. I am also not 100% sure what will be done, just making some comments and we will see how this will evolve. In any case there are a couple of issues with the "light and simple" fighter approach:

> If you are going to expend heavily in development, procurement and operation of a new fighter you want it to bring substantial improvements over the replaced models. So your space for making a fighter which is better but is not expensive gets narrower and narrower.
> You have to bet on the export market, due to the limited number of units RuAf can buy. So you need to think on the nations that have no heavy fighters and for which the light fighter will be all what they have from air superiority to strike. You will be competing against F-35, Rafales, Typhoon, Grippen, plus new versions of F-16 and F-18, plus other like Chinese developments. So you need performance and high-end avionics and cannot win easily with the "cheap plane" approach.
> In Russia the talk is to procure MiG-35 for complementing the Su-57, it will have an AESA radar and be fully multirole. Hopefully we will see what the price will be and then can compare it to Flanker variants. A version of a 4G fighter is going to be incomparably easier to develop than an all new 5G light fighter and bring the needed capacity and numbers in a much cheaper and unpretentious fashion.

Regarding the UCAV's future, I guess we disagree here, that is fine.
In a better world we would probably ban this AI experiment we are doing altogether, since we are the ones to loose out badly if things go wrong, but maybe humans are not smart enough in the end and don't realize this

LMFS wrote:@Azi:

of course a lighter, simpler fighter is a way of having a more numerous force. Only discussion is to what extent it is the most effective way of achieving this and if it suits the current state of things in Russia. I am also not 100% sure what will be done, just making some comments and we will see how this will evolve. In any case there are a couple of issues with the "light and simple" fighter approach:

> If you are going to expend heavily in development, procurement and operation of a new fighter you want it to bring substantial improvements over the replaced models. So your space for making a fighter which is better but is not expensive gets narrower and narrower.
> You have to bet on the export market, due to the limited number of units RuAf can buy. So you need to think on the nations that have no heavy fighters and for which the light fighter will be all what they have from air superiority to strike. You will be competing against F-35, Rafales, Typhoon, Grippen, plus new versions of F-16 and F-18, plus other like Chinese developments. So you need performance and high-end avionics and cannot win easily with the "cheap plane" approach.
> In Russia the talk is to procure MiG-35 for complementing the Su-57, it will have an AESA radar and be fully multirole. Hopefully we will see what the price will be and then can compare it to Flanker variants. A version of a 4G fighter is going to be incomparably easier to develop than an all new 5G light fighter and bring the needed capacity and numbers in a much cheaper and unpretentious fashion.

Regarding the UCAV's future, I guess we disagree here, that is fine.
In a better world we would probably ban this AI experiment we are doing altogether, since we are the ones to loose out badly if things go wrong, but maybe humans are not smart enough in the end and don't realize this

I'm with you, only in UCAV we disagree!

We will see what the future holds But I'm very optimistic...most western media wrote that the Su-57 is dead, but we see the Su-57 more and more in media. A dead design wouldn't be so present in russian media!!!

GarryB wrote:An often overlooked aspect of twin engine designs is that thrust vector engine control is more effective with widely spaced twin engines as it can be used for differential roll control.

The separation also means damage to one is less likely to effect the other...

BTW any attack on Russian Forces outside of Russian territory would be very short sighted and the aggressor would need to be aware that this would make their forces legitimate targets too...

That's true! Most people think that a light fighter MUST be more agile, but indeed it's not!

Azi wrote:I'm with you, only in UCAV we disagree!

We will see what the future holds But I'm very optimistic...most western media wrote that the Su-57 is dead, but we see the Su-57 more and more in media. A dead design wouldn't be so present in russian media!!!

I am keeping an eye on the normally vocal Western media and its cohort of forum drone-minds while watching the new series of Zvezda specials on the Su-57. Their shameful silence to comment all the new information that is being released while they got so badly triggered every time a shadow of doubt is cast on the program is very revealing. On the one hand, of their ill intentions towards Russia and the PAK-FA program. On the other, of the baselessness and cynicism of their accusations. Since there is nothing bad to say about the plane based on the new info, there is no point in commenting it at all.

They better get ready, they really have a truckload of frogs to swallow until the program is complete

Nevertheless I don't expect them to change and guess the future will be more or less like this:
> Continue putting Su-57 down as a "fake" 5G plane without future that "even" the Indians rejected, changing their demagogic arguments as they are taken down but remaining loyal to the aim of denigrating;
> In the meantime, rush to create a substitute for F-22 and F-35 or a hybrid of both. If possible, making allies pay for its development;
> Justify the need of generous budget for the new planes on the existence of new and fearsome Russian and Chinese fighters

Shameless people are like that!

Voyenna Pryiommka : From T-50 to Su-57 TV zvezda part 1



Interesting details (native speakers are welcome to correct my translations ):

11:50 Mikhail Strelec
Chief Sukhoi Designer, Gen Manager of R&D dept.
about short landing
I cannot say as that's classified info but I can say that's   a half of what Su-35 needs
+++
a bit later (`18') he noticed that 35+22 = 57      


Between both parts talk with Sukhoi Designer  journo is enjoying vision of Su-57 navalized      


Part 2
engine
18'30" - Evgenyi Marchukov
GM and Chief Designer  R&D Lyulki

this is not going to be only 5 gen engine but a bit more, you can say 5+, some characteristics correspond to 6th gen. Like specific thrust, specific consumption, specific weight



Yuri Belyi,
general manager of  V Tikhomirov Scientific Research Institute of Instrument Design (NIIP, 32'

Radar
-  has antennas spread out all over the fighter
- can track up to 30 targets (also missiles)


37'30" conversation with leading test pilot about length of takeoff strip.
q: could takeoff strip be so short that it would fit within length of Kuz?
a: I think that with certain weight it could going in the air before deck ends up.

and here 20'02" tada!  this picture I've posted in thread VI gen fighter      

The fore weapons bay lies tantalizingly open at 16:56

dino00 wrote:Su-57 in SYRIA

What's hilarious is the pissants that eyeball'd studied the RCS of the Su-57 and claimed whats stealthy and whats not, weren't aware of their sorties in Syria until well after they left and MOD announced their presence. You'd think that they had super sophisticated sensory instruments at their fingertips at all times, but we know that not to be true. The clickbait media industry needs people to click on their sensational articles to collect ad revenue, because their simply isn't any monetary growth in the news media industry.

magnumcromagnon wrote:
What's hilarious is the pissants that eyeball'd studied the RCS of the Su-57 and claimed whats stealthy and whats not, weren't aware of their sorties in Syria until well after they left and MOD announced their presence. You'd think that they had super sophisticated sensory instruments at their fingertips at all times, but we know that not to be true. The clickbait media industry needs people to click on their sensational articles to collect ad revenue, because their simply isn't any monetary growth in the news media industry.

Su-57 designers themselves were saying that stealthiness is not their main objective. Thus US can be with this regard better. But better oenst mean has not.

From the other hand n terms of distributed AESA radars all over plane and maneuverability is definitely better. Just trade off.

Su-57 fighter will get a hypersonic weapon

According to the developer, the appearance of hypersonic weapons for the fifth-generation Russian fighter is possible already in the next decade.

Hypersonic weapon for the fifth-generation Russian fighter Su-57 may appear in the 2020s. About this in the new issue of the program "Military Acceptance" said the general director of JSC "Tactical Missile Weapons Corporation" Boris Obnosov.

“In the future, of course, we can expect, but this weapon is already the next decade. For the Su-57, everything will be in its time, and certainly there will be a hypersonic weapon on it, ”said Obnosov.

https://tvzvezda.ru/news/opk/content/201811211253-jk84.htm

dino00 wrote:Su-57 fighter will get a hypersonic weapon

According to the developer, the appearance of hypersonic weapons for the fifth-generation Russian fighter is possible already in the next decade.

2 candidates IMHO - GZUR (airborne AShM with range of 1,500 kms or AAD of new generation - even today R-37M shuould have top speed ~6Ma)

@MikeTT and @Azi

F-35 has DAS system. Kind of distributed IRST. And yet optical tracking is passive one. You can see not being seen.

@MikeTT

Russia is upgrading stuff now simply because there is modernization potential, production lines are open and fighters are adequate till next gen in the west will be in masses.
Saved resources as I can see are pumper into R&D programmes, so when new equipment is needed can be mass produced.

Multi-quoting? Personal Attacks? Irrelevant discussion not related to Su-57? Please George or GarryB, remove their posts from the thread at hand.



...Now back to the discussion:

Syria.

Hole wrote:Syria.

What's interesting is that they carried several sorties under heavy ECM environment (according to Ru MOD), which means that 1.) The Su-57 is to be very effective under heavy ECM attack, and 2.) that ground and air-based ECM is very much apart of it's 'Low Observability'. For the latter revelation this is a 'no-brainer' as it's part of IAD's, and it basically means everything from Autobaza-M, Krasyuhka-2, to Murmansk-BM is part of it's bag or radar detection evasion tricks. Maybe Mindstorm could further elaborate.

Note the new antenna in the second pic.

...Now back to the discussion:

That many stars makes no sense
They were only there 2 days & from my understanding each star is supposed to be 10 combat sorties, maybe if its only 1 sortie per star?

What's interesting is that they carried several sorties under heavy ECM environment

Kinda should be a given really...
Still think it was not wise to expose them to the mass of US/pawns spy stuff in the area like that.


Has there been a rough ETA for when the first production airframe is expected?
Any confirmation of it being notably different from the prototypes/pre-production models?