MiG-29/ΜiG-35 Fulcrum: News #2

No they won't. Even countries like Turkey are creating 5th geberation fighters.

Yeah, everyone has a 5th gen fighter project these days.... but so what... the fact that the US is putting F-15s back into production suggests an all 5th gen stealth fighter fleet is not a good thing... when all your motor vehicles are rolls royces worth millions of dollars each... how do you plough your fields... because when real work needs to be done you need a workhorse... an Su-35, a MiG-35, a Rafale, an F-15... certainly not an F-35 or paper design that isn't anywhere near finished yet...

4th generation ones are almost done. Few contracts left that are going for su35 or rafale. The rest of them have no more export potentiel. There is no more client.

Most of the air forces on the planet have 4th or 3rd gen fighters currently in service and most of them can't or will choose not to afford some 120 million dollar a pop 80K per flight hour F-35... even if they wanted one. 4th gen fighters are dead just like tank are dead...

Mig-35 : 2 produced for RuAF. And they will go to aerobatic teams. That's pathetic.

What other state is left to buy the mig35 in decent numbers ? None.

With only two produced they could hardly form an air army of them...

Lets pretend the MiG-35 is actually a new fighter and not a mature old bird like the Rafale... was the Rafale amazing when it first entered service? Were there no problems? Was it the cheap light fighter they were going to buy in large numbers?

So why do you think it is a valid comparison?

The rest want only 1 multirole fighter in small numbers and they will put money on a new f35 rather than on the mig-35 based on mig-29.

The ones that would be allowed to buy the F-35 wont really get a choice because they have to buy American. Egypt is not a particularly wealthy nation and they chose to buy a mixed fleet of Su-35s and MiG-29M2s...

The MiG-29M2 is a particularly clever purchase... it has a clear upgrade path yet remains cheap enough to buy in reasonable numbers.... compared to 8 billion dollars for 36 Rafales... their internal fuel tanks would need to be filled with crack cocaine for that to be value for money...

Mig-29SMT is in service and according to you is 2 times cheaper than the su-30. According to your logic it should be used in Syria where the sky is pretty calm for RuAF.

They were tested in Syria, with a few issues identified and solved. There were also issues with the Su-35 which were also identified and solved.

They are upgrading the Su-30s to effectively two seat Su-35s and they don't seem to be upgrading their Su-27s... perhaps the plan is for the MiG-35s to replace the current Su-27 units in new formations that operate with upgraded Su-30 where the Su-30s use their superior radar and sensors and the MiGs are just cheaper than using Su-27s for simple operations...

They may simply need to regenerate capabilities and concentrate on the backbone of the air force at that precise moment, they are rebuilding air bases now. Maybe in the future they develop the lo part of the mix

See above.

I said it was walking to obsolescence, which is a fact for all 4G platforms.

But except the new build F-15s though... because although the F-15 is an aircraft design much older than the MiG-29 with less sophisticated aerodynamics, the new F-15s will be brand new build of an updated design... just like the MiG-29M2/KR/35 aircraft... and of course the new F-15 will be getting new avionics... like the MiG-35... the F-15 will probably start life with an AESA radar.... but no 300km range AAM like the MiG-35 could carry...

But you say one is obsolete trash because it doesn't have AESA radar...

That means, it is in the later part of the operational life of the platform. It does not mean it does not have use, but it is probably its last chance so you cannot waste time.  

Yeah, because all the best wine is freshly stomped by unwashed peasants and still tastes of vinegar...

They have MiG-35 flying since 2007 and MiG-29M are available.

They are custom built prototypes owned by MiG and used for testing and development.

Low side of the mix is expected to outnumber the high in a proportion of 2:1,

Who said? Why does that need to be the case?

so you can understand the kind of numbers we would expect to see the MiGs being bought and deployed.

Why 2:1... why not 20:1 or 0.5:1... doesn't Russian Air Force needs come in to the equation?  And do they have to buy two MiG-35s for each Su-35, or do they need to have two for each Su-30 and Su-57 as well? If you count the light strike role for the MiG-35 would the Su-57s count double being fighters and strike platforms plus of course the Su-34s as well... that is a lot of planes...

Or do they just want enough to replace their Su-27s on a one to one basis with one in eight not counted because it will be an Su-30 that controls those two squadrons in flight...

If you have old -29 airframes you are going to retire, better use them in low risk conflicts, in short range / low payload missions like the ones over Syria, that would be a ideal operational theater for the MiGs and save Russia money. It is intriguing that they don't use them, honestly.

Hard to tell you you are just being stupid... the fighter threat in Syria comes from Turkey and Israel and the US Air Force.... of course they are going to send slightly upgraded Yak-130s to do the air patrols... that will have those yankee bastards pissing in their nappies...  

If you consider the fuel load and heavy weight stations available, it is clear the Flanker is massively ahead.

Most of the Flankers in service can't use external fuel tanks... so massively ahead... no.

Two centerline stations (that can carry two AAMs each), plus intakes plus big stations in the wings means capacity to carry 8 big pieces of A2G ordnance with ease and keep stations for AAM, while in such a mission the -29 needs three bags and would deliver a low fraction of the ordnance.

They don't use their Flankers or Fulcrums for strike missions... that is why they weren't interested in SMT upgrades... guided air to ground weapons are expensive so only Su-24 and Su-34 units get them in any decent numbers... their Su-27s and MiG-29s carry AAMs 99% of the time.

I am not trying to put the MiG down (it was the air force that designed it so in the end), I am just stating facts that may make clear why VKS may currently prefer Flankers. As you said yourself, they re not lacking fuel so for the same overheads in terms of labour than a MiG and a bit more fuel they get lots more of capability and flexibility.

The air force uses MiG-29s and their variants and the Su-27 are interceptors and fighters... strike missions are done by specialist aircraft... Su-24 and Su-34 and Backfires...

MiGs main mistake was that their planes were multirole... ironically if the cold war had continued they would have been in every eastern european air force in large numbers because those air forces would not have Su-24s and Su-34, and would need to use them as multirole aircraft...

By making them multirole they increased the buying price... Sukhoi kept their planes simple... the Su-30 is just an Su-27UB two seat plane with a different name... it had zero air to ground capability and was being used by the Russian military as a mini AWACS type platform with a big powerful radar that directs smaller fighters operating closer to the enemy lines radar silent and directs them... when it detects an enemy target one of the closer aircraft climbs and accelerates and launches the missile while the Su-30 tracks the target and monitors the engagement... the missile launched much closer gets to the enemy aircraft faster with the Su-30 wasting no fuel climbing or accelerating, but giving its position away... if the enemy try to close to take on the Su-30 it needs to fight its way through the light fighters the Su-30 is directing and they can continue to operate in radio and radar silence. Even if they break through the Su-30 is fully armed too.

It was the Indian purchase of Su-30s and they paid for all the multirole stuff to be developed which Sukhoi took a bit further and developed the Su-35 for the Russian AF and of course incorporated into new generation technology for the Su-57...

MiG on the other hand lost its main market of customers who could afford its products.... the MiG-29M was the basis for the MiG-33 which was also fully multirole and the Navy didn't want multirole either so its multirole performance counted as nothing, while its smaller size and shorter range counted against it... match for match it would have kicked the arse of the Su-33 in air to air combat simply because it had a much more sophisticated radar and R-77 missile capacity... but they went for size.

When the Indians ordered some MIG-29KRs however the Russian Navy tacked a few orders on the back of that so they got planes rather cheaper because the tooling and setting up production had already been paid for with the Indian order... They probably would not have gotten the sale otherwise because the Russian Navy is still not greatly interested in multirole fighters.

I can understand their preferences, and hence why I have proposed to make the lo side of the mix as light, cheap and simple as possible, so it really makes a difference compared to the Flankers.

But by making your light plane as small and light as possible you are essentially limiting its fuel fraction which is already going to be a problem because of internal weapons carriage... that is why I am saying screw drag... make the plane bigger and carry more fuel... just give it the capacity to carry the fuel internally rather than require external tanks and top ups from tankers.

External fuel tanks and inflight refuelling probes are good ideas if you use them occasionally... if you have to carry two or more big external fuel tanks for every mission then you got the fuel fraction wrong.

No idea, frankly, but I hope they finally deliver something and specially they are in conditions to offer them to India because they seem to consider that important.

India wasn't prepared to help fund AESA radars... should they be at the front of the queue? I would offer them to Egypt first to be honest...

US is operating more that 1000 F-16 but producing F-35 just to keep controlling the market of their allies .For US air and naval forces the backbone will remain F-16,F-18,F-15 , adding some numbers of F-35 will not change the backbone shape ,soon.

They will be producing new F-15s and continue to produce new F-35s... it will be interesting to see what aircraft they replace first... and if production of new F-15s changes their plans about which aircraft get replaced... if they start replacing F-15s and F-16s with new F-15s I think we will have an interesting discussion...  

The mig-35 won't be cheap compare to su 35 like mig-29 was compare to su-27 which had fly by wire and better systems allowing more weapons to be used than mig29.

Actually the MiG-29S was the first Soviet fighter that could use R-77s, but they didn't order them in any numbers so it didn't matter that much... the MiG-29SM had the Gardenia self defence avionics suite... the MiG was often better than the Flanker, but that was rarely recognised in the west that saw the MiG-29 as the cheaper lighter simpler little brother...

Su35 is already under the 20 million $ unit price. Hard for the mig35 which has the same or equivalent systems to be cheaper.

Their Su-30s were costing more than that and that was before they were two seat Su-35 Su-30s...  you might want to track down better numbers.

Russia doesn't plan to have 4000 jets in service and the mig29 class was removed and replaced by su-30.

Why would Russia need a two seat Su-35 in the form of the Su-30?  Why would a Mini AWACS fighter aircraft operate with planes the same size and with similar running costs?

Agree about a light fighte needs and usefulness but mig-35 doesn't fall in that category. If they made it as light as a jf17 it would be really cheaper and usefull.

For a country the size of Russia a plane that small would be cheaper but it would also be useless...

They could sell 5 or 6 to poor african or asian countries but that won't save the program.

Poor and even rich countries can afford the MiG-29M2 in significant numbers... in fact enough to make them useful, and the MiG-35 can be an upgrade path over time for them to grow in to as its technologies become affordable.

Again the aircraft is very good and could hold its own against any other jet. That's not the point. The thing is that no one will buy it.

Nobody else has bought a Tu-22m3 or an Su-34 or the MiG-31... are they failures?

It has been stated that hourly costs of the MiG-35 will be 2/3 of those of the modern Sukhois, and I honestly think they are just meaning fuel there. That means only that being considered, they could afford 50% more MiGs than Sukhois, that leaves them far from the goal of a proportion of 2:1 for light/heavy fighters in the air force.

I have read comments by Air Force personnel that the MiGs are significantly cheaper to operate... which is perfectly logical.

I would not be surprised if first contracted MiG-35 were in fact more expensive than Sukhois.

So you are saying that brand new planes... the first ones with a contract, which will likely be a relatively small production batch could be more expensive than Su-35s after they have been produced in large numbers... well you win a cookie... putting something into production and ordering it in multiple batches reduces the costs and makes them cheaper... why bother with the new MiG 5th gen fighter because by then the Su-57 will be two for a dollar...

As for the export market, it is interesting that almost all new coming 5G models are not light fighters, but medium ones with two engines and empty weights in excess of 10 tons.

The point of light fighters is cheap and affordable... things not associated with 5th gen fighters...

The fact that all fuel and weapons have to be internal means they need to be physically bloated which adds drag and makes a second engine a good solution choice.... just saying.  

The lack of a proper engine to make a single engined plane that size may be one reason,

What?  Nobody designs a plane and then looks for a suitable engine... you find an engine and scale the aircraft to teh size of the available engine unless you want to add the enormous cost of a brand new state of the art jet engine onto the cost of the state of the art new radar and new ECM system and other avionics you need to develop.... 5th gen isn't just a stealthy shape and an AESA you know...

So I actually see more sense for export customers to buy the MiG as their only fighter than I see the VKS buying it as a low part of the mix, sadly the LO designs are starting to proliferate and therefore the market competitors are only raising their game, at least on paper (that counts too, in order to sell)

The Russian Air Force is buying Su-30s and upgrading them to Su-35 level, they are buying Su-35s, they are buying Su-34s, and they are buying MiG-35s and also shortly MiG-41s... none of which are stealthy BTW.... but to be fair they are also making Tu-160M2s and upgrading Tu-22M3s and Tu-95s... none of which are stealthy but they are making Su-57s, the new MiG project, and teh PAK DA which is stealthy... three stealthy aircraft designs and 7 non stealthy...

Even the US are now going to make F-15s which are not stealthy and they started the craze...

Rafale was amazing. Much better than any Mig-29S, Mirage 2000, f16, f15 or su27.

It has a perfect mix of manoeuvrability, low observability, multi role capabilities and sensors.

So never had any problems.... fully functional from the first day of service... no problems at all...

Well I am impressed.... and a little suspicious.

Usually when something sounds so good it isn't.

It was never designed to be a light cheap fighter but a multirole fighter that would replace 7 jets in french airforce and they knew very well such airplane would be more expensive than the older ones.

Ahh, so wait a minute... you are comparing the Rafale with the MiG-35 when clearly you should be comparing it with the Su-57 which is Russias more expensive plane...

The rest of your answers are totally biased. US buy again f-15 but what you forget to say is that they have more than a hundred of f22 and already few hundreds of f35.

But if there is no future for 4th gen fighters and they are all obsolete then why does the US waste time making F-15s that will be at a huge disadvantage against Chinese and European and even Turkish 5th gen fighters.... it is like putting Mustangs back in to production isn't it?

Then you say mig-29M is very good but also mig29SMT which is an upgrade to M level sucks against Turkish f-16 and US f-15 in Syria (and bring yak 130 from nowhere to "prove" your comments).

If they were up against ISIS's air force then the MiG-29SMT would be better value for money and capable enough to get the job done.

The MiG-29SMT is not a bad plane by any measure but against US F-22s and Israeli F-35s, and Turkish F-16s and potentially French Rafales from carriers... they have a better plane in the form of the Su-35.

Awesome opportunity to test those wing mounted L band AESAs against western stealth planes... if only they would come out to play...

You say Su-30 is made to act as an awacs (which was never said by the airforce or sukhoi) for smaller fighters which will come in more numbers and then say "why should they buy 2 migs for 1 su35.

The Su-30 was a PVO project and was intended as an AWACS role... but they kept it cheap.... they never spent the money on the Russian planes to fit it with a better radar or the communications it would need for the job... it is only this new upgrade with Su-35 and Su-57 stuff that makes it viable for the job.

I suspect they will have two tiers... Su-30s and MiG-35s as the cheapest and Su-57s and S-70s as the upper tier... but I would think the two seat Su-30 would do a better job unless the AI in the S-70s is very good. Over time it will probably get better and if the S-70 works out cheaper they might end up replacing the MiG-35s in that role with them...

But not every CAP requires Su-57s and S-70 drones...

F-22 has no ground attack, antiship, recon or jammig capacities.

As per design spec.... they were expecting to have other aircraft with it... F-15E and F-16s at the very least, and anti ship is US Navy territory... the F-22 is not a navy plane.

Su-35 has all of that but its big rcs with shorter range r-77-1 than meteor gives the advantage to Rafale.

Big RCS only matters when your radar is on and when your radar is on you can be detected too.

The Su-35 is also working within a rather large and power IADS... and the R-77M and R-37M make Meteor no advantage at all.

In ground attack mode the Rafale has the advantage with better sensors. Su-35 has the advantage in antiship role. Rafale has also the advantage in jamming with the spectra that is the best jammer on aircraft today.

Ignore the fact that in most roles not needing to carry external fuel tanks is an advantage... and also flight range?

Best jammer known by whom?

F-35 and f-18 are failures.

Important failures though... HATO isn't just going to bankrupt itself... it needs its white elephants... I assume white gold because they are certainly gold plated...

Typhoon doesn't participate to exercices against Rafale anymore.

F15 and f16 are jokes against Rafale. Just like su-30 and mig-29/35.

Yeah, before the Vietnam war the Americans thought the F-4 didn't need a gun and its BVR missiles meant those little primitive MiGs wouldn't even get close.... it was going to be a turkey shoot... a slaughter... and in 1980s HATO thought the same with their well trained pilots and manouverable 9g 4th gen fighters and their AIM-9L and M missiles... I remember them talking about how amazing their Mike and Lima missiles were...

R-77-1 is within same range as Meteor. It is a joke to state it is better.

R-77-1 is 110km... the R-77M will be 200-220km range model.

But I would expect the ramjet model they were developing and completed developing in 2012 it seems is probably going to be replaced with a scramjet model with much better performance.

Swiss tests were leaked and out the three (Grippen, Rafale, Typhoon) Rafale was the best in all parameters. Spectra is the best and everyone acknowledges this.
It even jammed slovak s-300PMU1.

The best in HATO is not the same as the best... and would like to see more evidence of it jamming an S-300 even if it is a 1970s based system...

Mig-35 jammer were supposed to be Italian... not russian btw.

For the contract with India.... obviously it would not be possible with Russian service aircraft...

Dassault admited at an air show its Rafale did jamm the S-300 (I'm not aware of how it happened but the S-300 couldn't lock on it).

The S-300 uses track via missile guidance so doesn't get the lock till the missile closes in on the target... were they actually launching real missiles...

And the company that sells the plane is not the most reliable source... is anyone else claiming it too?

Su-35 has reduced RCS from the front. The r-77 grids don't help reduce it. The r-37 is big and its ability to hit fighter needs to be proven. It was mainly made against AWACS.

The R-77s could be fitted with the grid fins folded if that was really an issue... they are likely made of composite materials and probably don't have any RCS at all.

The R-33 could engage targets that were pulling up to 4 g so were optimised to engage bombers and AWACS and also cruise missiles.

The R-37 is designed to engage 8g targets and it has a large HE payload with smart fusing that directs the fragments and explosion towards the target it is intercepting.

The leaks of the swiss tests can be found on the net. Rafale was far superior to Grippen (for which western fanboys says it has the best jammers) and Typhoon. Those are impartial test by the swiss airforce.

A western tug fest then... not really relevant to this thread.

Pastel on Su-35 do the same. It works with anti-radar and air to air missiles like R-77-1.

The Soviets invented that method of attack with their R-27EP missiles which are passive radar homing missiles designed to be launched against enemy aircraft with a SARH missile lock. If the target is an F-15 then they need to lock on to your plane with a radar beam for their Sparrow missile to fly towards... they can't turn it off or the Sparrow will miss. The R-27EP homes in on that radar beam and hits the source... the R-27EP is much faster and much longer ranged that Sparrow so even if fired slightly after the Sparrow it will likely hit first. More importantly the F-15 needs to keep pointing his radar at your plane to keep marking it or his missile will miss. After launching my faster flying longer ranged missile I am free to manouver... I can even turn around and fly away while my missile is chasing a closing target his missile is now chasing a receeding target... boom.

Obviously not so useful now with aircraft not using SARH missiles, but in theory the small missile R-27P should be able to use its ability to home in on an illuminating radar signal to hit AMRAAMs and Meteors and other ARH missiles... the bigger missile would not be needed because such missiles wont start scanning for targets until they are within 20-30km or so of the target, but the bigger missiles could be used against ground based SAMs that use SARH guidance... they have useful 40kg HE warheads...

Can it do it against an AESA working on many different frequencies at a time and changing them hundreds of time per second ?

It was designed for use against American planes with AESA radars so I would say yes...

They also have podded systems too.

I will spell it again, RADIATION. Do you know what that is? Frequency changing doesn't negate the fact it is still letting off Radiation. Radiation release will be picked up no matter what frequency it operates in or how it hops.

Frequency hopping is effective against primitive narrow band systems. The systems the Russians are putting on all their new systems are not narrow band...

Yeah but we are talking about using passive RWR to guide a missile so you need a constant track

Your western centric knowledge fails you.

You don't need a constant track to launch an ARH and for the R-27R/ER missiles, you don't need it either...

BTW if you need a constant track that means you are sending constant data updates to the missile in flight which the Su-35 will detect with its L band AESA radar...

The R-77 and R-27ER don't need constant target tracking... on launch they are sent to an intercept point calculated just before launch based on the targets location and speed and direction of travel... as your missiles travel to the intercept point you will periodically check to see that the target is continuing on the predicted course... if they are then you do nothing. If they change course or speed or altitude then your guidance system knows the limits of the missiles seeker so it knows if the current intercept point will still work or not... if not it calculates a new intercept point and sends new coordinates to the missile... once the missile is closer the R-77 launch aircraft does nothing... the R-77 turns on its radar and finds the target and illuminates it itself and attacks it... the R-27EP launch aircraft then starts to illuminate the target aircraft and the missile looks for the reflections and homes in on them.

Constantly scanning and tracking the target would instantly reveal it is under attack and for a BVR missile it could simply change direction and speed and altitude a dozen times and the missile will burn up too much speed and energy trying to follow it and drop from the sky short of the target.

One of the reasons SARH had such poor PK results for longer range shots.

It's not about a RWR that detects the signal. To track you need to triangulate (maybe I'm wrong that's why I asked if the su-35 RWR coukd work against an aesa) the signal and it depends on the frequency of signal (again maybe I'm wrong but that's how I see the thing). Aesa works on many frequency at the sme time when PESA work on just one. Frequency hoping wasn't my question.

Most RWRs are developed to detect all the frequencies enemy radars and radio communications systems can communicate in and as such they are broad band systems so frequency hopping is not so much an issue.

In use some frequencies go through weather better than others but on a clear day the frequencies that don't go through weather tend to be much more precise when it comes to detecting and tracking small things...

Modern jamming like DRFM is smart rather than powerfull.

Yes.... the ones the MiG-35 use and the Su-35 and Su-57 are particularly good too.

ODK-Klimov transform its construction biro to full cycle producer.

Nice... As mentioned in another article posted a while back that even the engine makers didn't make all the parts used in the engines they sold and production was often distributed across the country and in different countries... so while parts of engines were made in what is now the Ukraine... they have the same problem of needing Russian parts... the real difference is that the Russian companies have orders and contracts and funding to upgrade and start producing the bits they didn't make before.

New technology like 3D printing has revolutionised things too...

Pastel is meant to program anti-radar missiles and it doesn't matter if it is AESA, PESA, or old mechanical one or the jammer and to program the missile it have capabilities to triangulate it. It is no difference for Pastel to send anti-radar missile or R-77-1 AAM against the source of emmiting (radar, jammer,...).

Another difference with western systems... the old Soviet AS-11 anti radiation missile required a pod system that was used to receive information from the targeted radar and determine its position in 3 dimensional space so the missile wasn't just launched at the signal it was detecting... it was being launched at a position in space that was highlighted by that signal... if the missile was half way to the radar and the radar turned off the missile would continue to that location in space... if the target radar turned back on it could target it precisely but it was already going to explode within 20-30m of the target... and with a 150kg HE warhead any radar antenna were likely to get blown down.

The new aircraft have ESM suites that make all those calculations and detect targets so they don't need the pods any more... the newest version of the AS-11 is slightly smaller and has folding wings and will be carried internally by the Su-57... fully digital and able to engage a much broader range of emitting targets even after they turn off.

HARM and Shrike never had those features, though I believe GPS was added to the latest models of HARM... this century.

What do you mean by "stealth"? Signature management is here to stay... camouflage clothes do not make you invisible, but no one goes to war wearing pink.

Stealth meaning internal weapons, and a level of RCS that actually makes a difference at what range your aircraft can be detected by radar.

Essentially 5th gen only.

I think we have here more of the same US generated doctrinal distortion like we see in the carriers thread where the US approach ends up being considered the cannon, "stealth" must be ultra-expensive VLO design as the US does it, when probably doing completely differently would be much more sensible.

I don't agree. There are aircraft that were not designed to be stealthy that have had their designs adapted to reduce RCS like all the 4 th gen fighters, but when they hang a useful load of weapons you can see them at combat distances anyway. There are 5th gen fighters with internal weapons carriage... you could argue that stealthy planes are ultra expensive, but I would point at the Su-57 and say perhaps it is not stealth that makes them super expensive... it is the made in the USA sticker... and the games they play printing money and throwing it around like a snowball fight.

Other countries will no doubt do it differently.

They have no choice really... no country or even group of countries could justify spending 1.5 trillion US dollars on a medium weight stealth fighter... do you think MiG will get anywhere near that figure?

For instance KF-X with recessed AAMs is a perfectly valid approach IMO, at least by now. RCS going from 5-10 sqm to 0.5 is an important tactical advantage. 4G planes without specific shaping have difficulties to match new designs in that regard.

I agree it would be, but I rather doubt a fully armed fighter of the 4th generation will have a RCS from the front of less than 1m square and most will be more.... especially with external fuel tanks and inflight refuelling probes sticking out like the Rafale...

F-15 is in the same condition as MiG-29 in terms of being an old platform and therefore surpassed in many regards.

Rubbish... new engines new missiles new radar and both could be as good as any of the eurofag super fighters.

The US really does not have viable numbers of F-22s to be significant, and the F-35 is turning into a failure or the worst kind so I would think production numbers of the F-15 could double what they originally made...

Or they could come up with a cheap new fighter that is a scaled down F-15 that can carry most of what it carries but be cheaper to make and operate... they could call it the Meg-29 perhaps?

But the US planing has been so poor that none of their new platforms can substitute it properly... fortunately that is not the case in Russia.

Their planning has been brilliant... they are locked into producing 3,500 aircraft of a type that is a total failure that would have been cancelled years ago if they hadn't already committed everything to its success....

Only poor if they have to go to war.

Long range AAMs are being developed by US too of course.

Of course they are. And the Russians are developing short range anti missile missiles... a bit like IIR guided TORs, that will be used by the air force in their bombers and fighters to protect from AAMs and SAMs, by armoured vehicles to protect from anti armour and ground attack standoff weapons, and by ships to protect them from anti ship missiles or ground attack weapons used against ships.

No, and you repeating it does not make it true. You get pretty crazy with this issue, no idea why.

Well then lets imagine that MIG call a press conference and say their new MiG-35 is now in full scale mass production, 36 planes a year and fitted with a new photonic radar that can detect stealth aircraft from 500km range or more including B-2s and F-22s and F-35s... what would you say about it then?

My point was that VKS had MiG-29M available if they wanted to buy it. They didn't, it is arguable for what reasons, but that is the fact.

I explained the reasons they didn't buy it... it was multirole and more expensive than the cheaper Sukhoi alternative despite being cheaper to operate, why spend extra money on features you don't want?

And they didn't.

But things are different now... they want multirole and modern and the upgrades for the Su-27 to make them modern and fully multirole are not cheaper than the MiG-35... but teh MiG-35 will be cheaper to operate over time.

Russian experts or officials/servicemen, I don't locate the quote right now. It makes sense, if you incur the development expenses, that you do get something substantially cheaper and not a low percentage of savings / marginally higher numbers for the same money. The crucial advantage of the lo part of the mix is numbers, after all.

If you are buying more than you need then you are not saving money.

No indication until now that

To us... it was how they were planning to move forward in the 1990s when there was no money... now that they have money and are actually spending it... the logic has not changed... they are just waiting for the MiG-35 to get into production.

- Nobody has said yet, outside of this forum, that Su-30 will be the AWACS... Su-57 have an electronic co-pilot, Su-35 too, both have very powerful radars... nothing against the idea of using big planes with powerful radars as command posts and I have proposed myself that light fighters can be made much simpler, very much as loyal wingmans are being developed, but still we need to see Russians going this way, creating mixed regiments and supporting our predictions and guesses with some facts...

But logically can we not deduce that when they said the Su-35 and the Su-57 didn't need two seater versions because their AI copilot made that redundant, why would they need to upgrade the Su-30 with those systems... wouldn't it just make sense to replace those Su-30s with new Su-35s?

They could then just sell their Su-30s to Iran or North Korea or Cuba...

There used to be a separation of the PVO... basically an air intercept organisation that borrowed aircraft from the Air Force but had all the radars and SAMs for air defence of the country, and the Russian Airforce like Frontal Aviation... the PVO preferred bigger aircraft... Fiddlers, Foxhounds and Flankers, while Frontal Av prefered smaller planes like MiG-29 and Su-17 and MiG-27.

I would suspect new Su-30 and MiG-35 combo forces would be PVO type units.

Flankers have been indeed used for strike missions in Syria, that is what multirole fighters do.

Up until 2008 they weren't multi role... the only multirole Flankers were exports... Russia AF Flankers for the most part have been single role and even the ones that got upgrades... they didn't start buying air to ground munitions till well after about 2012... only Su-24 and 34 units got guided air to ground weapons.

VMF is equipping their Su-33 with SVP-24, suggests they do want to go from air defence only to multirole.

The Su-33 always had dumb bomb and unguided rocket capability... adding SVP-24 is a very cheap way of making the existing capability more accurate and more useful.

But please show me a photo of them integrating Onyx or Zircon to them and then I will consider it to have serious multirole potential, because otherwise they are just reusable cruise missiles effectively.

One of the main characteristics of a light fighter is that it is... light, am I wrong?

No. Depends on the meaning of the word light. The weight of the fighter is not the issue... there are not weight restrictions in combat where a lighter aircraft might be allowed in while a heavier one has to stand outside. This isn't about weight it is about cost. Cost to buy and cost to own and operate.

In that regard the MiG-29 has worked out "lighter" than the F-16 and the F-35.

I already explained my understanding on how fuel fraction and drag work in single and twin engine planes and how big planes benefit proportionally more from being twin engine, despite the added drag, that smaller ones. And have also shown actual fuel fractions of different planes and linked a ton of data in our specific threads in general military topics, enough for establishing facts at least at a basic level, if attention is paid. I feel did my part...

In my opinion all you have proven is that lighter planes should on paper be slightly lower drag compared with a totally different aircraft from a different country that had different requirements who started out with a totally different fuel fraction because those requirements were different.

I don't think it is even possible to create a cheap 5th gen stealth fighter, and by making it single engined and as small as you can possibly make it you are trying to do the impossible because it probably wont be very good.

Gripens are a case in point... you say the MIG-35 is obsolete because it is old... the Gripen has been shown to be totally inferior to its two European competitors... the fact that it is cheaper to buy and cheaper to operate is no consolation if they get shot down immediately by a superior enemy, or simply can't do the job.

Making the plane bigger and heavier is worth the extra money because you get a better weapon.

Fully agree... screw half arsed medium fighters with mediocre range and performance compared to heavy ones and mediocre operational costs compared to light ones.

There are two cars and a motor bike. A big SUV with 4 wheel drive we take skiing and the missus gets the goceries and takes the kids to sport or whatever they do on the weekend and for camping trips and holidays, the other car goes to work every day. The motorbike was a toy... very cheap to run, cheap to buy... goes faster than the other two vehicles... but no good for anything I actually want transport to do... helmet hair and bird shit and squashed bugs on my suit isn't popular at work... especially if it decides to rain. Can't get any groceries or kids on the bike in useful numbers.

The motor bike is a toy.... a show off thing... it is cheap, but if I could only have one vehicle it would have to be a normal modern medium sized car.

Cost more to run than the bike but does the jobs and is practical.

If the job was three blocks away a tiny bike might work... but even then walking is better for me.

Some nations cannot afford both so they buy medium fighters, the ones opting for a hi-lo mix should implement the idea properly, instead of developing two planes one of which is just a bit cheaper but substantially less capable.

Most countries don't need fighter planes at all and it is all just ego and pissing away money or you wont get more to spend next time.

The difference between the price of a medium fighter and a light fighter is not that big... in fact depending on the seller a medium plane can cost more than a brand new heavy 5th gen fighter that you get input on the design of....

If you mean light fighters like MiG-21 and F-5 then I agree.... if you mean light fighters like Gripen and F-35 then they are not cheap at all.

AFAIK the MiG-35 beat the Gripen in the Indian MRCA competition which suggests it was not more expensive...

Great, post them please, I already posted what I found.

I was on a thread in this forum... I seem to remember it being on the Su-35 thread.

Drones meant to be cheap companions of fighters are stealthy, made of new materials and have modern avionics too, like 5G planes

You talk about drones like there is one. Drones are meant to be all sorts of things... some of them are not cheap at all and were never meant to be because they are actually not intended to be expendible like a suicide drone.

You get your payload and systems and range / persistence requirements and get an airframe size, then you need to see what engine supports that, normally you make simulations with one or two engines.

Payload is a structure thing... an F-16 can carry a 7 ton payload but is lighter and smaller than an Su-24 with an 8 ton payload.... look at the empty weight payload capacity fuel capacity for the A-4 and that is a carrier capable aircraft...

Speed requirements would also come it to it as well...

A 5G plane with a 4G engine is as crappy as a F-15 with a J79.

The F-14 started life with crappy engines... if it bothers you that much just say it is an interceptor instead of a fighter and optimise it for top speed until you get better engines.

The Su-57 is hardly a dog at the moment and is poised to get better.

Actually most of them have implemented RCS reduction measures...

They also have camouflage paint but they are still not stealthy to the point where it actually matters... especially when armed.

Ok got it, in any case a 10dB reduction in the RCS of a plane already creates a tactical effect, prevents very long range detection and simplifies jamming.

Prevents long range detection for aircraft carried radars, but ground based ones will detect and direct aircraft towards you anyway... and even long range missiles don't start looking for you till they are 20km or so away so planes like Rafales and Typhoons really wont be any safer than Flankers or Fulcrums.

I definitely need English classes, that is what I am trying to say...

The Two Ronnies made a good living out of the idiosyncracies of the English language... still learning myself....

Power corrupts, unlimited money spoils people. So what should be a blessing for the US is actually their undoing.

That is true, but there seem to be some that are immune... and really what the citizens of the US and other countries around the world should be doing is that for every ivory tower of power there is another power that checks the foundations and insulation and make sure money spent needs to be spent and is not being wasted.

I would think demanding the people in charge of making weapons for the US military must have children currently serving would be a good mechanism to ensure they don't end up with rubbish.

I think politicians would be less keen to go to new wars if their children had to be leading the charge...

But then of course it wouldn't surprise me to learn that most of them eat their young anyway...

True, I was just pointing out that all RCS reduction is useful

Radar and IIR is developing all the time.... improvements in processing power and the use of much wider bands of frequencies combined together to fill gaps that stealth creates...

There is a video on this forum of an F-15 intercepting a plane and an Su-27 shooting it away... as they both recede into the distance the F-15 remains easily visible in its dark gray camo, while the Flanker rapidly disappears even at the same distance as the still clearly visible American plane... physical size is not the only factor they should be thinking about...

Progress in the design of airframes does exist, you are simply clashing with obvious facts: all platforms are designed, matured, squeezed and discarded. ALL.

This is true, but when in any time in history has any major air force only had one fighter type in service where that fighter type was the best they could produce?

When WWII started the Soviets had Polikarpovs... single wing and biplane models in enormous numbers and only had a few MiG-1 and MiG-3s and Yak-1s and LaGG-3s... and at no time in that war did they ever only have one type of fighter in service... after the war nothing changed... they have had a long string of different fighters all in service... and discarding them too soon actually happens much more often than not discarding them early enough.

Never say never, after ridiculing Russians for decades they bought the F-15EX...

Which because of its designation will be called Eff One Sex... like the B-1 is called BONE... or B-ONE...

I would say that it is BS like when 13 years ago they said they were ready with their new, AESA equipped, MiG-35

And when the Russian Air Force representative says they will have 16 delivered before the end of the year...

First Su-35S contract came in 2009, Su-30SM in 2012, it was clear then that they wanted a multirole fighter. But they didn't order the MiG. Sorry, I don't see what impeded VKS to order MiG-29M like Egypt did.

Because by then they were waiting for the Indians to pick the MiG-35 and pay for most of its development... and after a decade of pissing around they picked the Rafale instead.

When it became clear the Indians didn't want it they redirected their MiG-35 sales pitch to the Russian Military and the RM seems to have said make me some.

You are not creating your fleet once with heavy fighters and then replicating it with light ones, you are composing it in a more economical way because heavy ones provide ultimate capability while light ones provide numbers and economy to cover little demanding roles.

But in this case with the Su-30s with Su-35 level radar and avionics and comms these lighter fighters wont be filling less demanding roles.

If you think of it as a police force the longer range of the Flanker means fewer police stations built further apart... but the Flanker isn't faster than the Fulcrum... it just carries more fuel so while a Flanker can theoretically cover more airspace, in actual practice because it flys at the same speed two Fulcrums actually can cover a lot more space than the Flanker... assuming a circle 1,000km across for a Fulcrum and 2,000km across for the Flanker the Flankers radar might have better range than the Fulcrum but when both are out at the edge of the circle of airspace they protect the time it takes from them both to fly from one side to the other is half for the Fulcrum.

You get better coverage of your airspace by having more smaller shorter ranged aircraft... and that is a fact.

Such missions are much better done by a light fighters, and in fact it is MiGs, for the first time in a while that I remember, which are taking care of performing them. In the end peace time operations represent the vast majority of the time and expenses, if everything goes fine.

Strategically you will get less of a reaction when you station MiG-35s near a border than you would if stationing Su-35s or Su-57s.

Egypts purchase of MiG-29M2s didn't make many headlines, but word they were also getting Su-35s led to talk of US sanctions...

Being underestimated is a good thing.

I don't know enough to answer that. As far as I know they like very much both planes, and they have two different companies producing them. Now they are trying to unify and rationalize the fleet by presidential order, which makes sense independently of whether there is a WSO or not on board, but I don't know if the -30 will include the electronic copilot that the -35 uses. I assume further consolidation inside of UAC will only continue that path.

We need to see how effective and indeed independent the AI can be... we don't want computers making decisions that start wars... do these AIs know the difference between real war and peace time and exercises?

During the cold war a US ship in the Black Sea decided it was going to test the rules of navigation where you can sail through another countries territorial waters (ie their 12 mile waters, not their EEZ), and a nearby much smaller Soviet ship was there to enforce the Soviet right to defend their territorial waters and basically sailed into the US ship. If it was put in that sort of situation would an AI logically open fire... These things need to be tested... until then human crew who are not busy flying the plane can make decisions using information available to them from their aircrafts sensors and also the sensors of the aircraft they are flying with and of course ground based assets and space based assets too.

I don't know if there will be combo forces and I don't know if they will be PVO. The creation of the unified informational space makes such frontiers between units and services each time less convenient and necessary, providing further flexibility and a better use of the existing resources, a trend that the procurement of multirole planes only confirms further.

During the cold war there were pilots who were working for the air defence forces, and some working for the rest of the Air Force doing other things.

The organisation is now called the Aerospace Defence Forces, but there will still be aircraft and SAMs and radar whose job is air defence of the whole country...

Is a expense they would not do if they were not planing to use the planes in that role and follows their use as strike platforms in Syria...

It was not a big expense, and it made a secondary capability much more effective and much safer to use over enemy territory.

Without it an Su-33 could not realistically attack ground targets with bombs or rockets without serious risk of being shot down. With the system they can operate above trash fire and MANPADS and perform missions attacking point targets with reasonable chances of success... I would say money well spent.

If they seriously wanted strike platforms... they already tested and rejected the Su-33KUB, which was a side by side Su-34 look alike but with a round radar that was optimised for strike and air to air interception... it would have been exactly what they wanted if they wanted an F-18 Hornet in a scaled up F-15C/F-15E type version.

"Half of the Su-33 plane fleet has received advanced weapon systems designed to hit sea and land targets. In fact, their capabilities have been increased to the Su-30SM level. All Su-33 planes operational with the Naval Aviation will undergo such an upgrade,"

Su-30SM is pretty ordinary. Perhaps if they were talking about Su-35 level...

"The first stage of modernization has been completed, and now we are preparing for the second, after which the engine power will be increased, the detection systems improved, etc. The Su-33 will become a truly multi-role fighter," he said.

As you say of MiG advertising... talk is cheap.

The Kuznetsov can't carry enough fighter planes to justify a fighter and a strike plane so they want a multirole fighter... big deal.

Look back through my posts I have been suggesting the best choice is the Su-57.... but I rather doubt it will be used in the strike role very much at all.

In case f Russian planes, they referred themselves the new MiG-35 as costing 2/3 of what modern Sukhois cost, also in linear proportion with their weights (and we know their way of doing PR, like when they said the -35 is 2.5 cheaper in terms of maintenance than the -29, so they may very well refer to fuel costs and not labour).

If that were true then why does the MiG-35 exist? There would be no value at all in lighter planes, they should just buy all heavy planes if that were the case.... yet they don't.

How could the Su-35 be cheaper than a smaller lighter aircraft... unless they are fucking up the numbers by referring to Cold War Era MIG-29s and not the upgraded MiG-29SMT or MiG-29M2 which are 40% cheaper to operate and maintain than the older models...

F-35 is heavier than the MiG.

But single engined fighters are lighter and cheaper...

Also you cannot compare the costs of Russian military with US,

But the MiG-35 is shit because its empty weight is xyz compared with the F-16A model...

they are currently getting less in return despite outspending the Russians 10 to 1.

So the rules don't apply to the Russians and they can just have all Su-57s and not worry about cheaper lighter alternatives?

Even within the same service, CPFH is seriously affected by utilization rates and profiles, availability, accounting policies, average age of the fleet etc.

Which would count against them using old model MiG-29s, but actually count in favour of producing a lot of brand new MiG-35s...

I guess we can keep adding info to the thread and reflect fuel fractions and other cardinal parameters of modern fighters to make it clearer.

Fuel fraction is a design choice, and has nothing to do with how many engines an aircraft has.

The aircraft with the best fuel fraction in the world was probably the ANT-25 because it was a single engined pre WWII aircraft with a flight range of over 12,000km.

When it landed in the US it actually stopped them from cancelling the B-17 bomber programme...

"As small as possible" means today 10 t, already bigger than a F-16 and roughly like a Rafale. I agree it is difficult... that makes it more interesting than boring twin engined, medium sized F-22 cloned layouts we see proliferating around.

First of all there is nothing wrong with the MiG-25 layout.... it is a classic.

But I would ask you why bother making the smallest lightest most enemic fighter you can make... it means limited payload and fuel capacity which reduces range and performance to a minimum.

To get big plane performance from a little plane you need an extra expensive engine and an extra expensive radar and extra expensive electronics to pack in a much smaller space.

it simply makes much more sense to use a medium sized fighter... you can have the expensive model with all the flash bits like the MiG-35, and a much cheaper and simpler model like the MiG-29M2 with cheaper simpler bits.

Over time and with experience with both types you can work out which bits work best and also which bits are good enough... the bits on the MiG-35 that are worth it you can put on your MiG-29M2s after 5 years of use... the extra production and time in service will remove the bugs and make it cheaper, and the extra money from putting that stuff in all your numbers planes can be used to create the next gen engine and radar and IRST and other important bits for your MiG-35M upgrade.

If Sukhoi would have settled for second best instead of thinking bigger with the Su-57 they would have another F-22 knock-off instead of the most promising 5G fighter of its generation. The most substantial and durable advantage comes from refining the airframe, not simply going for the obvious solution anyone can do.

Russia doesn't need an F-22, they need something to kill F-22s and F-35s and Rafales and Typhoons and Gripens... which is exactly what Su-57 is.

For what we know from reliable sources, the new MiG should be a a delta canard with podded engines, which is also a relatively exotic configuration for a 5G plane.

We will see.

You have me a bit disorientated when you state this and in the next sentence you defend that a fighter like the MiG does not need to be the absolute best in everything, because it is a numbers fighter and it has Flankers and Su-57 covering him. I already explained that for the operational cost of the bigger Eurocanards they could have two or three Gripen, that would be much more capable overall, except obviously for those missions for which a heavy fighter is necessary, and coherently argued that Switzerland should simply stop mixing fighters belonging to different categories.

Except the difference is that SAAB is not suggesting a mixed purchase of Gripens and Rafales or Typhoons.... in comparison the MiG-35 wont be on its own in a vaccuum... it will be operating with Su-30s and Su-35s and Su-57s and even MiG-31s... but you are having too much fun comparing the MiG-35 with Rafales.

They are comparing one on one for a fixed fleet size, not calculating the total amount of fighters of each type they could pay with a fixed amount of money and their capability as a whole, which would be the right way and would give quite different results to that comparison...

Their angle would only work together with another fighter... either the Rafale or the Typhoon, and those aircraft makers have no advantage to reduce their aircraft sales to add Gripens into the mix.

Gripens on their own can't do the job, so SAAB suggest a mix of solutions to reduce costs... nobody else is because it benefits nobody else except SAABs offer of inferior smaller fighters.

And exactly like we said, if you cannot have both, you buy a medium car that cannot carry load and cannot take you out of a traffic jam either. It is actually not such a bad example

And in this example is the robinson helicopter played by the F-35... way too expensive, and probably wont work even if you could afford it.

There is quite a difference between Gripen and F-35, the later is twice heavier than the former.

The engine in the F-35 is more powerful than the engine in the F-22 so it is half of a plane bigger than an F-22... by your definition that makes it a light doesn't it?

Speed and agility are still not present among UCAVs.

For launching BVR missile attacks acceleration and climb are more important but agility could easily exceed anything a human body could stand.... 20g or more...how would a human pilot deal with that?

Rafale beat both of them and it was outrageously expensive... but wait, apparently (I am not joking) it won because of purportedly inferior life cycle cost clown ... so much for the competition's awarding criteria...

The Rafale was always going to win it was supposed to win... they couldn't say a 10 billion dollar contract was won by an aircraft that will cost 30 billion to buy... and as a rule of thumb generally the cost of the aircraft is often similar to the ownership cost of an aircraft, but even then if the 30 billion included support for the life of the aircraft they would still be 15 billion dollars....

Those competitions for a fixed number of planes do not consider the fundamental differences between the platforms they are comparing, so the clear tendency is to select the heaviest and most expensive plane possible.

Ordering 126 aircraft would normally get at least a small discount in individual aircraft price surely...

Payload and fuel are the basic size constraints of your design, what other design sizing rules could you use instead? Of course there are structures that are more capable or have a longer life than others, that is a figure of merit of the designers' work.

When making a plane as small and light as possible then structurally it becomes tempting to reduce structure strength to a minimum which can effect fatigue performance and airframe life as well as the capacity to take more weight over time like conformal fuel tanks etc etc.

Well, the fact that they, despite having an "almost" 5G engine with the AL-41F1 (2.5 t thrust more and 150 kg less than AL-31F), tackle the effort, delay and expenses of a new engine shows I have a point. The kind of capacities that (as far as I understand) are intended for the plane cannot, in any way, be achieved with 4G engines.

AFAIK they already supercruise and even just with an engine more powerful than the Su-35 the smaller lighter Su-57 with lower drag of no external weapons or equipment would probably perform better than the Su-35 does currently... which is probably already enough to make it the most capable dog fighter.

Fitting more powerful and lighter engines was always supposed to be a mid life upgrade to compensate for the inevitable weight increases... the so called delays and issues with getting it ready for the first production batch to use is bullshit... they never intended the first planes to use it... it was always a mid life upgrade so of course there will be delays in getting it into production and use because they are trying to get it into service early by several years.