Su-57 Stealth Fighter: News #6

The signal will just bounce on the engines which have far greater RCS than a normal aircraft/missile itself because they are made out of strong steal/materials that need to be able to sustain thousands of degrees which can't be replaced by stealth materials.

Would be iteresting however its possible the avionics were not fully ready for the test. It should be able to trash the Indian SU-30's quite decisively no?

Isos wrote:The signal will just bounce on the engines which have far greater RCS than a normal aircraft/missile itself because they are made out of strong steal/materials that need to be able to sustain thousands of degrees which can't be replaced by stealth materials.

It does not mean you make the entire plane out of them. You can make the sub structures using current stealth principals (absorb, deflect, disrupt) without making the aerodynamic compromises of stealth, plus the absorbant coatings can be placed on the inside and can be made without concern of aerodynamic and particle erosion. (coatings so far seem very high maint.)

Not sure if updated. Works well fullsize, Su-57 loadout exploded, so to speak

Celestial Electromechanics: Su-57 will receive fundamentally new engines(NOT NEW ENGINES)

Russian aircraft designers plan to abandon hydraulic control systems on the fifth generation fighter


Russian aerospace forces can get an "electric plane." On a fifth-generation fighter, hydraulic systems will be replaced by electric motors. This will reduce the radar visibility of the machine, increase its maneuverability and simplify maintenance. It is planned that the "electric" Su-57 will be able to fly in 2022.

According to experts, the modernization will also make the fighter more tenacious when hit by missiles and shells.Hydraulic FailureThe first flight of the prototype of the modernized Su-57 should take place in mid-2022, sources in the military-industrial complex told Izvestia. Currently, engineers are working on the transition to a fully electromechanical drive of all control surfaces on a fifth-generation Russian fighter.

This will increase the already good maneuverability of the aircraft and will give a number of advantages during its maintenance.In accordance with the test plan will take at least two years. It is necessary to check the flight characteristics of the machine, as well as the electromagnetic compatibility of the new equipment.

The system must be reliably protected from internal and external interference and lightning discharges.Switching to fully electric drives is technically challenging. But if successful, the result will be amazing, experts say. Refusal from hydraulic lines and mechanisms facilitates the aircraft, simplifies and cheapens its repair: parts, in the event of a malfunction, are easier to replace.

It will no longer be necessary to deal with hydraulic fluid leaks and use toxic oil. Electric motors are lighter and more accurate, as well as smaller in size.According to the test pilot of the Hero of Russia Oleg Mutovin, electromechanical drives will seriously increase the survivability of military vehicles.“In flight, the aircraft maneuvers by moving the so-called control surfaces: ailerons, stabilizers, rudders, etc.,” he explained to Izvestia. - Before the era of jet aviation, pilots could control the aircraft without the help of amplifiers. But when the machines became reactive, their combat load increased and speed increased, the pilots' strength was already lacking. Therefore, aircraft manufacturers began to actively introduce hydraulic amplifiers - boosters. Without them, piloting a modern combat aircraft is physically difficult, if at all possible.According to Oleg Mutovin, modern combat vehicles are equipped with complex and powerful high-pressure hydraulic systems.

For their work in the wings and fuselage of the aircraft have to lay pipes for hydraulic fluid. They take up quite a lot of space and are very vulnerable during aerial combat or shelling.- On some modern aircraft, the pressure exceeds 300 atmospheres. Therefore, damage to the tube causes all fluid to fly out in a matter of seconds and the booster will stop functioning. Unfortunately, I myself have been in this situation, ”said the test pilot. - When using high-speed electric drives, wires are connected to them instead of high-pressure lines.

They can be duplicated many times and spread out over the area. So damage will not completely disable the drive. In addition, he does not require fluid, which is often flammable and toxic. In the future, you can save on the weight of hydraulic pumps and highways.“More electric”The military and civil aviation of the United States and Europe are now actively working on the creation of the so-called "More Electric Aircraft" (More Electric Aircraft). They try to replace traditional mechanical and hydraulic systems with electric drives. This approach is considered advanced.The farthest American foreign fighter traveled along this path was the American F-35.

Among its key advantages, the manufacturer considers a mixed electro-hydraulic system. American designers refused to combine the hydraulic system for the control surfaces of the aircraft. Now each element of the plumage, whether it is rudders or flaps, has its own independent hydraulic circuit, which is controlled by an electric drive.But a complete departure from hydraulics is even more promising. The development of electromechanical drives is considered for their projects in the Swedish company SAAB, which produces fighter Saab JAS 39 Gripen.Increasingly, this approach is used in advanced civilian liners. One of the innovations of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner was its all-electric chassis brakes, which replaced a complex hydraulic system.

They are not only easier, but also allow more accurate control in real time of all operating parameters, including wear pads.Promising modernizationFirst flying into the air at the beginning of 2010, the Su-57 is in the final stages of testing.

The fifth-generation Russian aircraft has not yet been adopted, but several modernization programs are already being prepared for it. In particular, the fighter platform will become the basis of domestic combat aviation in the coming decades. Therefore, the machine still has many transformations.The most famous of the ongoing work concerns equipping the Su-57 with a second stage engine. Now the prototype and first production samples of the Su-57 “basic look” get turbojet AL-41F1, also known as “product 117”. They belong to the modernized fourth generation.

Flight tests of the latest fifth-generation propulsion system, Product 30, are already underway.According to Deputy Minister of Defense Alexei Krivoruchko, new engines will be more economical in fuel consumption and with a lower life cycle cost. It is also known that with them the fighter will be able to continue flying at supersonic speeds without the use of afterburner. A powerful power plant will be able to provide all the needs of a “more electric" aircraft.After completion of the tests and the start of serial production of new engines, they will also be installed on fighters already manufactured. Together with the electrical control system, they must fully reveal the capabilities of the aircraft.

Full Article
https://iz.ru/999344/anton-lavrov-aleksei-ramm/nebesnaia-elektromekhanika-su-57-poluchit-printcipialno-novye-dvigateli

https://d.radikal.ru/d06/1909/10/1acbbd4ab8b2.png

Su-57's updated cockpit interface, ignore the simplistic graphics, they're just for demonstration purposes, they had kids playing on it.

I've also been prowling on Russian forums for info on Su-57's electro-optical systems and I've come across solid information that it uses a dual band IR and UV system, meaning you get the advantages of both. There was a link pointing to a sensor that combined these two bands, but the link was dead, I went to the other section of the website and found some other stuff like this:

http://www.niielectron.ru/product/vysokochuvstvitelnyj-gibridnyj-televizionnyj-pribor-na-osnove-elektron-chuvstvitelnogo-pzs-dlya-blizhnego-ik-diapazona/

http://www.niielectron.ru/product/ru-vysokochuvstvitelnyj-gibridnyj-televizionnyj-pribor-na-osnove-elektron-chuvstvitelnogo-pzs-dlya-uf-diapazona/

Both of these are meant for "aircraft surveillance".  Note the interesting bands chosen for these imagers. I hope the combined band sensor info gets put back onto the website because such a thing is very unique and interesting for a fighter.

Having a "simplistic" display for the pilot is better than an over-saturated one. So larger fonts and less irrelevant information allows
for quicker processing. Even if the particular display was for kids, having some "sci-fi" overloaded display is BS also.

Anyway, the multi-band sensors are likely coupled to computers that do image/signal processing to extract the maximum amount of
tracking data possible. This information is then fed to the AA missiles and to the pilot, but more importantly to the navigation
computer than can help evade enemy AA missiles.

This system can operate both in daytime and nighttime.

Important point regarding information displays on aircraft cockpits... you can use colour to highlight that some figure is outside normal parameters and needs attention but you need to be careful because when pulling gs in combat you get both tunnel vision and also loose colour sensitivity... ie everything goes black and white... which can make reading a colour coded display a problem.

As KVS mentions, having too much information displayed can be overwhelming and lead to the pilot spending most of his time looking at the displays instead of outside the aircraft.

Its very surprising they would replace the already developed hydraulics with electric controls at this late stage. Perhaps they were developing them in parallel to derisk the program and they matured later then the test program. (kinda like the new engine). I can't think of a war plane that has these today, let alone a fighter jet. I assume the electric actuators can react faster then hydraulics and I wonder if the vectored thrust will also be electric.

Hydraulics are basically pressurised fluid systems that need sumps and reseviours and of course all sorts of connectors and valves etc etc.

Replacing that with electric servos would both save weight and also greatly benefit performance and damage resistance...

the 787 has a combination of electro mechanical and electro hydraulic. I am curious if they are linear motors or screwjack type devices. Not sure if an electric motor that is small enough can generate sufficient torque to operate the control surfaces..even with a gear reduction.

mnztr wrote:the 787 has a combination of electro mechanical and electro hydraulic. I am curious if they are linear motors or screwjack type devices. Not sure if an electric motor that is small enough can generate sufficient torque to operate the control surfaces..even with a gear reduction.

That is a matter of gears / rpm.

Main problem is the hydraulics is simple, few pipe/seal/valve, the electromechanical actuator with complex electronics is hard to validate.

Singular_Transform wrote:That is a matter of gears / rpm.

Main problem is the hydraulics is simple, few pipe/seal/valve, the electromechanical actuator with complex electronics is hard to validate.

Its got to be more then that, if not the 787 would not have gone with Electro-hydraulics.

I wouldn't trust electrical motors for that. They can just stop working for no reason and crash the aircraft.

There are millions of lines of programming code in a flight control system and the number of combinations of situations and orientations that might eventuate that a flight control system has to deal with and control means I think electric motors are the least of your worries.

At the very least control surfaces could be set to default and then the plane could be flown with thrust vectoring commands only...

All electric drives make sense in the air, on land, and at sea and indeed even in space, so it is probably the direction most are heading for.

mnztr wrote:

Singular_Transform wrote:That is a matter of gears / rpm.

Main problem is the hydraulics is simple, few pipe/seal/valve, the electromechanical actuator with complex electronics is hard to validate.

Its got to be more then that, if not the 787 would not have gone with Electro-hydraulics.

Doesn't mean it is not possible to test the components, or to decrease the risk with redundant systems.

It just highlight the fact the conventional hydraulics is more robust, and easier to validate than the electro hydraulics systems.

Revisiting the whole magic stealth BS. The F-35 is now operationally unable to operate at supersonic speeds. This is not a
glitch but a feature supposedly. Some US clown apologist for the rotten MIC is claiming that the subsonic operation of the
F-35 will make it more stealthy. That is equivalent to claiming that its IR signature will be lower. So, all the yapping
about shape, rivets and RAM is for nothing. IR sensors on Russian jets are a serious issue for yanqui stealth wunderfaffen.

Singular_Transform wrote:
Doesn't mean it is not possible to test the components, or to decrease the risk with redundant systems.

It just highlight the fact the conventional hydraulics is more robust, and easier to validate than the electro hydraulics systems.

Yes testing and redundacy are all done of course, I don't agree that hydraulic are innately more robust. They are just more mature on the development cycle.

kvs wrote:Revisiting the whole magic stealth BS.   The F-35 is now operationally unable to operate at supersonic speeds.   This is not a
glitch but a feature supposedly.   Some US clown apologist for the rotten MIC is claiming that the subsonic operation of the
F-35 will make it more stealthy.   That is equivalent to claiming that its IR signature will be lower.   So, all the yapping
about shape, rivets and RAM is for nothing.   IR sensors on Russian jets are a serious issue for yanqui stealth wunderfaffen.

This means the F-35 is not a 5th generation fighter.

I am waiting for them to revise its (F-35) role and call it a command recon plane... like they seem to have done with the Zumwalt Destroyers...

I should point out that the F-16 has a simplified air intake... it makes it cheaper and lighter but it restricts top flight speed to mach 2... because most fighters never fly at mach 2 even if on paper they can. The F-18 is limited to mach 1.8 for the same reasons... it would take 10-15 minutes at medium to high altitude in full AB to achieve mach 2 and most of the time it is of no value to do so for the time it takes flying straight and level, and also the enormous amount of fuel it burns up.

The exceptions are interceptors like the Su-15 and MiG-25 and MiG-31 where getting to the target area and launching an attack is critical... the faster you get there the further away you can deal with the target... and when engaging bombers ideally you want to intercept them before they launch their weapons so you have to shoot down a few hundred bombers instead of thousands of missiles and hundreds of bombers...

Most production fighters never fly at top speed during their entire service lives and many cannot achieve top speed with weapons anyway.

Ironic that they saved money on the F-16 and F-18 by such sensible measures, yet they ended up wanting to replace them with the F-35 which is not sensible and has lots of serious problems they are saying are not problems and brushing under the carpet... wouldn't be so bad if it was a cheap product, but these things are eye wateringly expensive.

It is true that AB abuse is pointless since there is never enough fuel when you needed it. But the Su-57 can do supersonic
without using AB and the point is not to do supersonic flight all the time. Using the average flight behaviour to impose a lid
at Mach 1.0 is ridiculous and clearly the F-35 designers were not doing this deliberately. Allowing a jet to do Mach 1.5
gives it greater utility. If flight above Mach 1.0 was not needed then the past 70 years of jet fighter development would
not have spent any time on it. All modern fighter jets, both heavy and light, require over Mach 1.0 flight ability. It seems
like Mach 1.8 is a reasonable limit. Mach 1.0 isn't.

I still can't believe F-35 makers screwed up this way. But then, it appears that US submarine construction ran into problems
since they forgot how to do certain welds. The US must bei more messed up than it appears.

Yea, the U.S has a serious problem all the way down to the Academic level, it's being going on for years, but its become ridiculous recently.
Because of this we are going to see even more odd things going on, with more and more the older generation Engineers and Designers getting old and retiring.
There replacements are clearly subpar, granted the retiring generation weren't much to begin with.

Zumwalt,F-22/35, the entire FCS program, Project Falcon, ext,ext.

And the U.S thinks it could fight a new Cold War with this terrible academic foundation, it's laughable.

AlfaT8 wrote:Yea, the U.S has a serious problem all the way down to the Academic level, it's being going on for years, but its become ridiculous recently.
Because of this we are going to see even more odd things going on, with more and more the older generation Engineers and Designers getting old and retiring.
There replacements are clearly subpar, granted the retiring generation weren't much to begin with.

Zumwalt,F-22/35, the entire FCS program, Project Falcon, ext,ext.

And the U.S thinks it could fight a new Cold War with this terrible academic foundation, it's laughable.

They need to import scientists and engineers from China to fight a war against China!

Well the reason that in the past aircraft don't fly around at medium and high altitudes at supersonic speeds all the time is because that would require a lot of AB use and while you move much faster around the place you also burn up lots and lots of fuel.

One of the fundamental cores of the 5th gen fighter feature set is supercruising is that being stealthy you have all your weapons and equipment inside so you are low drag and stealthy, but the enormous thrust potential of your engines that give you high acceleration and manouver performance because you are a fighter, means that you should be able to super cruise... which is fly supersonic without AB... so to be clear, old planes can go fast but the doubling or tripling of fuel consumption greatly reduces their flight range... so most of the time it is not worth it. The new planes are supposed to be able to fly faster than other planes (ie supersonic) in dry thrust which should give all the benefits of supersonic flight without the penalties of having to do it in full AB...

It was amazing because you move around the battlespace much faster.... you cover more airspace, your missiles reach much further than enemy missiles do and you can run down targets or run away quite easily without becoming a huge IR spot light with AB on all the time...

It seems however that this is something the F-35 cannot do, and also likely a serious problem for smaller users who intended to use this plane as their primary fighter...

Perhaps Turkey might be thinking even the Su-35 is better than the F-35 and they got out of that programme just in time...

I would be very interested to see a collaborative joint venture between Turkey and Russia could come up with creating an export oriented Su-57 using Turkish bits and Russian bits... a bit like the Russian/Indian Su-30MKI, but instead being a Su-57MKT...

In real combat being able to engage full AB and climb and accelerate to supersonic before you launch a missile at a target could mean the difference between a kill and not a kill because the added energy you give to your missile will make it rather more effective and capable...