Su-57 Stealth Fighter: News #6

They have a lot of basic work to do on the F-35 like an oxygen system that does not suffocate the pilot... that dog of a system is shared across a few different aircraft types so they all suffer and risk pilots lives.... I would think fixing that would be a priority... but it does not seem to be...

Flying with the AB on for more than 90 seconds would also be a good improvement that they don't seem interested in working on... amazing...

Instead of dealing with problems and coming up with more than a work around like a level one help desk jockey would do, they need to fix the design properly.

Of course cutting Turkey out of the programme means a new maker of wing parts and of course a serious push to reduce costs means most things are cheaply made on it now too... I am sure reliability wont suffer....

Their problem is that their stroke of genius also dooms them to failure.

Build factories to make parts for the plane in districts where the senators who decide on what programme gets money get voted in or out.

This means a map of where parts are made is eye wateringly complex with no order or structure or common sense. The wings are made here because it is a poor area with high unemployment and the senator for this area is the chairman of the committee that decides funding for the pentagon...

How many qualified engineers do you think live there?

Lots of jobs for the boys... but not quality workers and shifting parts around the entire country is expensive.... now putting a fourth generation thermal imager and AESA array on a plane is expensive.... but it would also be a valuable thing in combat so it is worth it.

Having to ship parts made all over the country to various places to be assembled and then shipped to other parts of the country to be further assembled is expensive but it doesn't make the plane better... it just makes it more expensive... but it also guarantees it is too big to fail.

Proven with the C-17.... it was an expensive dog of a plane but they kept getting funding for it because it got those senators votes.... it greased the gears to the point where they were all sloppy... they stopped asking for them and kept getting them for the next 10 years... hugely successful programme that was hugely wasteful and inefficient and it is not like it was an amazing plane because it was not.

Everything about it was expensive.

But I am starting to think the admin or moderators are pro-US gov agents with a bias which ruined my stay there.

You can rest assured the admin here is terribly biased too... in favour of everyone having the right to their own opinion.

Thats correct with Link-16 but MADL works in way higher frequencies than L-band as a new method communication which is why I am pushing for photonic radars on the 2nd su-57 part of its upcoming avionics package upgrade.

When you say way higher frequencies do you mean Ka and Ku band?

Some missiles come with dual homing capabilities so if the infrared tracking is blind would it work on the its radar tracking or active homing guidance?

Most modern fighters will have rather enormous and rather powerful AESA radars, so a laser to blind and a radar pencil beam to overload its radar antenna should suffice to deal with most incoming missiles.

There is a reason they call them MISS-iles... which is why the Su-57 is very manouverable and has a gun.

Other forums with a pro-US bias can say the same for the Su-57(example internal hypersonic missile and far range missile for ka-52) which is why I am trying to be fair bringing out the best capabilities I can find online for both aircrafts and trying to figure it which of those choices are the best over the other choices.

The hypersonic manouverable missiles they have shown so far have ranges exceeding 1,000km... I would think that makes a requirement that they be carried internally a bit redundant.

The fact of the matter is that the best platform to carry the Kinzhal missile is the MiG-31K because of the speed and altitude it can attain to launch the missile improves the performance of the missile enormously.

thegopnik wrote:
I have heard that there were some rear facing radars on Russian fighter aircrafts so I see why not the EW would not have radar functionality?

Yeah I don't question the basic feasibility and even the section of the tail cone seems aligned with the size of the side-looking X band arrays. Until now no proof has been produced though, that it houses a radar and not an ECM emitter.

101ks-v or OLS-50 as QWIP is correct, Sources are telling me only 360 degree UV coverage

There was no confirmation about the IRST technology in the materials you linked right? Regarding the IR 360 deg. coverage, the 101KS-O includes a sensor apart from the laser emitter. How capable it is and whether it has some use apart from the DIRCM functionality remains in question.

Correct, but I am also including the modules on the left and right side of the aircraft which can of course also be used for better passive tracking or offer better receiver sensitivity against incoming active homing missiles.

I see logical that their functionality is to compensate for the reduced field of regard of the main fixed radar rather than being ESM focused. So the Su-57 goes from very limited 120 deg radar coverage to 300, which is actually a substantial shortcoming of both F-22 and F-35.

I never knew about this until Jo Asakura(Japanese user with a strong support for Russia electronics) back at key aero and his constant arguments with Action Jackson. I started to see familiar key aero users like Trident, you and eventually haavarla and Dr.snufflebug joined recently, Ronny(mig-31bm at key aero, stealthflanker at india defense forum saying he is not the real stealthflanker of other forums like this one, etc) at secret projects. But I am starting to think the admin or moderators are pro-US gov agents with a bias which ruined my stay there. Because I bring up the internal kinzhal or a 100km hermes missile on a ka-52 and they immediately turn it down without a 2nd thought.

The GaN research is known, what is not known is the actual implementation in serial products. Technology is not so simple, I can tell you semiconductor material substitution is one of the hardest changes to pull off, it needs many years of long term research and evaluations before a product is released into market, because reliability can suck and ruin completely the intended advantages.

As to the pro-Western bias, it is the norm in the West, milder or harder but normally present. That is why we come here isn't it?

Thats correct with Link-16 but MADL works in way higher frequencies than L-band as a new method communication which is why I am pushing for photonic radars on the 2nd su-57 part of its upcoming avionics package upgrade.

Certainly Su-57's ECM suite already covers those bands, the problem is that those links are highly directional and therefore very difficult to detect and jam.

Other forums with a pro-US bias can say the same for the Su-57(example internal hypersonic missile and far range missile for ka-52) which is why I am trying to be fair bringing out the best capabilities I can find online for both aircrafts and trying to figure it which of those choices are the best over the other choices. I can understand why some users would call the MSDM and JATM showing miniaturization with far range performances as BS because their newest and latest ARM only exceed(or equal) an old ARM from Russia. The 2nd version Su-57 promises new weapons so I am not complaining other than complaining about my patience of when new features of the 2nd version Su-57 which start at the beginning of 2022 to the end of 2024 hoping that either a maks 2021,2023 or 2025 airshow show some cool features like the time different radars were shown of the su-57.

Almost everyone thinks that they are bias-free, but we aren't. Most balanced takes I have read from technical guys, for them it is more difficult to be blinded because they know the hard facts underlying capabilities, but even them will show a tendency to favour what they like most, or their country's plane. Of course we all try to be balanced but it is difficult.

Second stage Su-57 will apparently come with new weapons, engines and some new internal systems like actuators, I personally think weapons layout will be updated too. It would definitely make sense to update semiconductors both for radar and ECM modules but ROFAR is highly questionable, I know you have hopes for it, let us wait and see. The engine part in particular is critical for the plane to really fulfil its mission as intended and I think that will be game changing.

If you think about the development of the second stage, there was talk about bringing the plane in service early last decade, but I think they assessed both the international situation and the Su-35's performance and realized it was better to delay a bit the Su-57 and make a modernization before actually delivering big numbers to the VKS. This saves money in the end and gives less info away to the US. The program remains highly secretive and I think it will get even more closed so I recommend lots of patience

GarryB wrote:The hypersonic manouverable missiles they have shown so far have ranges exceeding 1,000km... I would think that makes a requirement that they be carried internally a bit redundant.

I see what you mean, but regardless for a supercruiser the internal carriage is a very nice feature. It does not mean that the plane cannot carry very big stand-off weapons externally on certain occasions, but it must be able to do most missions with minimum drag, even if RCS does not matter. Also, it remains to be seen what range do they manage to extract from the hypersonic missiles being created for the bays, given the volume available I am not sure they can have a very big range. The good part of hypersonic weapons is that the warhead can be small and still destroy the target.

Not to nitpick, but GaN is called gallium nitride and not "nitrite gallium". There are no oxygen atoms in this molecule.

Nitrogen appears to impart high temperature stability when it forms compounds. Silicon nitride (SiN) is a candidate for
high temperature semiconductors that can operate on the surface of Venus for long enough to matter. They can
run at several hundred degrees. Imaging a crystal electronics device that replaces metallic components and normal
semiconductors with temperature resistant parts.

Slightly better pic

I remember a bomb that had similar shapes. I think it was a guided bomb. I don't remember the name however. I'll try to find it.

Edit: KAB-500Kr U but it's different from the thing on the picture.

Maybe this is a double setup of cameras to record the weapons separation:



But I have seen a remarkably similar setup in some Chinese plane:



Surely it is something less exotic like simple cameras to check the field of regard of the different weapon stations, but with imagination it may be an stereoscopic IRST for passive range measurement of targets

The pylon cameras are probably just new bomb optic trainers due to new PGMs entering service.

thegopnik wrote:

LMFS wrote:What device you refer with QWIP IRST, 101KS-V? I have seen no confirmation about this technology or coverage. 101KS-O should have 360 deg cover in IR shouldn't it?

Is this an official Sukhoi publication? Or some outside group that's putting gathered info together?

Until now no proof has been produced though, that it houses a radar and not an ECM emitter.

I would expect with new AESA and new photonic radar technology the role of an AESA radar and an AESA ECM emitter will merge...

Almost everyone thinks that they are bias-free, but we aren't.

No I don't... I'd give my fourth and fifth nipples to be normal... but...

Most balanced takes I have read from technical guys, for them it is more difficult to be blinded because they know the hard facts underlying capabilities, but even them will show a tendency to favour what they like most, or their country's plane. Of course we all try to be balanced but it is difficult.

Everyone in the west is immersed in the propaganda of the west... they believe the west is basically a force for good, but when they work with people like the NSA and CIA like Snowden did, they realise there are some real bastards in the west... the irony is that Snowden is a US patriot but he revealed dirt on a lot of very powerful people so he is a criminal in exile... the problem is that the stuff he released isn't obvious like molesting children or whatever that is obviously wrong... the people that got murdered and it was all covered up weren't westerners... so it is easy to label them terrorists and bad guys when all they might have done was not help the US or be in the wrong place at the wrong time like those people the Apache pilots murdered...

Second stage Su-57 will apparently come with new weapons, engines and some new internal systems like actuators, I personally think weapons layout will be updated too.

We can see the new izd 760 is more compact because it fits internally in the wing root mount. The other new weapons will likely also be designed to fit internally in the Su-57 so carrying more weapons internally is probably a given...

Imagine those wing root weapon bays under the wings of the PAK DA... two enormous central weapon bays for the big stuff and then a dozen of these small bays out along the rather thick section wing that holds lots of fuel on each side of the aircraft... some small for self defence izd-760s and some bigger for longer ranged weapons... perhaps even located near the trailing edge on top of the wing to be thrown upwards to launch and fly clear of the aircraft by climbing rapidly....

It would definitely make sense to update semiconductors both for radar and ECM modules but ROFAR is highly questionable, I know you have hopes for it, let us wait and see.

One of the features of the new radar is that it can be built into the aircraft skin... so no large volume of the nose taken up with an empty radome with a radar sitting there... the vertical sides of the tail could be the side looking radar... the flying wing could have a delta triangle type shape with each leading edge having an enormous radar antenna with 120 degree FOV each with a big overlap at the front, while the entire straight trailing edge could be a rear looking antenna with the remaining 120 degree FOV... maybe 130 degree FOV each to create overlap areas...

I see what you mean, but regardless for a supercruiser the internal carriage is a very nice feature. It does not mean that the plane cannot carry very big stand-off weapons externally on certain occasions, but it must be able to do most missions with minimum drag, even if RCS does not matter. Also, it remains to be seen what range do they manage to extract from the hypersonic missiles being created for the bays, given the volume available I am not sure they can have a very big range. The good part of hypersonic weapons is that the warhead can be small and still destroy the target.

With inflight refuelling an externally mounted missile and AAMs carried internally in the weapons bays means it can fly and launch its missile... an external missile means no length limitations... and previously with a huge solid rocket booster and a ramjet main engine would offer the best performance, but honestly a scramjet is much more efficient than a solid rocket engine so a long single stage weapon with a small solid rocket fuel engine in the space where the scramjet motor is because that space really can't be used for anything else, and then instead of 4m of solid rocket booster... say 3 tons of extra solid rocket fuel, having a discardable 4 metre long fuel tank with 3 tons of fuel would be vastly more effective at extending range and improving performance... because no matter how powerful the solid rocket booster is... three quarters of it is dedicated to creating oxygen for the other remaining quarter of fuel to burn so a 3 ton solid rocket motor has probably 800kgs of actual fuel and the other 2,3 tons of material creating oxygen for the fuel to burn. Having more fuel for the scramjet means the equivalent of having a 12 ton solid rocket motor because the air scoop adds the oxygen... but even more so the scramjet motor can use the fuel much more efficiently to climb to effective altitudes and accelerate to higher speeds when useful and then coast for certain parts of the flight to use the fuel efficiently and then full power dives on target...

Internally carried missiles are shape and size constrained and also mean you can't carry much in the way of air to air to air missiles to defend yourself...

Surely it is something less exotic like simple cameras to check the field of regard of the different weapon stations, but with imagination it may be an stereoscopic IRST for passive range measurement of targets

The pods some are mentioning are simply the optical portions of guided bombs and missiles that are carried instead of the full sized weapon for training and testing so you can lock on to ground targets before launch using the actual weapon seeker so you know the training would work with the real product but without having to carry the real weapon... some of which are large and quite heavy.

Quite interesting in this case because these optics wont be particularly stealthy... and would never be carried in a real mission... you would carry the real bomb on those pylons and they would use their actual seekers and be released to destroy the target. These seeker pods are not able to be launched because they are just the seeker component of the weapon... they are not weapons.

But what if these are dazzlers or anti optically guided weapon systems... but they would have some face forward and some face rearward if that was the case...

Maybe they are testing datalinks using an image of a ground target from these pods as a source to feed target data and location data to weapons in the weapon bay... with the view that in the future that these wing mounted seeker pods can be replaced with proper targeting pods also being developed for the aircraft...

Interesting....

Is this an official Sukhoi publication? Or some outside group that's putting gathered info together?

My understanding is that this is from a British Magazine... Air Int or AFM and an article by Piotr Butowski... whether he put it together himself from his sources or it is official release from Sukhoi I don't know...

GarryB wrote:I would expect with new AESA and new photonic radar technology the role of an AESA radar and an AESA ECM emitter will merge...

Might be the case, since the ROFAR will be a very wide band radar... still many details are missing but it makes sense...

Everyone in the west is immersed in the propaganda of the west... they believe the west is basically a force for good, but when they work with people like the NSA and CIA like Snowden did, they realise there are some real bastards in the west... the irony is that Snowden is a US patriot but he revealed dirt on a lot of very powerful people so he is a criminal in exile... the problem is that the stuff he released isn't obvious like molesting children or whatever that is obviously wrong... the people that got murdered and it was all covered up weren't westerners... so it is easy to label them terrorists and bad guys when all they might have done was not help the US or be in the wrong place at the wrong time like those people the Apache pilots murdered...

The worst of all is the willingness to swallow endless BS and ludicrous twist of arguments in order to play down the crimes of the West and essentially to equate victims and offenders. Nobody is so stupid to believe this shit unless they actually want to, and when they do that then they are onboard for all the crimes that follow, see nazi Germany. Currently the West is going down that same old path at a scary speed.

We can see the new izd 760 is more compact because it fits internally in the wing root mount. The other new weapons will likely also be designed to fit internally in the Su-57 so carrying more weapons internally is probably a given...

Carrying air inside of a 5G plane is a extremely effective way of wasting money and ruining performance, so it is a MUST for weapons designers to optimize them for internal carriage, been saying this for a while. I assume Russians are not going to left any stone unturned in order to do exactly that for all relevant weapons, and after seeing Kh-59MK2 (Kh-69) or Kh-58 I think it is obvious that will be the case.

Imagine those wing root weapon bays under the wings of the PAK DA... two enormous central weapon bays for the big stuff and then a dozen of these small bays out along the rather thick section wing that holds lots of fuel on each side of the aircraft... some small for self defence izd-760s and some bigger for longer ranged weapons... perhaps even located near the trailing edge on top of the wing to be thrown upwards to launch and fly clear of the aircraft by climbing rapidly....

I actually imagine them in smaller fighters, because it is a very intelligent way of placing the short range missiles with the best field of view and the smallest impact on internal volume and layout.

One of the features of the new radar is that it can be built into the aircraft skin... so no large volume of the nose taken up with an empty radome with a radar sitting there... the vertical sides of the tail could be the side looking radar... the flying wing could have a delta triangle type shape with each leading edge having an enormous radar antenna with 120 degree FOV each with a big overlap at the front, while the entire straight trailing edge could be a rear looking antenna with the remaining 120 degree FOV... maybe 130 degree FOV each to create overlap areas...

Height finding is dependent on the number of vertical elements of the radar, so this approach is a bit limited in that regard, the nose still is a good place for a radar with good resolution in all axes.

Internally carried missiles are shape and size constrained and also mean you can't carry much in the way of air to air to air missiles to defend yourself...

Su-57 could carry 4 big pieces of ordnance and 2 self defence missiles or 2 big weapons and leave a full bay for AAMs. Depending on the mission they may maximize the strike payload or not, I can imagine for instance a naval strike mission with 4 weapons that can be launched say 500 - 700 km away from the target and would still be "stand-off" to a great extent even against a CBG, given the speed of the Sukhoi, so no significant AAM payload would be necessary.

As to the self-defence AAMs, in general they are being miniaturized and soon many will be carried for each conventional MRAAM position.

The pods some are mentioning are simply the optical portions of guided bombs and missiles that are carried instead of the full sized weapon for training and testing so you can lock on to ground targets before launch using the actual weapon seeker so you know the training would work with the real product but without having to carry the real weapon... some of which are large and quite heavy.

I knew there had to be a logical explanation  

Maybe they are testing datalinks using an image of a ground target from these pods as a source to feed target data and location data to weapons in the weapon bay... with the view that in the future that these wing mounted seeker pods can be replaced with proper targeting pods also being developed for the aircraft...

The 101KS-N is already available isn't it?

I actually imagine them in smaller fighters, because it is a very intelligent way of placing the short range missiles with the best field of view and the smallest impact on internal volume and layout.

Very small fighters a small short range AAM will be their bread and butter and only carrying 2 or 4 internally just wont cut it... even having a couple on top of the tail area with the missiles facing backwards for self defence makes sense... it is just a better use of real estate while improving the carrying capacity of the aircraft.

They could extend the idea to drones with MANPADS like 10kg long slim missiles like Verba or Igla-S, or other types like Pine (SOSNA) with a flap opening up and one of these missiles thrown out and launched in low drag internal positions... when not used for weapons you could fit a fuel bladder in there so the empty space could be utilised for more fuel/range/endurance...

All these new small bombs and missiles revealed with their new UCAVs are interesting too...

Even for a full sized fighter... they could be used for these tiny munitions or indeed custom designed jammers or chaff or flare dispensors...

I knew there had to be a logical explanation

It is odd that they are carrying two in each photo shown... the first with engine nacelle mounted cameras on the PAK FA and two wing mounted cameras on what looks like a Chinese Su-30/35...

It would be strange to carry more than one for the purpose of finding targets... the second camera is redundant... unless as mentioned they are looking at passive range finding or stereoscopic views.

Rather odd... maybe they are new digital video night vision cameras with a stereoscopic view for depth perception for a pilots view of the airspace ahead of him for flying low level...

https://defensesystems.com/articles/2017/06/08/lockheed-drone.aspx MADL is 20-30ghz Its K-band and as you said ku-band. High frequency comms offer faster and bigger transmission information and I take it that current airborne EW cannot jam this unless flying with a photonic radar. Also we cant confirm yet if OSNOD on the Su-57 would have something similiar or not.

Even if they can't crack the code and work out what is being transmitted they should be able to detect the transmission source and perhaps even locate it with its AESA array... and the potential to direct a high energy narrow beam of the same frequency at the source might disrupt communications...

thegopnik wrote:MADL is 20-30ghz Its K-band and as you said ku-band. High frequency comms offer faster and bigger transmission information and I take it that current airborne EW cannot jam this unless flying with a photonic radar.

I am not sure about MADL frequencies, but what would prevent EW to be upgraded to reach those you mention? I see no need for ROFAR

Also we cant confirm yet if OSNOD on the Su-57 would have something similiar or not.

This is one of the criticisms to Su-57, that it does not explicitly have a LPI/LPD type of datalink. But in reality we don't know if the L-band arrays or other apertures can be used for directional comms.

Your confused about my 2019 source stating 360 degrees circular radar coverage as I am confused as where your getting 300 degrees(I only heard of sources before that stated 270 and 240 degree radar coverage)

This comes from KRET, special 2/2015 which can be be found on the net:

The avionics system for the PMF is based on
three active phased arrays: one forward looking
(FL) phased array, and two side-looking ones
(to the right and to the left respectively). The
aggregate scanned area is almost 300° (Fig. 4).

with N-012 in the back of the Su-34 I assume that the Su-34 is the only 360 degree radar operational military aircraft(thats non-AWACS) in the world.

The Su-34 has the APU in the tail sting, not a radar

So the 101ks-u functions as UV and the 101ks-o offers infrared is what your image is telling me?

Yes, that is an official poster and confirms the EO function:

"System capability similar to 101KS-V + blinding attacking missiles"

(ask and you shall receive sources).

OK, I would love to see those sources.  

This is indeed interesting and relevant, I have not seen this confirmed until now, that is why I ask...

I don't follow you, radios on aircrafts can be jammed. https://tass.com/defense/1063141 radio channels can get jammed. Dont know how well link-16 is encrypted though, the difficulty or not remains but there is alot of voodoo in Russia's EW military industry that I don't see others doing publicly(and they might have more secret shit they don't want to reveal).

If you would think about directional optical links you would not have a big problem to imagine them as very difficult to detect or jam. RF is not essentially different (both are just types of EM radiation) and can be directed in a narrow beam. That is what now MADL does and MIDAS will take further.

GarryB wrote:Very small fighters a small short range AAM will be their bread and butter and only carrying 2 or 4 internally just wont cut it... even having a couple on top of the tail area with the missiles facing backwards for self defence makes sense... it is just a better use of real estate while improving the carrying capacity of the aircraft.

Indeed, if you take a look at the approach of F-22 or in a lesser extent J-20 it is clear to see both that they waste lots of internal space and result in a way worse field of regard of the missile's seeker. In the Su-57 it is already very important to get a good extra capacity for short range missiles to use the approach, in smaller planes it is even more important, in order to have a decent amount of MRAAM s + at least a couple of short range ones.

It is odd that they are carrying two in each photo shown

True, that is the reason for my speculation. I find it also very interesting that both the Russian and Chinese setups look almost identical...

Even if they can't crack the code and work out what is being transmitted they should be able to detect the transmission source and perhaps even locate it with its AESA array... and the potential to direct a high energy narrow beam of the same frequency at the source might disrupt communications...

In case of a highly directional link you will not detect that communication or even in the hypothetical case you do, it is possible that the receiver's antennas are too directional for your emission to be a problem or that your jamming is rejected as a side lobe during processing.

Is it reasonable to assume that the Su-57's and by extension the Su-35's IRST are superior in range to the eurocanards' PIRATE?

thegopnik wrote:GaN allows the capabilities to go below UHF to VHF

No need for GaN to make UHF or VHF jammers...

You sure?

Yes, there is no official confirmation that is a radar and there is no space left in the sting. There may be an antenna right below the exhaust, but it is extremely unlikely that is a radar, there is no space and besides the temperatures of the APU would roast it.

http://www.promweekly.ru/archive/kret/KRET_4-2017.pdf

“On-board radio electronic equipment is being improved. Now the transmission power of the transceiver module of the active phased array antenna is 5–7 watts. After switching to the use of gallium nitride in microwave transmitters, the power can increase to 20 watts. Accordingly, the performance parameters of the radar will improve, and its dimensions will decrease.”

The advantages of GaN are known. If you notice, they talk about a future where those will be implemented, I still see no statement about even ECM
already using it.

https://www.niip.ru/upload/iblock/4c8/4c89c11ae741be234a5f900b3fb41e86.pdf

Interesting, it is the same 2015 KRET issue I linked above! This is a very generic mention to GaN that sounds like a reference to the state of the art. They do not even differentiate it of GaAs, even when amplifiers manufactured with both materials will have very different characteristics. I appreciate the sources, but honestly I am not 100% convinced. Will keep an eye on this of course, thanks for the heads-up.

Present 3 GaN MMICs for 3 airborne EW systems,

I took that as lab samples, by now and more by 2024 when the second stage Su-57 appears they may actually have operational GaN TRMs at least for the ECM suite, I don't even know if they already have them on the Himalaya, if they upgrade N036 with GaN too that would be a big success of the Russian industry that I am not actually expecting, but maybe they pull that one off, I would not be so fool to dismiss them.

There is a huge chance the new avionics will include new radars and if so we might see a miniature missile APS

They can have that miniature missile APS with the current radars too... they already describe the fire control system as multichannel and multispectral with all-around surveillance.

Is it reasonable to assume that the Su-57's and by extension the Su-35's IRST are superior in range to the eurocanards' PIRATE?

No.

They were not designed for the same programme with the same criteria so there will be differences, but those differences wont make them better or worse... suffice to say they got the contract and are in service.

I would suspect some of the features of the built in EO systems on the 57 and the 35 will be extended and improved with addon pods to expand capabilities and performance when needed... and I would expect the same from the French system.

Maybe it is my imagination, but I would say the radar blocker is visible in this picture

You are assuming the approach will be direct head on...if it is above, below or at an angle the engines are invisible. Perhaps the idea is they will use a specific approach profile to maximise stealth. Just like the F-35 is not stealthy from certain angles, its very likely the case for the SU-57 as well.

mnztr wrote:You are assuming the approach will be direct head on...if it is above, below or at an angle the engines are invisible. Perhaps the idea is they will use a specific approach profile to maximise stealth. Just like the F-35 is not stealthy from certain angles, its very likely the case for the SU-57 as well.

We know there is a radar blocker in the Su-57 and it seems to be visible in that picture... do you see the concentric circles and radial lines deep in the air duct?

Charly015 also confirms this is a KAB-500KR-U, trainer for smart bombs: