Su-57 Stealth Fighter: News #7

Headline from The National Interest

Russia’s Su-57E Stealth Fighter Has Some Serious Tire Kickers.

Nothing much new here. They emphasis India and Turkey. Also , the su 57E is going to be at IDEX 2021. Arms expo in Dubai coming up in a week.

-SU 57 is a good, capable plane, and had it appeared in serial productcion 15 years ago it would have had massive success and would have turned into a legend much like the Flanker it is supposed to retire

You make it sound like it is obsolete... it is the best fifth gen fighter available.... the F-22 is designed to dominate an airspace filled with 4th gen fighters in third world countries... it was supposed to be invisible to radar, the F-35 was the solution to the cold war being over and the F-22 being too expensive to buy and operate... the F-35 was supposed to be radar invisible too and was to fly right up to S-300 systems and bomb them.

The problem is that neither are invisible to radar so the enormous prices involved are simply not worth it... compounded by the fact that their stealth is coating based and so any maintenance that involves removing panels needs sanding off the stealth coating, doing the job but then reapplying the stealth coating and waiting for it to cure.... 40 plus hours per hour in the air.... 77K per flight hours operating costs for the F-35... it is just not practical and it was getting more expensive, not getting cheaper.

The point is that the Su-57 is not just a Russian F-22... the Su-57 has L band Radar and IRST sensors to detect stealthy targets and it is geared towards dealing with an enemy with stealthy fighters. It was never going to be the one Russian fighter that replaces everything simply because most jobs don't need that level of cost.

The irony is that the things that make it expensive are the radar and sensors and avionics and systems they are also putting in the Su-35 so both planes are not significantly different in price and both are actually rather cheap in comparison to US equivalents... meaning they might decide the cost of the Su-35 means they might as well buy Su-57s instead but that would depend on ongoing operational costs for both aircraft.

If the US had an Su-57 equivalent there is no way they would be putting the F-15 back in to production... they would probably not even bother with a lighter F-16/F-35 type for those prices... just a fleet of maybe 3,500 Su-57s.

-Future is drone aircrafts and eventually at some point autonomous AI controlled planes.

Maybe, but I have not seen any air force look to use drones for air to air combat and I don't think it will happen any time soon.

Once your fighter capability relies on AI then EM pulse weapons that ruin electronics will start appearing...

They could at first play the role of just escort of manned aircrafts but it will be just the first stage of the process.

They wont escort the manned aircraft they will be led by manned aircraft... they might be sent off to perform tasks or just bring more weapons to the combat... you will see things like linking radar together and creating synthetic aperture radar hundreds of metres across, or take fuel from the drones to extend the range of the manned platform and send them home when they are low on fuel to refuel and rearm and return...

Again this is a personal opinion made by following just common sense.

Common sense looks at the radars and missiles and guns of Russia and thinks it understands why a western person thinks the age of manned aircraft is over... but looking back the other way with the pathetic air defences of HATO based as they are on highly vulnerable AWACS planes I wonder why you think the Russians should think the same?

Drones don't shoot down planes... missiles do... while the potential for a drone to pull 100 gs, that is just a question of using the correct weapon against them.

Like an Agent in the Matrix... place the pistol muzzle to the temple and pull the trigger and say dodge this.

-By the time USA, China and maybe Europe field drone fighters Russians will have to do the same.

Are you asleep... S-70.... Su-57 able to be remotely operated... they are well on the way already... except they have a good solid affordable 5th heavy fighter too which must be an advantage... though not the advantage their IADS is.

The fact that USA is not investing money in new manned fighter projects but seeks to revive the cheap F16 just backs this line of thought.

It is an admission that stealth is not the ground breaking generational advantage they hyped it up to be.... it is useful, but not worth the extra trillions of dollars they have wasted on that shit.

They are just buying the needed time before they can start using drone fighters currently under development/testing.

Their situation is bad... worn out 4th gen fighters that have been heavily used and needed replacement and their replacement is the F-35 which is a terrible piece of junk that will bankrupt the countries that try to operate it... so now it is time to admit defeat and chew on some crow and put the F-15 from the 1970s back into production.

Sorry... the newest Xbox is a failure so we are going to make Sinclair ZX81 Spectrums instead...

-All this leads me to thinking SU57 though capable and well designed aircraft will not be given enough time to actually be produced in significant numbers. Significant numbers being more than 100 units.

A 5th gen stealth fighter optimised for fighting stealth fighters that are manned should not have huge problems dealing with drones that are stealthy... they have plenty of experience making fighters and drones so I don't understand why you think this is a problem.

The Team that came second didn't rush and have come up with a very good aircraft... the Su-35 is already better than the F-15s and F-16s they have in service.

They are making all sorts of promises about how wonderful the new model F-15s are going to be but you have to keep in mind these are the same people who sold America F-22s and F-35s and would still be making them if they had their way.

Drone fighters might work spectacularly well, or they might turn out to be trash, but either way, any sane military ought not to be in the precarious state in the first place.

Bad management and bad choices got them where they are, and I don't see any fundamental ground roots realisation that their systems and thinking were totally wrong and need to change... they just went for the only other alternative... put the old shit back into production and spray air freshener around the room and say everything smells of roses... rotting corpses do smell quite bad.

The Russians are also developing programmable airburst rounds for the 30 mm gun. It would be immensely satisfying if it turns out that not only would this allow plinking of most drones at zero missile expenditures but allow for intercepting enemy incoming missiles as well.

For stopping incoming missiles I genuinely believe self defence mini missiles would be better than using the gun simply because when you are dodging missiles or manouvering to shoot missiles you are not focussed on the target.

What I mean to say is that the ideal situation is that when missiles are inbound that the pilot should be focussed on shooting down the source of the missiles while the self defence avionics suite should be using jammers and towed decoys and other methods to defeat the incoming missile... if it is determined to not be working then automatically launch small guided anti missile missiles to defeat the threat and perhaps que the pilot to turn in a specific direction to make things hardest for the incoming weapons...

My point is that by the time it gets in enough numbers to be considered as a meaningful weapon system, it will be obsolete.

Yeah.... they design good stuff but don't have enough in service for them to matter... it is another line of attack heard quite often.

The thing is that they don't need thousands of these aircraft and for each of them they will likely have 3-5 S-70s operating in the air with them, and probably will have 2-3 Su-35s or Su-30s... and with those sort of aircraft in the air and S-500 and S-400 and S-350 as well as BUK and TOR and Pine and Pantsir... the word obsolete doesn't really jump to mind...

Even if it takes them 10 years to make 300 of them they will be up against Rafales and Typhoons and Gripens and F-15s and F-18s and F-35s... honestly in what way will they be obsolete... even more so if they put F-16s back in to production...

Not to F16, F22 or F35 but to new drone platforms that are being under development in the West. Thats all.

They are only just putting the F-15 back in to production and maybe the F-16, but it is the brand new Su-57 you think will be obsolete... because of American drones that they might make.

Based on how their F-22s and F-35s turned out and the current 5th gen european fighter... oops there isn't one, I would say they are actually leading the pack with a capable and more importantly affordable 5th gen heavy fighter.

Garry, I do not understand also why you keep comparing the planes as if having a superior plane would somehow decide the outcome of military conflict between Russia and Nato/USA

I don't know... maybe the idea that the uncontested sole superpower for the last 30 years can't make an affordable 5th gen stealth fighter... a concept they invented by the way, and are having to fall back to putting back into production at huge cost a 50 year old fighter design, while a third world gas station that doesn't make anything seems to have done pretty much that... and has a fully operational IADS for it to operate within... making it even more powerful and effective because you are not just fighting a superior stealth fighter, but a system of force multipliers which should make it untouchable on home turf.

How many american F16 has the russians downed so far? How many russian mig29 has the americans downed?

In their own testing in the 1990s against downgraded MiG-29s western aircraft lost every test.

The fact that no direct conflict has happened is a good thing because the only result is everyone dead, which is why Russia is so careful and conservative... but why are the Americans so brash and keen to kill people in war?

Do you think if USA didn't have the F22 and F35 Russia would have attacked it sucessfully?

The US is the aggressor... Russia just wants to be left alone.

Or the other way arround - If Russia didnt have the SU57, Nato would have invaded Russia and captured Moscow?

HATO can't hold Afghanistan... I doubt they could defeat Ukraine let alone Russia.

C'mon we are speaking about nuclear powers. As soon as any of the major players does anything stupid it is game over for humankind.

So conflicts between Pakistan and India and India and China are not possible because both are nuclear powers?

Hilary Clinton wanted to create a no fly zone over all of Syria... do you think if they tried to achieve that that it could even be possible, or that it would lead directly to US pilots trying to enforce a no fly zone over airspace Russian aircraft are operating with the permission of the Syrian government...

I think you'll find that the "target" (ie a piece of cardboard with apparent shell holes) is a fake intended to conceal the actual grouping. Only a fucking moron would think that such a loose chaotic grouping would result from point-blank testing... but of course there are commenters on The Drivel who seem to belive exactly that!!

Grouping at such a distance would mean nothing, but normally in air to air combat the cannon would be fired at distances of about 500m, so the grouping is not really critical at all considering the area of the target it will be used against.

Anti aircraft guns that are too accurate are not very useful because a nice spread of rounds is good for spreading damage and also increasing hit probability against a fast small moving target.

Russian metal is all floppy and weak, giving high scatter in any gun made from it. NATzO metal is stiff and strong, giving laser-like focus to all the bullets.

Actually the GSh-301 is an extremely light weight weapon that is half the weight of the 30mm cannon used on the BMP-2, but it is a very effective weapon.

Gatling guns with spinning barrels rely on rate of fire over accuracy for effectiveness and within 1km of the target even an inaccurate gun would be fine most of the time.

Accuracy is relative, and the level of accuracy is nothing like the accuracy required to hit a person at 500m or more... an aircraft is a much bigger target.

I should add that the photos of the tests of the gun are clearly not accuracy tests, they are tests of the gun mechanism which includes the front piece that opens to allow the cannon shells to leave the barrel, and the rear portion where presumably the fired cannon shells are ejected.

In comparison a 12.7mm heavy machine gun is not sighted in at targets closer than 300m because the big heavy projectiles are not fully stabilised till they reach that distance so any accuracy results inside that range are meaningless.

When going hunting in bush where the target might be 50m or less distance away you get a piece of paper and you place it about 10m away and you shoot a group... you are essentially boresighting the rifle because any target you spot within 50m is going to be within bullet drop range of a hit with most centre fire rifle calibres.

Most rifles are zeroed for 200m to about 300m depending on the calibre so shooting at short range the bullets will strike high and a test at 10m gives you an indication of how high and if adjustments are needed for close target shooting.

The target they used above is interesting because if you have a look there is a circular pattern of hits on the target... which suggests that in addition to testing the functioning of the gun in position and its effects in terms of vibration and excess gas production, and testing the mount to make sure the gun was secure, that perhaps part of the mount allows the cannon to be moved ... to at least that circle of impacts shown on the paper.

Now that is a very short distance... if you extrapolate that circle back to 500m or 1,000m that circle is going to be huge, but if it is because the gun is able to traverse and aim a little from its mount that means it can correct its aim to hit a manouvering target... that actually makes it more accurate rather than less accurate which is what the claim is at the moment from the people seeing that spread of impacts at such a short range.

The thing is that a fixed mount under recoil often strings vertically, but sideways movement is not common so rather than a circle of impacts like that it would normally be a vertical string with an elongated oval pattern.

The circular pattern suggests a moveable or target tracking barrel mount... they already have fixed gun pod weapons that have guns that can aim down for shooting at targets on the ground and also guns that can elevate and traverse in their pods to follow targets while the aircraft manouvers...

Even the Boeing wingman drone, has the su 57 style all-moving verticals.

If the F-22 was any good they would be putting it back into production with modifications to reduce costs, but the are putting the F-15 back into production instead...

I believe at the time they were buying the F-15 one congressman stated that the US will never buy another 20 million dollar fighter because it was just too expensive... he was right because no US fighter since then has been even close to being that cheap...