Cheetah Sun Jul 04, 2021 8:59 am
I watched both of Millennium 7's videos on the subject yesterday.
Obvious errors aside, it is somewhat refreshing to see someone who doesn't immediately criticise the Su-57. Ignoring the specifics, he was more or less on-point with the broad strokes; though, there is one thing I took issue with. His take on thrust vectoring.
I don't know about anyone else here, but I've always held the idea that the Soviets', and by extension Russia's, obsession with extremely nimble fighters (with a recent focus on thrust vectoring) was due to a prediction that modern air combat, in spite of all its technological proclivities, would inevitably degrade into a complete mess where WVR combat would be prevalent.
I think with the advent of modern EW systems, and the still lackluster performance of medium-range A-A missiles, it seems perfectly logical to focus on close-quarter air combat capability. I'd also argue that in the larger defensive military doctrine employed by Russia, this tendency towards WVR combat could be forced by any number of complementary assets, such as SAMs, ground-based EW systems, Interceptors, etc.
For the record, I am definitely in the camp of people that think thrust vectoring has no intention to dodge or fool missile tracks. We're talking about aircraft entering combat at speeds nearing or exceeding Mach 2 and merging at around Mach 1. At those speeds, the accelerometer is going to max-out long before your AoA meter. Pushing that boundary isn't going to be good for the airframe and more-so the squish container of red water strapped into the seat. Not to mention, all of that is ignoring that the best way to defeat a missile is with vector changes at high speed and high G force with the intention of defeating the missile's energy, not its tracking ability.
TL;DR
I think Russia plans to force the aerial battleground into a WVR focused arena. Hence the focus on thrust vectoring and super-manoeuvrability.