Cheetah wrote: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.
The whole stereotype about russians only focusing on WVR is a russophobic meme based on the assumption that russians are too stupid/backward to design long range missiles and radars. If russians believed WVR is most important, they wouldn't focus so much in using the MiG-31 to be used against NATO aircraft on the frontline, or invest in increased G limit of the R-37M.
By saying russians only focus on WVR and maneuverability the west tries to paint russian pilots and aircraft designers as hopeless traditionalist romantics, akin to an eastern martial arts fighter, while the western airforces are pragmatic adopters of new technology(i.e. cowboy indiana jones type gunslingers).
Its also incorrect to assume the russian AF believes that jamming is some miracle that will make ECM useless, hence why theyre focusing on BVR missiles.
Tl, DR, its annoying when people from both the west an east think of Russian air doctrine as this one dimensional all or nothing doctrine.
Regarding TVC, it as absolutely relevant for BVR, since it reduces control surface movement which reduces drag and RCS, and provides superior control at very high altitudes. One barely mentioned advantage of russian fighters is their superior cieling, which would allow them to increase the NEZ of their BVR missiles and also reduce the NEZ of their enemies missiles.
Also the guy in the video is retarded for assuming TVC is to compensate for Russian inferiority in control surface design. The western cope about "muh super computers" being able to somehow make their aircraft's control surfaces to be perfect is such BS.
On reddit, self proclaimed computer engineers were claiming with a straight face that the F-35 is as maneuverable and retains more energy than the Su-35 because it was designed by a supercomputer, while the Su-27s aerodynamics were designed on paper sheets.