Su-35S: News #2

I remember when you claimed that it's unlikely the "independent" egypt would follow caatsa.

Well we don't know for a fact that they are following CAATSA... perhaps what he didn't allow for is what total bastards the Americans are and what sort of threats they likely made so they didn't buy Su-35s up front.

We don't know that they haven't, but we know they have not received any that we know of.

The amusing irony is that the aircraft they are not putting into service now are likely the aircraft Iran seems to be getting... which must be worse for the US I would think.

Also theres no hybrid AESA/PESA, theres either/or. Every single claim of "hybrid" in Russian language Su-35 brochures from rosoboronexport say so in context that its a hybrid between MECHANICALLY STEERED AND PESA. Show me where it says that the Irbis has independent T/R modules?

Which shows you don't understand what you are talking about.

The radar is electronically steered, but to get a much wider field of view the radar can be mechanically turned so instead of having say a 90 degree field of view, it gets a field of view that is wider... 160 degrees plus.

It means the aircraft does not need to fly directly towards what it is looking at to get a good view.

Not for everything but many export products are just quick made copies.

That is the point... they make to a budget... countries think they can save lots of money by buying the Chinese version that is a fraction of the price, but they can make it cheaper because it is for export...

Much of China's military exports are trash because these are the 2nd runner ups for the competitions to supply the PLA. As such they rarely finish development before they are hawked to international customers just to recoup some of their losses. The foreign customer then gets left holding the bag when these inevitably fail.

It wouldn't be so bad if the customer knows this and pays to finish development and cooperates with the early stages of ownership of a new system where you problem solve and fix anything that comes up... it might be minor and easy to fix, or there could be no practical solution with current technology...

My friend, we were discussing the MiG-35 acquisition and not the Su-35S. I said the latter is the one threatened by CAATSA and not the former. Nice try, though.

When Syria and Iraq and Iran all introduce their Su-35s I wonder if the US will care if Egypt gets a few shipped in... why should they care anyway... Israel would be super safe with their F-35s...

As I said in the Iran thread, Russia managed to set up production of Iranian type drones, modified them with their own electronics and equipment and the west didn't know anything about it till they started to use them on the battlefield.

When they started using them on the battlefield they drew attention to the Russian transport planes flying to Iran... with the suggestion that they went to pick up enormous numbers of Iranian drones... but they made them for themselves in their own factories... so rather than collection Iranian made drones (with Iranian made components) I would suggest those planes more likely delivered Russian components that Iran could start putting into their own drones and likely also missiles and equipment too.

In such a vacuum of western intel incompetence, who is to say how many Su-35s the Russians have ready to be sent anywhere...

Making an accusation without any real facts is not a good strategy for anyone.

Heavy load.

Nice photo...

From wing tips, it has jamming wingtip pods, then the next pylons are empty, then two R-73/74 short range AAMs, then the Kh-31 on the upper wing and an empty pylon on the lower wing, then two medium range R-77 variants on the engine nacelle pylons and down the centreline two active radar homing R-37s.

Production must be very good if they use it as a standard missile on su-35.

The R-37 has been a long time coming but was always intended to be carried by all their new fighters... the R-33 was only for the MiG-31, but the R-37 was always for the Su-27M (Su-35), MiG-29M (MiG-35), Yak-141 (which shows how old the missile programme was because this has since been cancelled) and also the MFI/MFS programme that turned into the Su-57, and will likely be used initially on the light 5th gen fighter until the object 815 is ready to replace it.

It's fine for su35, but for mig 35, to provide long range missile, r77M will be needed

What are you talking about... MiG-35 can carry R-37s... at max range it would likely only see AWACS and inflight refuelling aircraft and cargo transports or JSTARS but they would be good targets to hit anyway.

New Russian planes are net centric and the new missiles have their own guidance systems so they don't need a radar lock before launch... they just need target information until the missile gets close enough to get a lock for itself.

Su35 is fine with r27 and r73 for close range, r77-1 for mid range, and r37 for long range

R-27 would be mid to long range depending on the model.

And THAT is probably the reason because the(full rate production of) Mig-35 still don't come.

Actually in a net centric model having more AESA radars operating around the place detecting threats and targets adding information to the network is actually more valuable than having rather fewer platforms with longer ranged missiles.

But Mig-35 is compatible with the R-37 and will also be able to carry the Item 815 too.

What they are missing in this conflict is smaller lighter numbers aircraft with better radar and IR sensors than medium sized drones that can defend themselves when attacked but also go on the attack to suppress enemy air defences too.

In 2018, Iran announced the start of production of the local Corsair fighter for use in the Air Force. Some military experts believe that this aircraft is a copy of the F-5, made in the US in the 1960s.

To be fair to Iran their development of the F-5 wont be using 1960s technology and their F-5 modification could be rather better than the original in a few different ways.

The F-20 replaces the two small cheap engines with a larger more powerful engine in the 8 ton class, which Iran has in the form of the RD-33 engines from their MiG-29s, and they could certainly update the avionics and equipment and armament of the aircraft to make it a useful but still affordable light fighter.

There are speculations that Israel may have influenced Russia's decision to keep advanced fighter jets from Iran.

The Israelis don't seem to be keen to deliver weapons to Kiev, which might be part of some deal but I suspect Russia not wanting to hand over Su-35 technology to be reverse engineered might have played a part in their decision.

It is OK for countries to want to make their own products but they rarely are prepared to pay for the technology they will be getting and using, because once they hand over that technology they not only lose a customer because they can now make as many as they want, they also get export competition because that customer can equally start designing their own aircraft on the basis of that aircraft and sell to others.

And if I remember correctly Russia also never bought any Shahed from Iran officially

I rather suspect Russia bought a few dozen Iranian drones of a few types, but they wont have done that this year or last year... they will have done it 4 or 5 years ago in Syria and would have tested them there too, which is why they could be confident enough to buy a licence to produce them and also have time to not only set up serial production for them in Russia but also modify the drones with their own navigation systems and avionics and communications systems to be compatible with Russian comms and also not be jammed by Russian EW equipment.

The lack of these drones in the early stages of the war can simply be explained by the fact that Ukrainian drones didn't last very long and were unable to perform their job because Russian air defence was too strong, and Russia would not have been using any drone at its disposal for many of the same reasons, but as the Ukrainian air defence was degraded it made sense to start using drones for all the reasons you use drones... they are cheaper, they can get the job done without risking pilots and you can make tens of thousands of them in comparison to how many helicopters or planes you can make, and finally with the enemy on the back foot and most of their AD smashed and AD platforms essentially largely operating on their own the use of drones is good for finding them and either destroying them or getting them to waste ammo on the drones and reveal their positions so they can be destroyed too.

Lots of speculation regarding the Su-35s for Iran and I rather suspect whomever leaked that idea probably wanted to gauge reaction, which behind doors was probably very energetic from pleas to threats and all sorts of promises.

It is clear Iran and Russia are working together and seem to be working well and helping each other out. Russia is getting maintenance and spare parts for its Boeings and Airbuses and also large turbines that it used to have made in the Ukraine or later Germany/Canada, and Iran is likely getting things apart from money for the deals... no doubt the Russians have fitted more sophisticated electronics to their licence produced Iranian drones, including navigation and communications that Iranian drones might not have had, and for the parts the Iranians didn't make themselves they probably bought on the black market which would make them rather more expensive than they really needed to be so buying those parts from Russia might speed up their own production and also made them cheaper and easier to make in enormous numbers... enormous numbers is a valuable thing for a drone.

They might even have other things the Iranians lacked like an EW package they could put in a drone instead of the payload or perhaps as well as a reduced payload to make the drones much harder to hit with missiles... which actually makes them even better.

In the west a drone is not really cheap, though it is cheaper than any manned aircraft alternative, but at the end of the day they usually fly straight and level and are relatively simple to shoot down if you can get to their altitude. Their cruise missiles and stealth missiles seem to be the same, but as we have seen in this conflict Russian missiles from Iskander to Kh-101 and Calibre and their anti ship missiles etc etc all seem to have ESM equipment to help them penetrate enemy air defences... something the west has very much neglected so when we say Russian air defences are strong we mean that because Russian defences expect the western threats to be like Russian threats with ESM and jamming and all sorts of other things hampering their work which is why they have done so well dealing with HIMARS and Storm Shadow and Javelin and Stinger and Starstreak and all the other systems the west expected to totally blitz the Russians and leaving them burning on the battlefield.

Ironically I think HATO systems don't have the same safety margin... as shown by the poor performance of Patriot, it is not designed to deal with Russian weapons or their drones, but that comes down to planning too... the Russians respect the western gear and expect it to be at least equal to their own so they send in drones and land mines and attack helicopters to "soften" the attack... their surprise that these measures actually stopped the attacks completely hopefully doesn't make them lose respect for western gear because underestimating your enemy is worse than over estimating them.