VVS Russian Airforce Force: News #2

A few years ago, Putin had greenlight a vtol fighter program. This was posted I believe during MAKS airshow. Now, while the Yak-41 jumpjet program was shelved, it doesn't mean they do not have the original plans and with modern technology, they could very well be developing a successor to it using what they still have knowledge on of the previous Yak jump jets.

Such a plane could be very useful in allowing Russia to have carriers without the need of building massive carriers. Instead, reinforced transport vessels are able to work.

I don't believe so. Many bombs are being dropped aren't entire all that heavy. But you are right, it limits based upon payload. But even then, acting as defense is also necessary.

Oh so it's just ONE crash. Another case of bad grammar and/or disinformation then?

No, it was just one crash, but the cause of the crash revealed a rather fundamental problem with the entire design... that the front mounted lift jet engines create very hot oxygen depleting engine exhaust near the front of the aircraft and when landing or taking off if that hot air with low levels of oxygen enter the main air intake also at the front of the aircraft... the engine can stall... the main engine.

And there are two times you are in a hover like that... taking off and landing... times when an engine surge or an engine stall can be hazardous to the structural integrity of the airframe.

One solution they talked about was a fan that was powered by a shaft drive to the main engine... as used on the F-35, but that would require a complete redesign... and that would achieve flight performance inferior to the MiG-29 that was already rejected because they couldn't afford a second carrier fighter... why would they spend money creating a third carrier fighter with inferior top speed and payload?

As for the Mig-23: It would have been pointless to try and develop 4th gen fighters that are inferior to the 3rd generation.

They had thousands of MiG-23s and MiG-27s... if they needed them they were available for immediate use... different things could be upgraded as required... radar and missiles first... a MiG-23 with R-73 missiles and R-27 missiles would have been superior to most western fighters in the 1990s simply because of the advantage of high offboresight air to air missiles, and the R-27s were superior to the Sparrow and Sky Flash missiles used by HATO countries at the time.

The 23mm cannon was an accurate and effective weapon for air to air use.

Fortunately the Soviets managed to avoid that embarrassing bit by developing 2 vastly superior machines compared to the previous generation!

The introduction of the Su-27 was dramatically slowed by the complexity of making the avionics... Keeping the single engined aircraft in service longer would have been useful... or at least not the end of the world... plenty of the worlds air forces continue to use much older aircraft even to this day... the Germans kept their F-4s longer than they kept their MiG-29s.

Fact is that the Yak-41 was about to be developed into a stealth VTOL fighter with internal weapon bays and they were gearing up for series production.

That is not a fact... there was not enough money to fix its basic design to avoid engine stalls in the hover... trying to make it stealthy with internal weapons was a dream of Yak and nothing more.

There simply was no money going to the military... it was not a case of the military stealing money, it was a case of no money making it to the military to start with.

A few years ago, Putin had greenlight a vtol fighter program. This was posted I believe during MAKS airshow. Now, while the Yak-41 jumpjet program was shelved, it doesn't mean they do not have the original plans and with modern technology, they could very well be developing a successor to it using what they still have knowledge on of the previous Yak jump jets.

They had plans for the Yak-36 and then Yak-38 and then Yak-41 and they might have new plans for a new design now, but only the Yak-38 entered service and what they learned from that is small carriers are not much use and the Yak-38 was worse than useless and wasted a lot of money.

They probably learned a bit about thrust vectoring which is why they have MiG-29OVT and Su-35 and Su-57 with thrust vectoring jet engines, so it wasn't totally wasted... and they managed to fool the Americans into making a VSTOL F-35... hahaha... but otherwise it is all a big dead end money pit.

Such a plane could be very useful in allowing Russia to have carriers without the need of building massive carriers. Instead, reinforced transport vessels are able to work.

The French, the British, the Americans, the Japanese, and the Soviets all thought this might be a good idea but in practise civilian ships are horribly vulnerable and have little to no defence or survivability from even the lightest battle damage.

The massive carriers are the most useful... which is why each new Soviet carrier got bigger and bigger with each design.

Tiny carriers are more vulnerable than bigger ones, but are not a lot cheaper to buy or to operate.

The British went through this too... claims that three days into WWIII the Harrier will be the only jet fighter operating because the Soviets will have destroyed all the airfields, while the Harrier can operate from any inner city carpark... except the jet engines directed downwards means it can't operate from grass strips... which it rips up and ingests enough dirt to grow potatoes in the engines. In a supermarket carpark plastic bags and rubbish being ingested into the engines ruins them rather quickly too... and the engine exhaust melts the tar seal.

When conventional jet aircraft showed the ability to take off and land from any 400m long strip of motorway then the idea of the Harrier was dropped pretty quickly.

Compared with the Yak-41 the Harrier had the advantage of not trying to be supersonic which just wastes fuel, so it could have a bigger wing offering better lift for better payloads and fuel weights.

VSTOL fighters are an unnecessary extravagance that results in crippling your navy because it saves money where it should not be saving it.

20 K ton carriers like the British carriers almost cost them that conflict... the helicopter based AEW left them mostly blind and the lack of decent Anti sub helicopters meant they had to sit back from the islands. This meant the subsonic Harriers were operating further away from the things they were supposed to be protecting... leading to large numbers of ships being sunk including warships.

If the conflict had happened 10 years earlier and the British had the Ark Royal with Phantoms and Buccaneers the Argentine pilots would have had rather more problems and fewer ships would have been lost... if any. No need for long range V bomber strikes... the Bucc would have done a better job taking out those airfields... and the Phantoms could have provided top cover.

Aircraft carriers area about providing eyes (AWACS) and reach (fighters).

Mini carriers and VSTOL fighters is what you end up when the bean counters have too much say... if you include the cost of development of the Sea Harrier and the cost of the mini carriers and also add in the cost of the ships that were lost because it did not do its job you would realise that a full sized carrier with decent conventional fighters and proper AWACS types are cheaper than VSTOL bullshit.

With VTOL aircraft become capable of little more than point defense..

A tiny carrier with VSTOL fighters is barely able to defend itself.

Lots of countries now are wanting tiny carriers with a VSTOL fighters, but are finding the VSTOL fighter they can use is the F-35 which is 3 or 4 times more expensive than a MIG-29K and rather more likely to crash. Britain wants bigger carriers and France has said its next carrier wont be 50K ton, it will be 75 K ton and nuke powered with cats. The CdG was made lighter because they thought it would be cheaper but with experience they want heavier and nuclear powered...

Even without fighters an aircraft carrier that can operate AWACS to provide detailed views of the air space from the sea surface to space makes the air defence missile systems on the ships more effective and powerful. Having fast long range fighter aircraft that can fly out to meet targets early and well away from your ships makes them much safer too. You might lose a plane but that is better that losing ships.


During war or during peace time being able to send aircraft to investigate means you have a situational awareness that is worth all the money in the world because it means in peace time you don't shoot down civilian airliners and in war you don't get surprise attacked because you thought that was an airliner and it wasn't.

Sorry but the hot air ingestion is/was a common problem for all VTOL fighters at the time - it has nothing to do with a "fundamental problem with the entire" Yak-41 design. Pilots were taught how to handle and prevent this phenomena that occurs at about 5 meters from the deck if I'm not mistaken?

Other VSTOL aircraft don't have the same level of problem but it is not only VSTOL jet fighters that suffer.... Apache helicopters in British service were found to have engine stalls when firing rockets from rocket pods on the inner weapon pylon.

The Harrier uses the engine to solve the problem... the air for the front two puffer jets is taken from a high pressure section before it reaches the combustion chamber so while it is not room temperature it is oxygen rich and can cause an engine surge rather than a flameout because the fuel can't combust due to lack of oxygen.

The F-35 uses an engine driven fan sucking air from above the aircraft and not burning fuel either so the airflow at the front of the aircraft is neither hot nor oxygen deprived.

A potential solution would be to replace the lift jet engines with electric engines that don't burn fuel, but creating engines with the astounding characteristics of the two engines in the Yak would be difficult.

They would only operate during takeoff and landing so takeoff power from the main engine could be used instead of powering the radar and other systems.

But in the 1990s that wasn't an option, and even today would need money invested to develop.... and if they don't have enough money for MiG-29Ks then there would be no money for an aircraft that was inferior... no matter the claims made for its future performance.

Full scale production of the Su-27 started in 1982 - one year later than the Mig-29. Dramatically slowed is a little harsh don't you think

The aircraft wasn't considered ready for service and fully operational until....

The Su-27 was officially put into service by a decree of the government of 23rd August 1990 after all the major faults identified during the tests had been remedied.

source:  https://web.archive.org/web/20150214080912/http://www.sukhoi.org/eng/planes/military/su27sk/history/

It wasn't a dream at all. The Yak-201 - a stealth modification of the Yak-41 was an actual development project and would have become a fully fledged 5th generation aircraft. The design of the Yak-201 was based on the traditional twin-tail but unlike its predecessors, it would have one power unit.

Well if you are talking about paper planes I much preferred the Yak-43 with the NK-32 engine from the Blackjack...

Ironically not a lot more powerful than later models of the R79 engine with further development...  25 ton vs 22 ton.

All weapons would have been located in the fuselage and it would have been a single seat fighter.

So it would be fatter.

The Yak-201 would probably form the basis of the next VTOL design.

I hope they have moved forward and have something better to waste money on.

So really no point in regurgitating it here.

Indeed.

Judging by the canopy and the internal weapons bay it is a small dual trainer/lightweight fighter that looks very much like a stealthy Yak-130 of approximately the same size.

A light 5th gen fighter is not supposed to replace the heavy 5th gen fighter and be more capable than it is. It is supposed to be smaller and lighter and cheaper and to achieve that it would be stupid to give it a 4,000km flight range and 10 ton weapon payload capacity.

Basing it on a small light aircraft like a Yak-130 type actually makes sense as long as it is actually stealthy.

Judging by the canopy I would say it is like the new MiGs and can be single or two seat using the same canopy.

he wing design is also quite conventional with a fairly gentle sweep to the rear.

There is no point in making the light 5th gen fighter a mach 2.8 rocket ship... making it a transsonic aircraft... mach 1.5 or so, they can make design decisions like wing sweep and materials that would not be possible if they wanted it to go faster. For the same reason the F-16 has a fixed simpler air intake because it was limited to mach 2 and the F-18 hornet was supposed to be cheaper by limiting its top speed to mach 1.8 or so.

Surprisingly, the now rather old fashioned rudder design, is also a feature on the shipborne stealth fighter! It also features oversized canards instead of the rather more advanced levcons found on the Su-57.

These are plastic models... the Su-75 doesn't have Levicons either... the shipborne stealth fighter is the light fighter for the navy... it would replace the MiG-29 not the Su-33.

Anyway back to the LFX. The small size of the aircraft limits the capacity of the internal weapons bay, but it does have 4 external underwing hardpoints for weapons and another one under the belly for a drop tank that fits between the doors of the weapons bay. Unlike the Su-75 no provision seems to be made for an auto cannon.

On the model shown. The model didn't appear to have RAM applied either... what do your amazing deduction powers tell you about that?

The short stubby - yet fully exposed jet engine nozzle - seems to lack any TVC and serrated edges.

Like most of the S-70 prototypes shown publicly. A few models show a more stealthy layout.

They are designing the aircraft... the engines are made by other companies.

Compared to the Su-75 it's design features are rather basic and the concept is likely aimed at Third World countries with much smaller budgets, with a dual trainer/light fighter role.

Rather ironic because the facts seem to suggest the opposite... the Su-75 has been revealed for export orders, while the MiG design is being kept secret.

No doubt the Russian AF will test the MiG and the Sukhoi and anything Yak or other OKBs can come up with but it seems to me that based on public information it is the MiG that is being funded by the Russian military.

The Su-75's stealth features appear to be far more elaborate and the Al-51 with its serrated TVC nozzle should give a very low IR signature as it is also well hidden behind the tail section of the fuselage.

They copy and pasted from an existing design... of course it is going to look more "stealthy" than a basic model shown at an airshow.

The Su-75 also offers 4 external hard points but it's internal weapons load far exceeds that of the Mig-LFX model. Not much else is known about the Mig-LFX model, but it would appear that the Su-75 would offer much better overall performance parameters compared to the Mig-LFX model.

If you want the highest performance then buy Su-57s... the purpose of the light 5th gen fighter is to provide a weapons platform with a modern engine and modern radar and EOs and modern weapons... if you have to carry 7 tons of weapons you really have to ask yourself what you have done wrong.

The movable beaver tails (ruddervators?) are yet another innovative and unique aerodynamic control feature from Sukhoi - much like the Levcons.

You have to ask yourself if such things are necessary for a light cheap numbers aircraft... when a more conventional design might simply do a better job.

I did read further... the plane was in service for 5 years before they got the design right and working properly.

No surprise... new generation engines and new generation radar and weapons, new generation IRST... but still...

Such an operative modality would have solved about all the problems of hot air ingestion so I am inclined to think that Yak was discontinued for the usual mix of TOTAL lack of funds (and if they would had any to spare they would have acquired Su-37 first), doctrinal infigtings and the single engine ban.

The Yak was discontinued because the Yak was not an operational aircraft... in fact it was no where near operational and was the third option behind the Su-33s and MiG-29Ks and they didn't even have funding to make MiG-29Ks... why would they complete development of the Yak which would likely prove rather more crash prone based on the service performance of the Yak-38 or the Harrier for that matter.

About the proposed new light fighters I would keep myself of the only sure things: the S-70, the PAK-DA and the PAK-DP.
These are the things that the Stavka wanted, these are the things that VKS would get for sure.
The rest a.t.m. are just scale models and mock ups.

The VVS expressed an interest in a light single engined fighter light strike aircraft.

If that was genuine they could start by putting the MiG-35 into serial production... it is not single engine but it is cheaper than the larger heavier Flanker alternatives and the number of engines really is not important, it is the cost.

Unfortunately in this game you'll have to be innovative and "forward thinking" or you'll be left behind...

And end up with an F-35 that is three times the price of an F-16 which is better in every regard to the F-35 except in RCS. In fact if you put the radar and systems of the F-35 in the F-16 you probably end up with a much better aircraft that is cheaper to buy, cheaper to operate.

This is how aircraft evolve from one generation to the other. Sukhoi surely knows how to do it - and they do it brilliantly.

Yeah, they can do no wrong.

The MiG-29/35 is too heavy... it is not different enough from the Su-35 and Su-30 so you might as well buy all Flankers.

If only they made a lighter cheaper single engined aircraft that was significantly different enough from the Flankers to make it a good choice... except the air force didn't want single engined fighters and the single engined light fighter they proposed was rejected by the customer.

5th gen and the MiG light 5th gen is a single engined fighter you now say is too light and not good enough for the job of light fighter, but the rather large and overweight Su-75 is perfect... even though we don't know that any of them has even flown yet...

Wasn't that long ago it was claimed that the MiG-35 was stupid and too big and that they should make a stealthy Yak-130 for the job to make it really cheap to buy and operate in large numbers.

Again, this new MiG design... which we really don't actually know much about, is too small and not enough internal weapon space because of course light aircraft need to carry payloads rivalling strategic bombers these days...

The Yak-130 is not stealthy and has no radar or internal weapon bays at all, but is obviously interesting as a start point....

A light 5th gen fighter should be cheap... it is the numbers aircraft. It does not need an enormous payload or range because it will be used in large numbers over the battlefield. Fitting it with Levicons and x tails just makes it more complex and expensive for only minor gains.
Su-57s and S-70s will be operating above these fighters clearing the skies of enemy aircraft at enormous ranges... one of the key advantages of these light stealthy fighters will be use their thermal optics and IRSTs and AESA radars to scan the airspace over the battlefield passing live high res intel to HQ and front line commanders who can find enemy positions for the aircraft or artillery to attack. This same information can be shared with attack helicopters and aircraft and drones so their picture of the battlefield is as up to date as possible and any threats are found and dealt with quickly before they can do a lot of damage.

Using parts of the F-15 to make an F-16 wouldn't make sense... using the same engine makes sense for commonality but it does increase the operational costs of the F-16. The Al-31 was more expensive than the RD-33 and still is... Chinese and Pakistani cheap single engined fighters use derivations of the RD-33 because it is cheaper. If they were the same price then they would use the more powerful Al-31 engine to improve performance.

Using one engine instead of two does not halve the operational costs of the aircraft... it halves the operational costs of the engines...

It also does not double the fuel consumption.

This discussion is going to be moved shortly, as it has very little to do with the topic.

Anyway, something I recall

The new supposed plane might very well be the MiG-41 interceptor.

Reason why, was apparently back in 2019 the design was finalized, so I wouldn't be surprised if they come out with some kind of flying prototype. Probably using a lot they learned from the Su-57 aircraft.