Su-57 Stealth Fighter: News #8

Rostec has created a stealth glass with improved performance


Specialists from the state corporation "Rostec" said that they have finalized the method of manufacturing stealth glass. Now the cockpit canopy of the "stealth aircraft" will receive improved characteristics that directly affect the combat potential and survivability of the winged vehicle.

The development belongs to engineers from ONPP "Technology" named after. A.G. Romashina (part of Rostec). It is reported that the new technology will reduce the radar visibility of the aviation complex and at the same time improve the optical characteristics, which just affect the survival rate, as well as the combat potential of the “stealth aircraft”.

According to Vladimir Artyakov, Deputy General Director of Rostec State Corporation, the first samples of stealth glass made on modernized equipment fully confirmed the design parameters.

As for the technology itself, it consists in using the thinnest films of metals and metal oxides deposited on the glass surface by magnetron sputtering in a vacuum installation. The latter, after refinement, makes it possible to deposit films with a significantly lower surface resistance due to an increase in the peak value of magnetron sputtering by more than 3 times. At least that's what the experts said.

Based on the data obtained during measurements and testing, the new stealth glass manufacturing technology makes it possible to improve the performance of aircraft cockpit glazing in terms of stealth by 20%.

https://en.topwar.ru/193919-rosteh-sozdal-stels-steklo-s-uluchshennymi-harakteristikami-dlja-samoletov-nevidimok.html

thegopnik wrote:https://tass.com/defense/1429737

Rostec invites Tom Cruise to MAKS-2023 expo to get first-hand knowledge of Su-57 fighter
Attentive viewers of the "Top Gun: Maverick" movie trailer starring Tom Cruise noticed a jet fighter in one clip that strongly resembles the Su-57
MOSCOW, March 30. /TASS/. Russia’s Rostec invited US actor Tom Cruise to visit the MAKS-2023 international aviation expo, so that he could learn first-hand about the capabilities of the newest Russian Su-57 jet fighter, the Rostec press office told TASS Wednesday.

Attentive viewers of the "Top Gun: Maverick" movie trailer starring Tom Cruise noticed a jet fighter in one clip that strongly resembles the Su-57. The US pilot observes the plane from his cockpit during a dogfight.

"The Su-57 is a powerful and advanced machine. It impresses and inspires, not just the military, but, as we can see, movie directors as well. We invite Tom Cruise to the MAKS-2023 expo to get better acquainted with the Su-57 and to see an impressive piloting of this plane by Russian ace pilots in person," the Rostec press office said.

"Top Gun: Maverick" takes place 36 years after the original 1986 movie, in 2022. The first time the Su-57 took to the skies was on January 29, 2010, which makes it possible for the plane to appear in the movie’s storyline. The plane was tested in real combat conditions in 2018 in Syria. It is possible that the filmmakers took note of the new Russian plane and included it in the movie.

The Su-57 is a fifth-general multipurpose jet fighter, designed to destroy all kinds of airborne, ground and naval targets. It features a supersonic cruise speed, internal weapon bays, radio wave-absorbing coating, and a cutting-edge avionics system. By late 2024, the Russian Aerospace Forces should receive 22 jets, by 2028, their number will be increased to 76. The first fighter entered service in 2020.

That's just cringe, kind of how rogozin invited musk.

It is clear who the bad guys are though... who is inviting whom to what is the real question, Musk getting invited to space related stuff or Cruise getting invited to aircraft related stuff is not the same as Putin being invited to Nazi and nuclear and bio weapon related stuff...

Source: Russia uses Su-57 in special operation in Ukraine

The aircraft operate outside the zone of active destruction by enemy air defense systems, using rocket weapons

MOSCOW, May 20. /tass/. The Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) use Su-57 fighter jets during a special military operation in Ukraine. This was told to TASS by a source in the military-industrial complex.

"The use of Su-57 aircraft in Ukraine began within two or three weeks after the start of the special operation. The aircraft operate outside the zone of active destruction by enemy air defense systems, using missile weapons, " the source said.

TASS has no official information on this matter.

https://tass.ru/armiya-i-opk/14679393

Not seen this photo before.

Its in this pretty comprehensive article https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/lets-talk-about-the-rumors-that-russias-su-57-is-participating-in-the-war-in-ukraine

JohninMK wrote:Not seen this photo before.

Sweet pic, man.  Is Sukhoi up to 4 production aircraft now or is it 5?  I'm really hoping this war doesn't slow things down.

Another couple pics.

5, one delivered end of 2020, another 2 end of 2021 and 2 more beginning of 2022, IIRC

LMFS wrote:5, one delivered end of 2020, another 2 end of 2021 and 2 more beginning of 2022, IIRC

I thought 5 were delivered in 2021. If the above is true, production rates haven't picked up in the slightest, and the Su-57 is built like a boutique super car, not a serially  produced aircraft. What happened to the enhanced reality assembly assistance? This should have massively upped production numbers. The production numbers should be 15-20 Su-57s per year. But this may be a pipe dream given that even Su-35 numbers are less than 20 per year, and the infinitely simpler(in terms of electronics, metallurgy, composite material engineering, semiconductors) inokhodets is produced in even more pathetic boutique numbers.

They're waiting for the new engines

The air force doesn't consider it enough of an improvement over the Su-35S without them

Although I'd argue that the current conflict in the Ukraine is showing how far a little stealth can go

It might well be making the difference between those radars in Poland, Romania, etc... detecting you and ahead of time - or not

lancelot wrote:This is a decision purely driven by the top. They want to wait until Su-57M is available to put the aircraft in mass production. Perhaps the current conflict in Ukraine will change their minds but it remains to be seen. Personally I think it is idiotic to continue producing the Su-35 which uses the same engine resource when you can produce the Su-57. But whatever.

Its idiotic to still produce Su-30s instead of ramping up Su-35 production.


Also any news on the R-77M? On one side, western and chinese analysts gloat that it isnt close to being ready and isn't being used at all, while other rarer views suggest that its produced in small batches but its not shown in service over secrecy. The former recently love to gloat that the Russians are lagging behind in missile technology compared to the chinese, contsantly citing how the PL-15 blows the R-77-1 out of the water and its in mass production since the mid 2010s. Regardless of the Pl-15, russians need 150km+ range AAMs for all of their fighters, preferably ramjet powered ones.

limb wrote:

lancelot wrote:This is a decision purely driven by the top. They want to wait until Su-57M is available to put the aircraft in mass production. Perhaps the current conflict in Ukraine will change their minds but it remains to be seen. Personally I think it is idiotic to continue producing the Su-35 which uses the same engine resource when you can produce the Su-57. But whatever.

Its idiotic to still produce Su-30s instead of ramping up Su-35 production.

AFAIK the only versions of the Su-30s being produced at the moment are the ones manufactured by the Irkut plant. So it makes sense. The Su-35 is manufactured by KnAAPO and so you won't be able to ramp up its production anyway by cancelling Su-30SM2 orders for Irkut
Besides which, as a 2-seater it has a different niche to the Su-35

I'm thinking in the future the Su-57 will be modified into a 2-seater variant that might be manufactured at Irkut. But we're talking late 2020s here.

Russia does not need to pump out enormous numbers of anything except possibly small drones and guided missiles of all types, but also air burst 30mm and 57mm shells.

They have Su-30s and Su-35s in production and also MiG-35s in production and Su-57s in production too and S-70 which will help boost numbers for all of these types is about to start production too... in terms of numbers they are pretty much set.

Moving forward there will be Su-75 vs whatever MiG might come up with and a carrier based Su-57 and a lighter hopefully twin engined carrier based fighter to be developed too... otherwise they are in a great position.

Personally I think it is idiotic to continue producing the Su-35 which uses the same engine resource when you can produce the Su-57. But whatever.

Give them a few years experience to decide whether the costs of the Su-57 and the performance is justified... it might be that the stealthy aircraft costs more and has more capability than is needed for some roles... in which case it makes sense to continue to produce the Su-35 which is already an excellent aircraft and the Su-30 which has been upgraded to essentially be a two seat Su-35.

It is the US that wants an all stealth fighter fleet, not Russia... and it is more to do with ego and pride than any actual tangible advantage it might give.

It might turn out that the S-70 is stealthy enough so Su-35s with S-70s can do jobs better than Su-57s alone could manage... the Su-35 has the advantage of more weapon stores of course...

Its idiotic to still produce Su-30s instead of ramping up Su-35 production.

The Su-30 is essentially a two seat Su-35 so it probably makes more sense than an Su-35 because it offers two seats which the Su-57 does not have.

Also any news on the R-77M? On one side, western and chinese analysts gloat that it isnt close to being ready and isn't being used at all, while other rarer views suggest that its produced in small batches but its not shown in service over secrecy. The former recently love to gloat that the Russians are lagging behind in missile technology compared to the chinese, contsantly citing how the PL-15 blows the R-77-1 out of the water and its in mass production since the mid 2010s. Regardless of the Pl-15, russians need 150km+ range AAMs for all of their fighters, preferably ramjet powered ones.

Yeah, that is quite amusing because the R-37M was designed to be used by all of the new Russian fighters... ie Su-35, MiG-35, Su-57, and so is the Item 810 replacement for that missile.

The story is that they dropped development on the ramjet powered R-77 for the version with the improved rocket motor, but you have to ask, if a mach 6 AAM with an air breathing motor is useful then what about a mach 10 AAM with an air breathing scramjet motor...

All the problems involved in making a ramjet powered AAM would be similar to those making a scramjet powered AAM except the performance would be much much better.

Instead of a HE warhead it could store metal cubes along its body with a tube of HE down the centre to scatter the cubes a fraction of a second before impact... a shower of cubes moving at several kms per second would be devastating even with just a dispersion charge to spread them out just before impact.

It could be smart fused to throw them in one direction or another to increase the damage done to the target.

And those that say they can't make combined rocket ramjet missiles... they invented the concept with the SA-6 SAM for goodness sake, not to mention the Kh-31 anti radiation and anti ship missiles and of course their range of ramjet powered supersonic anti ship missiles... some of which are the size of small jet trainers...

I'm thinking in the future the Su-57 will be modified into a 2-seater variant that might be manufactured at Irkut. But we're talking late 2020s here.

Perhaps a two seat carrier capable version with folding wings...

limb wrote:

lancelot wrote:This is a decision purely driven by the top. They want to wait until Su-57M is available to put the aircraft in mass production. Perhaps the current conflict in Ukraine will change their minds but it remains to be seen. Personally I think it is idiotic to continue producing the Su-35 which uses the same engine resource when you can produce the Su-57. But whatever.

Its idiotic to still produce Su-30s instead of ramping up Su-35 production.


Also any news on the R-77M? On one side, western and chinese analysts gloat that it isnt close to being ready and isn't being used at all, while other rarer views suggest that its produced in small batches but its not shown in service over secrecy. The former recently love to gloat that the Russians are lagging behind in missile technology compared to the chinese, contsantly citing how the PL-15 blows the R-77-1 out of the water and its in mass production since the mid 2010s. Regardless of the Pl-15, russians need 150km+ range AAMs for all of their fighters, preferably ramjet powered ones.

What do analysts know about the development of the r-77M ? Who cares about their opinions.

R-77-1 is used by only russian air force and is an improved r-77 which in its export version lags behind last US and chinese missiles. But the r-77-1 is another beast and no one knows its real caracteristics.

R-77M will be in the range of 190-200km. Tye only footage we got may even show 2 versions with one getting a ramjet while the other one a rocket motor.

Chinese pl-15 is said to be in the rnge of 200-300km yet its export version is only 145km (and its max range against a dumb slow head on target). So I highly doubt they can have such differences for a same missile and their domestic variant may be just slightly better with a range of 160km.

US have launched new programs because amraam seem to be way behind new russian and chinese missiles.

Most Chinese weaponry is vaporware, very little if any is combat proven. The best jets they have are the ones they received ToT and manufacturing rights from Russia, they still buy Billions of dollars worth of Russian arms while Russia buys almost nothing from them. They bought AL-31F's for the J-20 because the engines they had at the time sucked, but suddenly they're ahead of Russia by all conceivable parameters and Russia needs to catch up? 
Give me a   break, 5-6 years from now they'll be manufacturing Su-57's on license and buying S-500's while online Chinese trolls will still brag about how far advanced Chinese armaments are of Russia.

Don't confuse China fanboy trolls with China... there are plenty of Russian fanboys posting shit on the internet too about super stuff they exaggerate based on their own personal speculation rather than any actual facts.

China has money and talented engineers... thanks to oil and gas money Russia had some money in the early 2000s and talented engineers but still needed to buy some technologies to catch up in some areas. They bought French thermal imaging technology and Israeli drone technology... none of it was the best they had but was good enough to get Russia up a huge leap in terms of performance, for which internal competition and cooperation led to them now not needing to import everything despite both being complex and expensive niche technologies that most countries who have the technology spent decades and large amounts of money perfecting.

Everyone has some limitations... the Russians lacked thermal imaging technology and knowledge because they went for low light level TV technology like the Shkval in the Ka-50 and Su-25TM... EO systems that were also used in Kornet and Pantsir and other systems like auto target trackers for tanks firing laser guided missiles etc etc.

Buying French technology boosted them up to a world class level, but their level of materials technology and also their theoretical physics knowledge means their potential to move forward and not just continue to copy but actually innovate is strong.

BTW having the longest range AAM does not mean you win... AAMs can be shot down as can SAMs... you just need to look at the air launched Iskander called Dagger (Kinzhal) to see the benefit of picking a surface launched missile and lifting it above the thickest layers of the atmosphere and accelerating it up to speed before launching it to realise you can triple or quadruple its flight range depending on how high and how fast you launch it from.

Now imagine the effect of launching the two 9M96 S-350 SAMs from an aircraft... the smaller of the two with a 60km range and the larger of the two a 150km range from the ground, but with modern accurate ARH seekers intented to hit all sorts of threat targets from ground level to about 30km altitude including ballistic threats and helicopters...

They are slim missiles without lots of wings and fins sticking out so they would be easy to carry on twin or triple pylon mounts and would be easy to mount internally in a weapon bay on a fighter or a bomber...

But that is an example of fanboy stuff... we have heard rumours about S-500 being carried and launched by MiG-41 potentially, but no mention of the S-350 being modified for air launch... it is only used on Army systems (S-350) and Navy systems (Redut).

Isos wrote:

limb wrote:

lancelot wrote:This is a decision purely driven by the top. They want to wait until Su-57M is available to put the aircraft in mass production. Perhaps the current conflict in Ukraine will change their minds but it remains to be seen. Personally I think it is idiotic to continue producing the Su-35 which uses the same engine resource when you can produce the Su-57. But whatever.

Its idiotic to still produce Su-30s instead of ramping up Su-35 production.


Also any news on the R-77M? On one side, western and chinese analysts gloat that it isnt close to being ready and isn't being used at all, while other rarer views suggest that its produced in small batches but its not shown in service over secrecy. The former recently love to gloat that the Russians are lagging behind in missile technology compared to the chinese, contsantly citing how the PL-15 blows the R-77-1 out of the water and its in mass production since the mid 2010s. Regardless of the Pl-15, russians need 150km+ range AAMs for all of their fighters, preferably ramjet powered ones.

What do analysts know about the development of the r-77M ? Who cares about their opinions.

R-77-1 is used by only russian air force and is an improved r-77 which in its export version lags behind last US and chinese missiles. But the r-77-1 is another beast and no one knows its real caracteristics.

R-77M will be in the range of 190-200km. Tye only footage we got may even show 2 versions with one getting a ramjet while the other one a rocket motor.

Chinese pl-15 is said to be in the rnge of 200-300km yet its export version is only 145km (and its max range against a dumb slow head on target). So I highly doubt they can have such differences for a same missile and their domestic variant may be just slightly better with a range of 160km.

US have launched new programs because amraam seem to be way behind new russian and chinese missiles.

The R-77-1 is exactly the same as the RVV-SD. They both have a 110km range against nonmaneuvering targets.

Yeah, that is quite amusing because the R-37M was designed to be used by all of the new Russian fighters... ie Su-35, MiG-35, Su-57, and so is the Item 810 replacement for that missile.

R-37M is a different class of missile, and its not ideal against fighter sized targets.

Do we even know if izd.810 has left mockup phase yet?


Also all medium to long range AAMs use lofted trajectories, making them have a huge energy advantage over intercepting missiles. You keep claiming that AAMs can destroy other AAMs. Has this ever been tested by any air force? If yes, which one, when and what was the probability of successfully hitting them.

Rvv-sd is the export version of r-77-1. It doesn't have the same caracteristics, russian are known to downgrade export versions.

Actually there was work on r-27AE with 130km range which should have been used for the r-77-1. So if the export version RVV-SD is 110km then the r-77-1 is at least 130km.

Btw those numbers are full of shit because they won't disclose the real value to the enemy.

Isos wrote:Rvv-sd is the export version of r-77-1. It doesn't have the same caracteristics, russian are known to downgrade export versions.

Actually there was work on r-27AE with 130km range which should have been used for the r-77-1. So if the export version RVV-SD is 110km then the r-77-1 is at least 130km.

Btw those numbers are full of shit because they won't disclose the real value to the enemy.

How do we know that the AIM-120 D doesn't have 180km range and the MBDA meteor doesn't have 250km range? That could be their non doiwngraded range.

The R-77 has more subsonic e drag due to grid fins and is a smaller missile than the R-27, so it's believabls that it has lower no escape zone