Competing Aircraft Designs of the 90's and Beyond

Besides the Russians don't have too many Mig-29's around - let alone Mig-35's!

Because of their own decisions and choices.

If they decide they need to massively ramp up the number of modern fighters they have they could do it faster and cheaper by making MiG-29Ms and MiG-35s.

Later on as the technology gets cheaper they could upgrade those MiG-29Ms to MiG-35 standard easily enough.

however I think they will rather concentrate their efforts into producing more Su-57's. This is the fighter they really need to counter the west.

If they need lots of aircraft quickly that can carry modern AAMs and launch them at targets at massive distances then they will be able to crank out MiG-29Ms faster than any other type at the moment and the cost of operating them won't break their budget that also has to pay for new missiles of a range of types.

The Su-57 and it's little checkmate brother is going to be needed.

The fact that Checkmate has been revealed to the public suggests it is not the Russian AF funded project for light 5th gen fighter, which is secret.

It would be that single engined MiG model that is derided as a fighter trainer type aircraft, but ironically that would be the best light 5th gen design.

Small, cheap to buy, cheap to operate, stealthy with internal weapons... single engined. That is what they wanted, but it seems anything MiG is bad.

Mir wrote:

GarryB wrote:That is what they wanted, but it seems anything MiG is bad.

Not at all! I just think Mig is currently tied up with the development of the "Mig-41" which by all accounts is an enormous and very challenging task.

Not taking all the ressources.

Mig has already worked on new light trainer jets, new 5th gen fighter and the modernized mig-29, the mig-35.

They could easily develop a light single engine 5th gen fighter with their previous works. It's not like they would go from scratch. They spent all the 00s till 2020 developing the SMT variant, the M and 35 which isn't impressive.

Mig-41 is a big program and they are lucky they had the mig-31 so they naturally received the funds for it. If not, sukhoi would have won it too.

Reality is they don't receive enough money. Neither from export nor from russians. They barely have to sustain normal company activities.

As far as I'm concerned, I think that for a country the size of Russia, the MiG-29 aircraft platform is insufficient.
That aircraft was forgotten for decades and, unlike the Su-27 platform, it did not receive successors (at least not in large numbers) in the past decades, such as the Su-30SM and Su-35S and even the Su-34 strike variant.
I don't think that the Russian idea of ​​going with the single-engine principle with the Su-75 as well as the F-35 is good. I think the best thing is done by the Chinese with the FC-31.
I think that every pilot will much more appreciate an airplane that has a higher rate of climb, a better range, a larger payload, and therefore better maneuverability. Two engines are two engines and there is nothing to be smart about. Russia needs the Su-57 first and a successor to the still unbeatable MiG-31.

Mir wrote:

mnztr wrote:

Just maintain a patrol with MIG-31. They can get close enough real fast to launch R-37's . You don't need more the 4 planes to cover a massive amount of space.

The Su-35 can pretty much do the same thing (not to mention the Su-57). The whole Su-27/30 family is perfectly suitable for the CAP role with their huge internal fuel loads. They can also be used as point interceptors or air superiority fighters with a lighter fuel load but also with a serious amount of AA missiles. Besides the Russians don't have too many Mig-29's around - let alone Mig-35's!  

What the Mig 31 has is its ability to far more rapidly close to launch range and launch from much higher altitude and speed imparting much more energy on the missile and significantly increasing its range. that extra 20K feet and 700 kph makes a big difference

Not at all! I just think Mig is currently tied up with the development of the "Mig-41" which by all accounts is an enormous and very challenging task.

In terms of development that will be some work, but their production and suppliers for engines and radar and other equipment, not to mention the factories that normally build their planes will be idle doing nothing waiting to assemble MiG-41 prototypes or upgrade MiG-31s. Making some new fighters would be good for them and for Russia.

They could easily develop a light single engine 5th gen fighter with their previous works.

They are doing that most likely. The claim from officials was that when the Su-57 entered serial production that funding for the light partner to it would be funded, so it should be getting funding now.

They spent all the 00s till 2020 developing the SMT variant, the M and 35 which isn't impressive.

To be fair the MiG-35 has most of the features of the Rafale for a tiny fraction of the price. 8 billion might only get you 30 Rafales, but it would probably get you 200 MiG-29Ms or 150 MiG-35s.

I know which would be more use.

Mig-41 is a big program and they are lucky they had the mig-31 so they naturally received the funds for it. If not, sukhoi would have won it too.

Sukhoi has no historic experience with speed record breaking aircraft for the PVO. The Su-15 was mach 2 capable, but was not a ground breaking design.

Reality is they don't receive enough money. Neither from export nor from russians. They barely have to sustain normal company activities.

Mostly due to decision beyond their control and the power of Sukhoi influencing decisions in their own favour... not a good way to run the military.

The SMO taught the Russians some hard lessons - and even more so when it comes to the navy. Lets see where all that money goes but I am willing to say that the navy will get a fair slice of the pie - and that includes new submarines.

I would say lesson number one was that  big ships that are not upgraded with modern air defence equipment are not as useful as they appear, but the biggest lesson they should realise is that they were in a colony slave relationship with the west where most of their trade went through western markets and western ports to the rest of the world and that their future is to break away from that and to trade with the rest of the world directly. That means they need a civilian merchant marine force that is much bigger than now and they need a decent navy to support that.

Submarines are mostly defensive things that are only really useful during war time, and have little real influence during peacetime.

Not suggesting they don't need subs, but they need surface ships that can visit foreign ports and show the flag and make foreign countries feel safer trading with you.

Building international naval trade will pay for the ships you need and more so.

The UK and US didn't become powerful and then build big navies... it was their navies that gave them global reach and access to markets that made them rich.

but for decades things in the VMF are not as they should be and what's worst - the fleet is shrinking.

There are lots of ships that need replacing in the VMF and you can't replace them all at once. Ships and subs take time to build... perhaps now is an excellent time to pause most new construction and finish things being built and using the time to upgrade and improve the shipyards themselves so that they can produce ships faster and more efficiently, and then start producing more. They are having civilian ships built in India with Indian money they have... that is sensible too because it expands production capacity for things that will make money for Russia.

Neither the Mig-AT jet trainer nor the Mig1.41 was a great success in terms of design.

Both cases were a bit dodgy in my opinion. The MiG-AT was much cheaper than the Yak-130 in addition to be rather simpler too, and probably would have been a better aircraft they could have produced in larger numbers and gotten them into service faster.

The S-37 that beat the MiG 1.41 looked nothing like the final aircraft so by what criteria was it better if they had to completely and fundamentally change the design for the final product?

The MiG 1.41 could arguably be said to be flying in larger numbers in China...



There are less changes between the MiG 1.41 and the J-20 than between the S-37 and Su-57.

Decades later it was developed into the New Mig-29M and Mig-35 but it was too little too late.

But is it?

A modern F-16 is not a bad plane for right now with many features and capabilities the F-35 is not good enough for in its current and foreseeable versions and the MiG-35 is just a twin engined F-16 really, though with thrust vectoring probably rather better in close combat.

That aircraft was forgotten for decades and, unlike the Su-27 platform, it did not receive successors (at least not in large numbers) in the past decades, such as the Su-30SM and Su-35S and even the Su-34 strike variant.

The Su-30 is a fancy name for a Su-27UB, the MiG-29SMT and MiG-29M and MiG-29KR and MiG-35... all they are missing is an Su-34 equivalent, which is redundant really.

The Mig-AT had a low set straight wing and was overall aerodynamically inferior to the Yak-130. The MiG-AT's fly-by-wire controls allowed the aircraft to replicate the characteristics of third- and fourth-generation jet fighters, whilst the Yak-130 can do all that and is also able to replicate the characteristics of several 4+ generation fighters as well as the fifth-generation Sukhoi Su-57.

The MiG AT was much cheaper and simpler and could have done the job better. The Yak was expensive and got the job because it had a heavier external payload of 3 tons vs 2 tons for the AT. The claim being that the  Yak-130 could be developed into a light cheap fighter and also a light ground attack type to replace the MiG-29 and the Su-25, except it was expensive and had a foreign engine too so it was a while before they got it into serial production and it still hasn't replace all the L29s.

It was tested as a replacement standoff ground attack platform but was too fragile to operate over the battlefield. The light fighter has the same problem... too vulnerable because it lacks all the things that makes fighters useful... when you add those things on then it wasn't much cheaper than a MiG-29M.

There was talk of putting the MiG-AT into production to be used as a cheap simple Jet trainer with the Yak-130s being the advanced jet trainers.

Neither types have thrust vectoring engines so full simulation of 5th gen fighters is not possible.

The Italians liked the design so much that they practically stole the design for their M-346 Master advanced trainer.

Their Italians and their western customers are more used to spending enormous amounts of money on a LIFT... Russia needed a jet trainer they could make in enormous numbers that airfields could use as a hack...

A number of those technologies found it's way in the Su-35 and current fifth-generation jet fighter Su-57, but it was never designed as a 5th gen fighter.

It was the design competition to decide which company would take lead on what eventually became the Su-57.

The prototype Mig1.41 (1.44) did not offer any real advanced stealth features in the design and it had no internal weapons bay

Being a prototype I doubt they were interested in revealing their secrets to the public and their enemies... with that forward swept wing the S-37 wouldn't be very stealthy either... those forward swept wings acting like a radar reflector in the forward hemisphere... not to mention those canards.

The period after SMO...

* VVS priority number 1; PAK-DP
The MiG should focus on the PAK-DP because the MiG-31 has no major problems other than the ravages of time.
I think that the entire OAK and certainly Sukhoi will work on this plane. If nothing else, production of PAK-DP could FINALLY go full steam ahead in "Sokol".
All aircraft manufacturing companies produce something (KAPO, NAPO, Avaistar-SP, Irkut, and especially KNAAZ), but I'm not sure about "Sokol".
Except for a solid number of crashes in flight, the MiG-31 not only exceeded all other expectations, but it is really an extraordinary machine.

* The Tu-160M ​​and Su-57 have finally become the present and are being produced, thank God, and the serial production of the S-70 Okhotnik (English pronunciation; Okhotnik) is on the way. What is the intended role of that giant UCAV and how the Russians will use it remains to be seen.

* Su-30SM/34/35S; I think that all aircraft based on the Su-27 platform will cease to be produced either by the end of this decade or by the middle of the next decade.

I don't know what the Russians are doing in terms of replacing the light transport aircraft and the medium transport aircraft, so I don't know how legitimate it is to use the Il-112V and Il-276 designations anymore.
There is also a problem for the replacement of anti-submarine platforms. The biggest problem of Russian aviation is; light transport aircraft, medium TA, as well as the new ASW aircraft.
Transport aviation remains the biggest problem even though the workhorse (and basis of the Russian TA) is finally yielding results and Aviastar-SP is producing more and more Il-76MD-90A.
The work on the Il-78M-90A is certainly nearing completion, and I hope that Beriev will complete the A-100 as well.

I wouldn't waste my time on the single engine Su-75.
I'm sorry, but a single-engine plane has no climbing speed, no range, smaller radar, smaller payload, worse maneuverability, lower flight ceiling.
It is good for dispersing crows and seagulls in peacetime over Kaliningrad and Sevastopol, but if a conflict starts then you need Su-57 and PAK-DP will be needed.
I think that in 5 to 10 years, stealth will be far less "famous" than it is now, and then we will return to the flight characteristics of the aircraft. I know that every pilot looks at the flight characteristics of the plane first.

It's better to have two "eggs" than one, right ?

Mir wrote:@GarryB
Fact is - NONE of these Mig aircraft ever made it into production for the VVS (6 Mig-35's just don't cut it). On the other hand the Yak-130, the Su-35 and the Su-57 did.

Mig-29K for Indian Navy and Russian Navy weren't bad at all.

Pinnacle of what Mikoyan can do is MiG-31. And I do believe they still have it in them to do the replacement and advancements of the MiG-31. MiG-29 was fantastic as a light fighter but has taken a rather back seat since sukhoi got the financing.

...and are they rolling off the production line? I think the Yak-152 won that competition for a basic trainer?

The talk was just talk, just like they didn't adopt the SR-10 as a basic jet trainer either, but the fact remains the Yak-130 is too expensive for what it is.

Maybe it is because they haven't used Yaks in a while and it has become a boutique organisation kept alive with its LIFT programme...

If some people here get their wish the same might happen to MiG and the MiG-41 might get horribly expensive too.

I have not seen any advance trainer with thrust vectoring - have you?

Well it is really only Russia that has fighters with thrust vectoring engines as an option as standard so that really isn't surprising.

However most advanced trainers claim to be able to simulate the latest gen fighters and they do it pretty well...as advanced trainers.

Simulate... not replicate.

The thing is that the Su-35 and presumably new upgraded Su-30s have TVC and the MiG-35 was supposed to have that too so I would say it would be standard on modern Russian 4++ and 5th gen fighters moving forward which would make thrust vectoring flight an important part of flight training moving forward.

Note their LIFTs are not supersonic capable but you don't really need to train for that.

I would say a Yak-130 with TVC engines might actually be interesting as a light fighter... but then that model of the new MiG light 5th gen fighter could be the basis of a new light fighter and also a new LIFT too.

As I've said the S-37 was an experimental aircraft and the forward swept wings was there for science. It proved to be extremely effective in high G maneuvers.

But not stealthy and it was never going to be stealthy because forward swept wings reflect radar forward while rear swept wings redirect radar sideways...

They used the S-37 to test a few different technologies including forward swept wings which were not much use for a stealth fighter but might have been useful for something else.

why would Mig build a prototype 5th gen stealth fighter technology demonstrator and then actually build one with nearly zero stealth features?

Why do western "experts" admit the current Su-57 is stealthy when they claimed the flying prototypes were not. Even the S-70 had a non stealthy engine nozzle which will be changed in the service model. The flying prototype was to test aerodynamics and flight performance and other things related to flight and manufacture. The stealthy model was supposed to be kept secret but was designed to be stealthy.

You keep it a secret in a hanger until you reveal the prototype. Clearly they lacked the expertise at that stage.

Lacking expertise presumes there was no hangar prototype that was stealthy because they couldn't manage it.

Prototypes are hand made and I would argue that most countries can make a stealth prototype... mass production in a factory built to tolerances that maintain stealthy performance is another matter of course... do you think Sukhois factories just went from Su-35s to Su-57s without any problems or issues at all?

"...those canards"? You must be joking

The priority for Russian 5th gen fighters was to be able to fight and be stealthy second.

Who is to say what those canards are made of... they could be radar transparent for all we know.

Fact is - NONE of these Mig aircraft ever made it into production for the VVS (6 Mig-35's just don't cut it). On the other hand the Yak-130, the Su-35 and the Su-57 did.

And the VVS never makes bad choices?

The MiG-AT is a better trainer aircraft than the Yak-130... when discussing putting the MiG into production it was admitted as such... the costs of the Yak-130 are like that of a light fighter like a MiG-29SMT but it is no fighter and making it a useful light fighter would make it cost rather more without reaching the cost performance of the MiG-35.

The Su-35 makes sense and so does the Su-57 but Russia can't really afford an all Su-35 and Su-57 fleet... they are just too expensive and cost too much to operate to have them in useful numbers to protect the entire country.

Sukhoi admit that themselves when they talk about Su-75s and their low purchase price and low operational costs... but of course they want to sell aircraft.

Mig-29K for Indian Navy and Russian Navy weren't bad at all.

And the reason the Russian Navy wanted MiG-29Ks was because it was a numbers aircraft. With Su-33s, perhaps upgraded to Su-35s they wont be able to carry as many aircraft as they could if they had both Flankers and MiGs and numbers are important too.

MiG-29 was fantastic as a light fighter but has taken a rather back seat since sukhoi got the financing.

It think it is more about poltics... Sukhoi people secured high up jobs where they get to make decisions for government and they prefer Flankers.

Quite old, but good video explaining Russian doomers

And his comparison of Russians thinking government will screw things up and Americans thinking they can do no wrong because they are the good guys... is about right and about what most pro west people think... Russians are realists and pessimists, which makes them frustrating at times, because pessimists miss opportunities because they expect to fail or lose. A bit like lacking confidence and not going for a better job.

There was a YT video for HT saying Biden is not telling Zelensky to talk peace.

The amusing thing is that they probably think Putin will accept things the way they are now, but I think they have a shock coming....

GarryB wrote:

...and are they rolling off the production line? I think the Yak-152 won that competition for a basic trainer?

The talk was just talk, just like they didn't adopt the SR-10 as a basic jet trainer either, but the fact remains the Yak-130 is too expensive for what it is.

Maybe it is because they haven't used Yaks in a while and it has become a boutique organisation kept alive with its LIFT programme...

If some people here get their wish the same might happen to MiG and the MiG-41 might get horribly expensive too.

The problem with the Yak-152 is the lack of engine for it. It was supposed to use the RED A03 V-12 diesel engine. But it was made in Germany and with EU sanctions on sales of military related equipment after 2014 annexation of Crimea it just wasn't possible to get the engine anymore. Considering this engine was made by a Russian designer with Russian funding, it was a big mistake to make the factory in Germany.

Until the VK-650 turboprop engine is available, or they get the APD-500 engine of the Aurus certified for aircraft use, this project is going nowhere.

The issues have nothing to do with Yakolev design bureau or the factory. The bureau is working just fine as can be seen by Yak-130 and MS-21 aircraft programs. The factory is still producing the Yak-130. And I wouldn't call its production "boutique". The factory produced almost 200 such aircraft.

Mir wrote:
The Yak-130 unit price is given at around $15 million on the open market. The very basic Mig-29 was around $20 million per unit at the time. The SMT is far more advanced and the cost of a current generation Mig-29 is close to $30 million.

These planes were never advertised as light fighters. Outside the training role they can take COIN tasks meaning very light strike/recon/air support.

Nobody ever bought any model in quantity to be used for these roles. It's merely advertised because it can be done, so why not. It's a sideeffect of having weapon loadout and electronics on a flying machine, nothing more. Just like the modern fridge has a web browser, doesn't mean anyone is buying them for web browsing.

Re. MiG-31. It's one of the greatest assets left over from USSR to Russia. The importance of the aircraft is depicted in Tolkachev's defection story. VVS budget suffered heavily but refactoring leaked components was a hard priority. I heard that cost until 1992 would cover about 30% more operational Su-27S/P in the fleet. On the other hand, NATO had no way of really knowing state of MiG-31B for years. They could've slowed down on the mitigation plan, allocate the funds elsewhere, but they didn't and it tells a lot. It means that MiG-31 was so crucial to defense of the country and multiple important military programs should suffer budget cuts instead.

I had a keen interest in this airship. Spent years gathering materials, books, anything that can be found.
One of the most impressive stories was a crew interview from the mid 80s. On the surface, nothing thrilling in it, but the way the pilots described interaction with the aircraft as it were a computer and they were in a game is the earliest example of pilot comfort, reduced workload, increased situational awareness "testimony" in a Russian setting.

Since 2005 I've claimed publicly that MiG-31 is able to mission kill F-22 without any issues and I still stand by that.

Arrow wrote:

We won't find out anytime soon. The MiG-41 may appear in two decades.

Yeah. In this situation they need to do it in secrecy. And that raises the effort massively.

Modern processes and full secrecy do not go well together. If it takes the same security effort to handle data as in a secure military installation, that will massively hamper the speed of the development and the number of potential people that can work on this project in any capacity. MiG-41 needs to fly faster and higher and shoot more lethal weapons than anything deployed anywhere in the world after its projected operational date, and years to come after. So throughout the already long project no data leaks can be tolerated because they will provide countermeasure information to the adversary. And that further moves the operational date.

Simply put they can't afford the MiG-31 leaks this time around.
If UAC pulls this off it will be just like building the Yamato but in 21st century, very impressive.