Once again I never said that the Su-75 is a carbon copy of the Su-57.
I appreciate what you are saying... they don't have to invent new parts, this new light plane shares commonality with the larger heavier aircraft, which means it doesn't have to be designed and developed from scratch, but as has been said by myself and others the configuration is different.
Those control surfaces above the engine intakes... levicons I think they are called... essentially canards but without all the problems of canards, plus and those horizontal tail surfaces and that wide flat underbody with two spaced engines with TVC.... it is different compared with the Su-75s current and previous configuration.
Even the wing planform looks different, and the roles and uses of the aircraft are likely to be different meaning flight performance and profiles are going to be different too...
This is not Su-57 passed all the tests so we wont bother testing the Su-75, plus I suspect the new light 5th gen fighter is going to be reoriented to have a more multirole task list with a lot more looking for smaller air targets and also ground targets.
This plane is your light numbers plane which might find itself chasing down incoming guided weapons of all type, and probably drones too... even if it does not shoot them all down itself, it will be using its radar and datalinks to friendly forces so that any nearby air defence units can use its data to shoot down air threats it might not have been able to detect from its position.
I like the aircraft... it is just not ready and wont be ready for 8 to 10 years and that is assuming the countries that invest in it can decide the important stuff and haggle for 3 or 4 years before splitting up into separate versions of the plane in groups.
- they have actually used the wing design of the Su-57 for the Su-75.
It hasn't flown yet, they don't have a wing design yet, but even if they did without the horizontal tail surfaces and without the levicons and without the body lift from the two spaced engines the aerodynamics is going to be totally different, and they are going to have to test it with and without ordinance or material in each and all of the internal weapon bays as well as external ordinance... they have a lot of work ahead of them.
The MiG-35 is in service.
What I said was that they used some components from the Su-57 design (as above) - including the engine and undercarriage. As for internal systems and subsystems - we'll I would bet that most of those are copied straight from the Su-57 design.
Which would be a good thing from production perspectives, but a bad thing from a design perspective. If you take half the engine out of a big heavy muscle car and put half the engine and transmission and other drive train components from that big car into a small car unless you scale it down the axles are going to poke out and the wheels are going to look ridiculous. If the Big Muscle car essentially had two V4 engines creating a V8 type engine then putting one V4 into the smaller car makes sense but most of the other things wont make sense because the smaller car is smaller.
Wing mirrors and ash trays would be fine but the windows might need to be scaled down or the little car might end up looking like a glasshouse.
BTW - we all know why it took so long to develop aircraft throughout the 90's. However my point is that all those designs are now dated - and this includes the Su-35 as well as the Mig-35.
The aircraft of HATO are all dated too, you don't need an X wing fighter to do the jobs these aircraft need to do.
The F-15EX is indeed a pimped up somewhat stealthy F-15, and yes the design is dated - but like the Mig-35, the Su-35, the F-15EX IS NOT obsolete. There is a difference you know.
The sole reason why the US is buying retro is because they can't put the F-22 back in production - so they will use this interim design until their 6th gen is available.
So it is OK for the USAF leader of the free world with bottomless pockets when it comes to war and spending on military aggression... who knows what their military budget will be this year and add on the CIA budget for wars and starting wars around the world it will be over 1 trillion dollars and remain high while they replace all the stuff the Russians have destroyed in Ukraine and Syria.
The US does not have a 6th gen fighter ready to put into serial production.
Well guess what... Russia does not have a light 5th gen fighter to put into serial production either, and Russia needs a cheap numbers fighter more than the west does...
Also their 5th gen fighters proved to be extremely expensive to produce (never mind maintain). If they want them to be more affordable, they will have to buy Chinese copies, but as you know, the US is planning for a war against the PRC - which complicates matter somewhat.
So if the USAF is rejection the western worlds only production 5th gen fighter (F-35) and is putting 4th gen fighters back into production then doesn't that mean the MiG-35 and Su-35 are not dated at all and showed good forethought as they are both in serial production yet remain cheap to buy and do not break the bank in operational costs.
AND quite notably the very first F-15EX was delivered to a Air National Guard unit in Portland a couple of days ago
So it is clearly not a new direction they want to head in... it is a gap filler that is more affordable than aircraft that are not ready yet.
Sounds familiar.
@GarryB It's funny to see you say it's not a real plane because it foesn't fly. You said exactly the opposite for the two Mig models that are just toys exposed in a meeting.
We know Sukhoi is looking for export customers and they have told us the Su-75 has not flown yet.
MiG have not said whether their aircraft prototypes, which they presented as models have flown yet or been built as prototypes or are about to enter serial production too.
Absence of information is not evidence of anything.
That's because those are models from MiG
When Sukhoi got the contract to make the heavy 5th gen fighter we now know as the Su-57 it was said MiG would make the light fighter... it was also said because funding was not available for everything and anything that they would start funding the light 5th gen fighter when the heavy 5th gen fighter entered serial production.... the Su-57 is in service and has entered serial production.
And, i believe they didn't have AESA, as it still wasn't ready back then.
It is an operational aircraft... such things are generally not reported. What any of us believes is not really relevant, but if they made 200 I would say a couple might have experimental AESA radars for development purposes while the rest had conventional radars till the new AESA designs were operating properly and performing better than the much cheaper existing types.
With them only making 6 planes I would guess they were making 36 and were going to put AESA radars for testing on 6 of them and then realised that it was a very important part of the plane so why not just make 6 and focus on getting that AESA radar developed and working properly and then once it works decide whether to put these aircraft into full serial production to get numbers (which is what a light fighter is for), or to wait for the next gen 5th gen light fighter from MiG or Yak or even Sukhoi if their plane turns out to be the best.
Considering that, there were no follow up orders in the last 5 years, is everything one needs to know about opinion military has in regard to these planes.
There would not be follow up orders until they had taken the time to actually test them and fully evaluate their performance in a number of different situations and roles.
IMO, they should use airworthy MIG-29s, as they already have them, for help with battling Ukrainian drones and missiles over Russian territory behind front lines. And keep Sukhoi planes for frontline duty. That's all.
Most problems with AESA radars is production related... they wont make big leaps in performance and quality without having them in service in decent numbers.
It is only when you have to make millions of AESA elements that new materials and better more efficient ways of making them are found to speed up production and reduce the dud rate.
It will be expensive to begin with but over time the price will drop dramatically and the quality and performance will improve and they will be putting them on everything... including AAMs and Air to Ground missiles.
Actually it is.
It is like the Su-35 and Su-30 are. Ironic that such dated aircraft are probably superior to most of the Euro canards that are slightly newer...
The biggest joke is that, according to MiG fans, there are manned production lines for MiG-35 and all details are in mass production. Yeah, right. No need to start a new project or have massive engineering and skilled workforce. They just stand by waiting until the MoD finally reads this forum and understands what's best for them!
MiG tends to get its components from different suppliers... radar, engines and other parts come from companies that don't do a lot of work with Sukhoi, which means the product ranges they have that go into MiG productions are not currently stretching their production capacity right now...
If MiG was to thrash out 200 MiG-35s would there be 400 engines from Saturn to power them?
Klimov could probably make that many in the time it takes to make that many planes... they have been making engines for Chinese planes and planes for Pakistan.
Engines that are just modified RD-33s.
The real biggest joke is that Mir wants to stop production of Su-57s so they can start making Su-75s... when they come flying off the production lines they will have to do all the testing and measurements before they hit the ground because it will be the first time they have flown.