Air Power Australia (APA) has released its assessment of the Sukhoi PAK-FA.

 

Assessing the Sukhoi PAK-FA

I known many people don't like Kopp and associates' analysis, but I see is an interesting and up-to-date article. Also with some clean photos, I can count, I think, 4xWeapon Bays in the underfuselage, perhaps for 8xAA-12/KTRV RVV-SD, two in tandem in each bay.

Incidentally, in the DB the 30mm gun allocated to PAK-FA is (I think is a mishap) the Su-25 gun, not the Su-27/30 gun.

Incidentally, in the DB the 30mm gun allocated to PAK-FA is (I think is a mishap) the Su-25 gun, not the Su-27/30 gun.

 

Heh, you're right. Thanks, should be GSh-301, not -302. And I've already made some other changes which will appear in the next iteration.

CV32: Love the Strangelove quips ...

 

From Aviation Week's Ares Blog

 

What, Me Worry? - USAF on PAK-FA

Posted by Bill Sweetman at 3/24/2010 10:23 AM CDT

 

Solomon reminded me that I hadn't commented on reports of the USAF leadership's view of the Sukhoi T-50, the prototype for the Russian PAK-FA future tactical fighter. That's because at first sight I found the statements unremarkable - but then I realized that, in itself, that is worthy of comment.

 

In the Cold War, you could rely on the Pentagon and the USAF to play up the Soviet threat for all it was worth. The MiG-25? Not only Mach 3 but an agile dogfighter. The Tu-22M Backfire was a B-1 equivalent with the range for strategic attacks against the US. And if you disagreed with the USAF that the nation consequently needed lots of F-15s and B-1s, you were clearly some kind of fluoride-swilling crypto-Commie prevert.

 

There was actually a running fight between the military intelligence agencies and the CIA, which bypassed the Pentagon and took its data to black-program teams within industry. The most public rumpus was over Backfire, where the boss of USAF intelligence tried to force McDonnell Douglas to recant the conclusions of a CIA-contracted team within the company, whose estimates of the bomber's performance were lower and far more accurate than those of Air Force analysts and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

 

So it's ironic to see USAF leaders downplaying the potential of the T-50, as in this report from Air Force Times. “I didn’t see anything … that would cause me to rethink plans for the F-22 or F-35,” Air Force Secretary Michael Donley was quoted as saying. Pacific Air Forces commander Gen. Gary North, added: “I guess the greatest flattery is how much they copy you.”

 

Donley's comment, of course, is a demonstration of the Mandy Rice-Davies principle in action: He would say that, wouldn't he? His immediate predecessor was canned for (among other things) expressing incorrect and counter-revolutionary sentiments regarding his boss's F-22/F-35 plan.

 

Gen. North, meanwhile, is falling into the old technical intelligence trap called mirror-imaging: we want the B-1, so the Soviets must want a B-1 as well. The PAK-FA's front end bears a superficial resemblance to the F-22, but its hindquarters could not be more different, and - just for starters - it's a reasonable assessment that the Russian concept of balancing stealth with other requirements is very different from that which informed the F-22 design.

 

I'm not sure that anyone has an accurate assessment of the PAK-FA threat, in terms of timing, numbers and detailed capability - that will depend on how fast the Russia-India relationship can move things forward, which in turn depends on money, as well as on technical resources. But it is pretty clearly a supercruiser, probably a good one, with some unique features that are there to combine speed and high agility without counter-stealthy aerodynamic surfaces all over the place.

 

And had you started thinking about this kind of design in the late 1990s, and if "eating F-35s for breakfast" was on the requirements list, you'd end up with something like T-50. So I'd suggest that writing it off as a me-too F-22 is a bit premature.

The expression

"eating F-35s for breakfast"

remembers me from the previously mentionated article

http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-2010-01.html

this disturbing paragraph:

“The sustained turning performance of the F-35A Lightning II was recently disclosed as 4.95 G at Mach 0.8 and 15,000 ft. A 1969 F-4E Phantom II could sustain 5.5 Gs at 0.8 Mach with 40 percent internal fuel at 20,000 feet. The F-35 is also much slower than the 1960s F-4E or F-105D. So the F-35A’s aerodynamic performance is ‘retrograde’ when compared with 1960s legacy fighters. The consequence of such inferior JSF performance is that its DAS might detect an incoming missile, but the aircraft lacks the turn-rate to out-fly it. As the F-35 also lacks the performance to engage or escape, repeated ‘freebie’ shots from the PAK-FA could inflict high losses. Expect the exchange rate to be of the order of 4:1 in favour of the PAK-FA, possibly much higher.”

The expression

"eating F-35s for breakfast"

remembers me from the previously mentionated article

http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-2010-01.html

this disturbing paragraph:

“The sustained turning performance of the F-35A Lightning II was recently disclosed as 4.95 G at Mach 0.8 and 15,000 ft. A 1969 F-4E Phantom II could sustain 5.5 Gs at 0.8 Mach with 40 percent internal fuel at 20,000 feet. The F-35 is also much slower than the 1960s F-4E or F-105D. So the F-35A’s aerodynamic performance is ‘retrograde’ when compared with 1960s legacy fighters. The consequence of such inferior JSF performance is that its DAS might detect an incoming missile, but the aircraft lacks the turn-rate to out-fly it. As the F-35 also lacks the performance to engage or escape, repeated ‘freebie’ shots from the PAK-FA could inflict high losses. Expect the exchange rate to be of the order of 4:1 in favour of the PAK-FA, possibly much higher.”

 

OTOH, there's a school of thought (IIRC the Rafale was designed to it) which holds that sustained turning ability is not actually terribly meaningful; what matters is instantaneous turn ability. The comment about the F-35 lacking the turn rate to outfly a missile is meaningless --- no manned aircraft can outfly a modern AAM, the pilot can't take the Gs. Top speed is also fairly meaningless, since it takes too much fuel and time to get there, and it can't be sustained for more than a few minutes in most cases. IMO, neither of these issues is of particular concern in an aircraft that was designed as a striker with some air to air capability, rather than as a dogfighter.

IMO, neither of these issues is of particular concern in an aircraft that was designed as a striker with some air to air capability, rather than as a dogfighter.

Yes, but my concern is for some allied forces, from Norway to Australia, F-35 will be the only type of combat aircraft, and if the situation comes, F-35 will be used as dogfighter .... at least to defend itself (the same fear sometimes mentioned in these fora about the operational use of LCS as FF or DD, as real fighting ships)

 

And I think is a common fault of contemporary fighter design, I remember now also a conversation with a senior spanish Typhoon pilot the past september 2009 in a defense congress in Jaca, I supposed he don't want to say me Typhoon is a lemon, but, the smile frozed in his lips when I quest him directly after some drinks and some innocent aeronautical questions "Typhoon flies as bad as it sembles?", and his answer, hesitant and almost babbling, was "no, no, .... and we are improving her flying performances very much with the past of the time".

A very interesting russian report on Firefox, and also well translated. Definitely the wing gloves structures are part of AESA radar:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW0x2EDghbE...player_embedded