Red 5Gen Fighters

After reading some of the comments on Typhoons “A Great Question” post, here’s my thoughts on the new Red (Russian/Chinese) advanced fighters.

XXJ-this aircraft is a projected fighter only. Another one of those “looks great on paper” aircraft. A more viable alternative for China would be to buy the license production rights to a MiG 1.44 or S-37 derivative.

J-10-this is more interesting. This could potentially be a great aircraft, and if the Chinese produce it in the mass quantities they’ve produced their J-7’s in, Taiwan should be a little worried. Not much is known of its avionics/weapons fit, but aerodynamically it should be a sound aircraft, and being based on the F-16 in an Israeli sort of way, it should be able to hold its own in a WVR engagement (at least against the IDFs and Mirage 2000’s of the RoCAF). Might make a good candidate for the Chinese Navy’s new aircraft carriers, as its advertised as a multi-role aircraft.

S-37-I like this aircraft. A few magazines have raised the idea that this aircraft was actually designed for the Russian Navy. As I can’t see any obvious wing folding joints, or provision for an arrestor hook, I’m dismissing this for now. On the surface this looks like an interesting aircraft. If you look at a clear picture of the underside, you can see the internal weapons bays. FSWs should provide it with great sub-to-transonic maneuverability. And the traditional Russian avionics complement of a radar, IRST, and HMS should give it excellent combat capability. The aircraft as we know it right now is underpowered, having D-30 engines as opposed to the intended AL-41’s (these were earmarked for the MiG 1.44 test program, as it had won the I-90 contest for the Russian ATF). Proper engines should give it excellent power and performance. Unfortunately, it is only seen as a technology demonstrator at the present time, but that doesn’t mean that Sukhoi’s LFI contender won’t be a derivative.

MiG 1.44-this aircraft remains the result of a lot of speculation, few hard facts, and unfortunately an under-funded development program. Having made only 2 flights compared to the S-37’s 50+, it lags way behind in the Russian aviation program. What we have to remember is that the 1.44 is only an aerodynamic demonstrator for the 1.42 aircraft, the real Russian Raptor. The configuration would remain mostly the same, with perhaps a cranked arrow wing (Russian engineers have stated that flight tests of the MFI would prove if this is necessary or not) and an avionics suite. The main thing anyone can see that the 1.44 lacks is a radar in the nose. The radome is not much larger than that of the MiG-29UB, certainly too small to fit a modern fire-control radar. However, it does have the AL-41 egines, which give it a supercruise capability in the realm of Mach 1.6-1.8, and a top speed of Mach 2.35 (the Mach 2.6 that is often quoted would necessitate larger amounts of steel or titanium in the airframe, as opposed to much lighter ingredients like aluminum or composites). Would the 1.42 be a viable combat aircraft? I believe it would. It would posess 3-D thrust vectoring, a full avionics suite, and the latest generation of Russian weapons. The most interesting item attributed to the aircraft is the Keldysh plasma stealth device, but I won’t go into it here unless asked for details (there’s a lot to explain!).

Basically, we have 3 aircraft here that are not yet built, or are technology demonstrators. The Chengdu J-10 is the only aircraft actually earmarked for production in its present state (although Russian Generals have discussed toe possibility of a competitive fly-off between the S-37 and 1.44), and as with the J-7 may take a considerable part of the export market in the next 15 years, particularly to countries not too friendly with NATO (Iran? Libya?). However, the 2 countries do appear to be on the right track, and it will be interesting if nothing else to see what comes out of Russia and China’s aerospace industries in the next 10 years.

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