Or maybe he just forgot to activate them, in the way airliner pilots sometimes forget to lower their undercarriage before landing and then do a bellyflop.

I barely recall reading yonks ago, that the training syllabus for BACKFIRE pilots was 100 hours on a Yak-52 followed by 50 hours on the Yak-40 tri-motor, before converting onto bomber type – would that be correct?:confused:

That seems completely absurd- given the many Tu-134s specifically for bomber training.

I think the current generic circular nozzles look great, really make it look like a muscle car, flat nozzles are ugly. Of course none of this will have any bearing on Sukhoi’s decision, which I believe was confirmed as flat nozzles in the future?

Some nice photos of Dolgoruki.

Presumably the assembly machinery is still being worked on. Series production won’t commence for another few years anyway.

I know I’ll get the usual replies of ‘They’re the experts, trust them’ but nevertheless I find the, well, ‘rough’ surface of the plane disturbing. For stealth design even something as small as a protruding screw can cause a significant RCS increase, especially when they all add up. The J-20 seems to have followed this philosophy more closely.

Based on what? Photos far away that show nothing about the black painted surface of the J-20? photos that are more than likely heavily touched up?

Honestly people…

It is obvious to anyone aside from China strong bots. “Partner” can simply mean “Buy our plane”, I find it completely unlikely they wanted any form of joint development with China, aside from perhaps funding assistance- not an issue today.

http://pilot.strizhi.info/2011/03/04/9381

Photos of LII (Flight-testing Institute named after Gromov) by Pilot, some nice photos of Kaveri test rig.

Guess you have trouble reading. The PAK-FA threads for months now have been full of expectation that the T-50-2 would have an identical outside- as a matter of the changes are a pleasant surprise.