Well, it’s certainly not the case with the PAK FA. The wheels retract to the airframe because that’s where their well is. It’s not like there is no other 9+ design with wells on the wing. Mirage 2K comes instantly in mind.

Good reason for it on the M2000… they have no where else to put it. 😉

If Dassault had any other decent option, they would have taken it. But they didn’t, so needed to compromise.

It is also quite a different wing – see below:

Note the distinct bulge in the lower surface of the wing along the wing root?

There to get the wheel in, and there to reinforce the surrounding wing spars through increasing the 2nd moment of area of the spars themselves…

The PAK-FA wing does not show an increase in thickness towards the root outside of the normal root:chord taper ratio (look carefully inboard and outboard that weapon/sensor bay to see the lower surface is roughly aligned).

You can of course pick out other examples, but there will be mitigating reasons for choosing to put the wheel well where it is. It is a compromise any structural designer will go a long way to avoid making. With the PAK-FA airframe, its a no brainer to pack them into the engine intake sidewalls.

Stay serious.

Sens, that was a big piece of irrelevant rubbish.

Bottom line, radars don’t kill people (yet), missiles do. A pilot has to react to a missile coming his/her way, even if the Pk is low… continue to fly wings level and that Pk will start rising dramatically.

The pilot doesn’t have to do jack sh!t when a radar is pointed at him/her.

My calculated radius is ~1,378 km or a total distance of ~4,330 km. With a constant speed of 926 km/h (~258 m/sec) the 360° are covered in ~ 17 seconds. By that I do come to a two digit value.

Just a rough calculation after a bad feeling about your 5,4°/sec sust. claimed.

Maybe you can correct me.

Just double checked…

I used 4.95G in the eqn; radius = v^2/[g * tan(bankangle)]

I should of course have used g = 9.81 m/s^2

Thus the actual sustained turn rate is ~10.6 deg/sec – which is more sensible… if still not spectacular.

edit: For comparison;

MiG-21: ~9.5 deg/sec
MiG-23ML: ~ 14deg/sec* (other sources suggest 8.5 deg/sec)
F-16C: ~ 14deg/sec (although I’ve seen numbers as high as 20deg/sec at sea level)
M2000: ~ 13.5deg/sec

*not certain

You claim was a 2,7 km radius or a total distance of ~8,486 km, which is covered with 258 m/sec = ~ 33 sec for a full circle of 360° = ~11°/sec sust. and not your claimed 5,4°/sec at least. 😉

My radius is wrong, it should have been 1.4km…

(at a 2.7 km radius, the total circumference is 2*pi*radius = 17km – which would still be 5.something deg sec)

You do not fire an expensive AAM without the intention to hit a target.

At the potential cost of an even more expensive aircraft?

I know which I would do…

The RWR does alert the opponent already, when your fire-radar designated the opponent.

Assuming you are firing radar guided missiles (thus need to track via radar).

Also, from the perspective of the other pilot; knowing you are being tracked, and knowing there are incoming missiles are two different things. You can choose to ignore the former to concentrate on other more immediate tasks (such as getting your own shots away, dropping bombs, critical radio reports… whatever), you simply cannot ignore the latter.

Even when you do a “ripple fire” by a pair of AAMs, which the Russians do prefer, you hardly spent 6 AAMs during an engagement, because non will stay longer than two minutes into an engagement most of the time.

Maybe… maybe not.

For me, I would not be prepared to put down $300 billion on that. But, I suppose that is personal opinion, and everyone is entitled to their own.

You certainly have a reading problem if that’s what you got out of what I said.

Perhaps in that case you’d like to re-interpret this for us…

Stealth is not a totally new field for the Russians.

Maybe you should do a little reading and save yourself some embarassment.

4.95g is not a turn rate.

You can convert it if you want… all the necessary data is there if you assume an ISA day.

But yes, your right, g-loadings are not a turn rate, but in this case it might as well be.

[To save you the bother; At sustained 4.95G, the bank angle is ~78.35 degrees, the turn radius is just over 2.7 km and the turn rate is a mere 5.4 degrees/second]

And pretty much discredited as BS.

The article in question contained direct quotes taking about the Kirov’s reduced radar signature from a British military expert with 32 years experience working on “stealth techniques, radar, and electronic warfare.”

Thus, your going to have to produce some good evidence to back up your statement, otherwise, retract it.

Show me their stealth aircraft. I’m willing to give a benefit of a doubt, just cough up some evidence.

Oh, so the knowledge of radar reflectivity and absorption only applies to aircraft now?

You better tell the USN that they wasted large amounts of money in facets of the design of their Arleigh Burke class cruisers… better phone the Swedes while your at it… I gather they’ve been wasting their time on it for quite a few years now too.

Don’t forget, you are arguing the Soviets were totally unaware of the properties of EM waves and how to reduce the RCS of their equipment…. until the Russians were informed some time in the… 90s? (that is from your post earlier in this thread… but you can state a clear time before which you believe they didn’t have the knowledge of reducing radar returns)