The design of the MiG Skat indicates that the objective is all-aspect LO. That pretty much follows from the design of any UCAV, in that UCAVs can’t shoot back or otherwise respond to a threat. Wideband? Probably, since the ability to do wideband depends on having a configuration that can be protected on all edges by serious RAS.
Can they do it? There is a known and documented Russian stealth program that has yielded operational RCS-reduction kits and has certainly got as far as large-scale RCS models. Look at the Tu-160…
Once you understand the basic principles, what takes time and money is all the details – maintainability, doors, apertures. What France and UK have realized, though, that you can only do so much on the pole and that the graduation exercise is to build a demonstrator like an old Lindberg model – it’s not the real thing but all the doors and other moving bits work. Watch Japan doing the same thing.
There’s nothing impossibly wrong about Skat, although the inlet looks odd. I suspect that it’s a graduation exercise and a bait for foreign partners.
There’s more than one way to skin a cat… unless it’s the one that disappears bit by bit until all you can see is the grin.
What it’s really interesting is the new standpoint the Russian are researching about stealth possibilities.
If you check the promised (or let’s say hypotetized) PAK-FA specs on this area and multiple other ones, Russians came to believe that steatlh for aircrafts (or maybe for flying vehicles) was not capable to get down the -20 dBsm area (0.01 m2 RCS) and that could bring an identificable limit point to how strap such design compromises in a manned aircraft. Check the Sukhoi and NIIP papers on new aircraft and radars, and most of them would tell you (specially by early 2000) than F-22A’s RCS was about 0.03 (pretty in line in the -20 dBsm) m2 area. Those could be well propaganda from the respective bureaus (even if those appeared on Russian Academy of Scienes journal) or could be a valid (then) standpoint made by 2 TsNII (2nd Central Research Institute, the main Russian MoD Institute dealing with Low Observable research for aircraft). It’s a similar issue as the 50-70s era standpoint on noise reduction for submarines, where Gorkshov (the holy cow of the Soviet Navy) in all his wisdom didn’t care about the issue, before too much things happened that started to made change his mind and valid the point that SUBMARINES NEED TO BE QUIET (and not speedy, check the 705 Lira, or Alfa)…Walker spy ring, multiple Soviet Navy high command complaints, understanding of tactical limitations of contemporary systems, and even BELIEVING WHAT INTEL (GRU) TOLD THEM…they ended in late 70s researching Akula, Kilo, Sierra, Delta-IV, Typhoon, Oscar…all quiter, all with heavy emphasis on noise reduction.
It could well be that with the activation of F-22A units, more intel assesments about the topic (plus other stealth related projects) could have reached Russia and made 2 TsNII change his mind on the issue…”-20 dBSm stealth is feasible for aircrafts”…
But for manned ones?…is worth the cost?, could PAK-FA be redirected to such goals given money constraints?
I think Russians are approaching a new mindset on stealth (and Skat is a stelath platform or at least an idea of a trully stealth platform) in this topic, and Skat could well be a DEMOVAL of such new understanding along the whole Russian BPLA program (BPLA = UCAV). Skat is after all, more of a test platform as Neuron is.
Just some crazy ideas.
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