LevshaWhat exactly is wrong with the B-1 anyways?
I know its serviceability could be improved, but as far as I know its really only been used as a bomb truck now (mainly).
LevshaFlight hours in the Russian air force were 80 hour at the average last year.
Were they? Russian AF pilots spent 80 hours flying what? L-39s, Yak 52s, hot air balloons? I’d be more interested in finding out how many hours the actual aircraft types themselves flew – what was the total accumulated flying time for the Tu-160, Tu-22M etc?
but even if it did they werent flying 200 hours a year like the NATO norm.
I’m not sure, but I doubt very much if NATO are averaging 200 hours per year. Someone on this very forum informed us a few months back that Luftwaffe F-4 pilots were barely making 120 hours per year.
Carrier aviation got a little over 100 hours last year according to an interview with a Su-33 pilot I saw on Zvezdanews.
Another ambiguous statement – how many hours did the Admiral Kuznetsov spend at sea in 2007, in 2006? I should think that those flying hours, if they were flown on the Su-33 were mainly carried out at the special land based carrier operations facility in the Crimea – useful but not the real thing.
How many pilots in total are they referring to anyway?
LevshaYes, and the USSR had a total of nearly 500 Backfires built of all variants, including prototypes.
That must have been expensive. One reason why the USSR is with us no more, I should think.
Nowadays they are running so many training exercises it’s not even funny.
Are they now, really.:rolleyes: Have you got a schedule of these training exercises, number of total hours flown, number of hours flown per pilot, flight profile, etc. Does anyone have such a schedule?
If you spoke Russian it would be worth it to watch the Russian videos about the strategic aviation on Youtube for you.
I do speak Russian (well, sort of). I have myself posted many Russian language links on the forum. And what do these video clips prove? That the Russian air force likes to make photo calls for the publicists and journalists, or what?
And I don’t give a damn about how the US can barely keep its 60 B-1s in service, they must cost more to maintain, plus they have so much other crap to pay for, its really irrelevant as a point.
No, it’s not irrelevant to the point! If you want to find how much it costs for a particular country to operate a particular aircraft, a good system of estimation is to find out how much it costs to operate the same or similar aircraft in another country and then make your presumptions from there. I have seen figures for Russian air force operating costs for the Su-27 in the range of 8,000-10,000 USD per flying hours (??). Probably not much cheaper than it costs the USAF to operate their F-15s. America is usually quite a cheap country to operate aircraft (civilian anyway), perhaps even cheaper than in Russia, who knows?:confused:
And Russia is far from America in terms of fuel prices.
Are you sure – maybe not such a difference – and fuel prices are not the only factor for consideration when calculating aircraft operating costs.
LevshaAs mentioned before, 150+ Tu-22M3 in service with 90 or so in reserve.
Define ‘in service’…
I wouldn’t be surprised if a Tu-22M consumed more fuel per hour than a B-1B – and may need just as many man-hours of servicing/repair per flying hour as the ‘Bone’. The USAF can barely afford to keep 60+ B-1Bs in service and your telling me that the Russian Federation, which has less than 10% the defence budget of the USA, has 150 BACKFIREs in service!:rolleyes:
LevshaCan anyone confirm a rumour I’ve heard about a Russian Air Force AN124 frame 82038 involved in an incident in Russia today……….
A225HVY
Can’t find any info about an accident involving an An-124 happening today, but this event happened on Monday.
In Sescha avia-garrison “Ruslan” departing from runway
Aviation accident happened at the military airfield in the village Sescha Dubrovsky District Bryansk region on Monday, 28 January. There, seated around 19.30 descended on the runway military transport plane AN-124 “Ruslan”. Now it turns out that the same has been the cause of the incident.
Note immediately that as a result of the incident there were no casualties, the victims do not. In the Bryansk military garrison prosecutor’s office any details of the incident have refused to report. Nevertheless, the Office said that in Sescha location in the garrison prosecutor’s office, left the working committee with representatives from the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. “So far there are two versions of what happened: technical fault plane and unpreparedness runway”, – the representative of the military prosecutor’s office added Bryansk garrison. According to the same garrison prosecutor Leonid Dmitrieva, AN-124 “Ruslan” was flown by Sescha pilots. The purpose of the flight the prosecutor’s office did not specify, noting also that the damage from the incident clarified.
It should be noted that the weather in the Bryansk region in the past two days have been such that after the onset of severe frosts thaw, and on the roads was strongest ice.
In recent years, this is only the third aviation accident in the Bryansk region. In 2003, the emergency landing at the International airport Bryansk sought Greek charter “Boeing”. In 2005, by the refusal of the engine in the region fell Novozybkovskom lightweight single aircraft overflying the pipeline “Druzhba”. And in 2006, in an area near the village Dubrowski Sokolya Sloboda fell Su-25 attack. Then cause of the collapse was the refusal of vital systems in the cockpit.
LevshaVenik makes Carlo Koop look like a first rate analist…
Have you followed the Serbian/Nato conflict? And the “magnificent” job that Venik did in covering the NATO losses?
Let´s just say that anyone that uses Venik as a primary source has the credibility of…hmmmm…well…
Forget it, credibility and venik are two words that don´t combine.
And you know, it’s a kind of a pity really, because the http://www.aeronatics.ru website is not badly put together (for an old website) and had obviously taken a lot of time and effort to create. Some of the photo galleries are excellent and when Venik isn’t off on an anti Western/NATO rant he does provide some half decent analysis on some other topics – his report on the 2002 Dubrovka theatre siege comes to mind.
LevshaIraqi MiG-25s were of MiG-25PD Export standard with RP-25 Smerch-A2 radar of the original MiG-25P. Soviet MiG-25PD used Sapfir-25 N-005. Also, Iraqi MiG-29s had N-019E radar. It would seem logical to assume that it had downgraded ECM resistance, since MiG-23MFs and MLs supplied to Iraq had downgraded radar sets.
Thank you Grizzly01
The Soviets almost never exported their PVO types such as the Su-15 or MiG-31 to their client states – not even to the Warsaw Pact, but they are far to specialised in role for anyone to want them or find them useful, I suppose. The MiG-25P was the original FOXBAT which had been compromised by Belenko’s defection, the MiG-25PD was the revised, updated ‘uncompromised’ version using the radar and fire control system of the MiG-23
So are there any real differences then, between the MiG-25P and the ‘export version’ of the PD?
The simple fact that Grizzly had to explain that tp you shows people have to do more indebt research,
Yes, I do some research… I ask questions in posts to the Key forums!:rolleyes:
You’re casting a lot of assertions on other peoples’ knowledge, but I’m not so sure about your so informed yourself, for example:
as I’m convinced that Russia in the post-cold war times is using “The Art of War” strategy to make U.S./Europe “think” the are weak.
Do you know anything about the ‘Art of War’?
The Soviets may have been secretive about their true military capabilities, but I don’t think it was ever Soviet propaganda during the Cold War to state that some how they were under-armed or defenceless. What were all those massive military parades rumbling through Red Square on May Day and the anniversary of the revolution for?:confused:
LevshaHello gents
Regarding another topic in this Forum
I am making inquiries as to wether North Vietname had Sukhoi Su-7 ‘Fitter’s’ in their inventory during the Vietnam War?
There were no Su-7s ever delivered to North Vietnam during the war. NVAF was mainly an air defence force, while the Su-7 is a ground attack aircraft and therefore inappropriate to their needs.
I don’t recall the NVAF ever carrying out any ground strikes during the war, although I recall an incident where an Air America Huey helicopter shot down Vietnamese AN-2 COLTs in the early sixties.
Were the AN-2s carrying out bombing missions at the time?:confused:
I think North Vietnamese MiGs did carry out a few strafing attacks against USN ships in the early 1960s, though.
Levshaall I’m saying is the U.S. has NEVER went up against actual Soviet/Russian figthers just their dowgraded exports, which is know.
If I recall, Saddams’s air force used the same standard version of the MiG-25 as used by the Soviet Union, the MiG-25PD.
Is there such a thing as a “downgraded export version” of the MiG-25?
LevshaThanks for the link Levsha, its a real shame they canceled it, it would have looked amazing with those huge wings! I wonder whether it would have made it into service if Stalin had not have died?:confused:
Who knows what would have happened if they hadn’t cancelled it, but in the very last paragraph of the link I gave, there is mention of an interesting project called “100”, (izdeliye ‘100’?) which talks of using the Tu-96 as a launcher for some type of mini-bomber which is designed to enter the USA, deliver its warload and then return to the Soviet Union on auto-pilot (it can be either manned or un-manned)!
Some pictures or drawings of this interesting project would be nice – fat chance I guess.:rolleyes:
I had a quick search on the Russian language web – nothing to be found… 🙁 🙁
LevshaUltimately the project was canceled creating yet another ‘never was’ in the process. This leaves me with a question (as always), why was the project stopped? Were there other more promising alternatives or were there technical difficulties, or is it a mystery?:confused:
Hi, Sealord, Check out this webpage:
http://www.airwar.ru/enc/bomber/tu96.html
In fact, you could enter its URL into here to get an English translation
http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en
and read the second last paragraph.
But basically all it’s saying is that the development a of a faster, higher altitude version of the tu-95 was eventually seen as pointless by Soviet Long-range aviation – there was no way any developed version of the ‘BEAR’ was going to out-climb or out-run the Interceptors of the USAF entered/entering service at that time (we’re talking about the F-101, F-102 and F-106 Delta Dart).
LevshaWho cares if they came later as long as they appeared to be better machines at the end?
I should think those who have to fight with technology that’s 10 years behind that of their enemy’s would care, wouldn’t you?:rolleyes:
Also I wouldn’t mind to know how many Russians work in USA construction bureaus, surely more than vice versa.
Apart from the fact that most Americans would not be attracted by Russian sized salaries, are American nationals (or any other foreign nationals) allowed to work in the Russian defence and aerospace industries anyway?:confused:
LevshaSo when do we get to see USN Hornets landing on the Charles De Gaulle…?:cool: :confused:
LevshaThat is just a myth, the myth that Soviet and Russian technology was inferior and still is inferior, this also has been propagated even more with the combat records acknowledged by the west.
As far as I can see, yourself and a few other contributors to this forum get confused between “Soviet” and “Russian”.:confused: :rolleyes:
This old comparison between Soviet and Western technology seemed to be a major “cause celebre” during the Cold war. If a country could claim its science and technology was superior – by inference, its political /economicsystem was superior too. As far as I could see The United States was far ahead technologically of the Soviet Union. In many cases the USA was ahead of many other Western nations as well – but what does this prove – that the USA was a better system,? Or maybe it just had deeper pockets and was able to profit from the economics of scale?
But even for the shuttle it doesn’t make sense… carrying ten tons of engines into space and back for no purpose, those engines then need a complete overhaul to make sure there are no problems before you can fly again. The Buran solution of disposable engines means cheaper engines lower overall costs and shorter down times between launches.
Yes, but it was still a more honest, consistent attempt at introducing some sort of reuseability into a launcher’s propulsion system… or do you still expect to see 100% single-use, disposable launcher systems and spacecraft in the year 2050?:rolleyes:
LevshaThat’s the way it works, one side develops something, and the other side must come up with a counter.
That’s true, but why it’s always the same side that develops something new and it’s always the same “other side” that has to react?:rolleyes:
If your only philosophy in technology (or warfare, or business) is to only react to your opponent’s/competitor’s opening shots and first initiatives, and not to be a proactive player yourself… well, your chances of survival might be somewhat diminished i guess…:rolleyes:
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