sounds like they decided to have a three tier navy past 2030. these very large destroyers for ocean ops, accompanied by 4-5 thousand ton frigates which may also be used in ocean ops to an extent and then the corvettes for near coastal duties. So in a way these 12 new destroyers (i don’t think that number is necessarily what will happen in the future. May be more or less ships) will replace the kirovs, slavas and part of udaloy/sovremenny combo. frigates like gorshkov and grigorovich will replace rest of udaloys/Sov combo as well as ships like kashin, burevestnik and neustrashimy. Corvettes will replace various fast attack/asw boats.

It has steam turbines which could in theory be replaced by gas turbine solution. (though am not sure if that’s really going to happen as that may require some considerable redesign of the ship’s insides.)

Ship’s hull is fairly small really, i guess a direct product of available turbine solution at the time. Of course the hull can’t be changed (lengthening is out of the question i think).

What’s most likely to be changed is various electronic subsystems. If the new ship is relaunched within a year it’ll be something like 19 years after the launch of original ship. Any country would have made considerable improvements in subsystems in such a time span, and China has made leaps in regards of electronics in that time frame. So various new sensors, management systems, weapons, etc might be expected.

I guess a lot could be done with the ship but question remains just what sort of modernization is worth it. I for one am not expecting a vast redesign of ship’s systems.

So what about this?

if we DO assume that in 2020 there will be only modernized ex-legacy airframes left in service and if we assume one for one replacement with new airframes until 2020 – then we can also deduce how many legacy airframes there are in active service today. and the numbers basically equal those predicted a few posts earlier – how many new airframes will be produced within 2015-2019/2020 period. Which would suggest something like 100-ish su24, and something like 220 fighter airframes (su27 and mig29) to be replaced by mig29smt, mig35, su35, su30m2, su30sm and pak-fa. And one could assume there are more su27 left in active service than mig29. Of course i didn’t mention mig31 nor su25 here but situation is more clear with those. It seems evident from modernization plans that there are some 100-120 mig31 in service and that they will remain in service. Su25 numbers are a little more dodgy, but roughly 150-200 airframes seem plausible, with 100-ish of those remaining in service in 2020s.

Plausible?

I guess number of pilots could also be used to deduce some airframe figures. If only we had the number of pilots in ruaf available. If the pilots are a constant, one won’t really be making more planes than the attrition rate requires, once the pilot to plane coefficient is satisfied (though we don’t know that either). One could try to extrapolate aiframe numbers from pilot numbers, if one knew those…

Anyway, what about this guy and his numbers (keep in mind they’re dated october 2014 so they don’t include end of year additions)? In the past he seemed to have pretty decent info on organisational changes. https://russiamil.wordpress.com/category/russian-air-force/ Sadly he doesn’t list any sources. Also, am not sure about the 2500 aircraft claim. Although he does say it includes non active planes and helicopters, it seems a bit disingenuous. Why even mention it then unless one wants to portray the whole force as stronger than it is?

Legacy birds will be gone on the basis of age alone.

I think we can roughly predict what the state of modernized legacy birds will be by/past 2020:

Su-24s: Almost all gone. Even Su-24M2 will be old, and the Gefest upgraded birds were cheap stop-gaps in any case. Su-34 numbers make replacement possible, and they are some of the oldest and least safe birds in the RuAF in any case.
Su-27SM: On the way out by 2020 IMO. Most of the upgraded birds will be over a decade old by then; plus these airframes are kept busy and will probably have quite a bit of wear and tear. I have no idea what the airframe extension of the upgrade was, but I suspect by 2021-2022 they will be all gone.
MiG-31BM: 100+ flying well past 2020. Upgrade is relatively new, airframes got little air-time in the 90s, and there is nothing replacing them anyways.
Su-25SM: There were 79 SMs through 2014, and they intend to go foreward with SM3. Given murky PAK-ShA prospects, I think we can safely say most of this fleet will remain in operation well past 2020. Whatever remains non-upgraded will be long expired flight hour wise.

I’m not sure if we can be certain various planes will be retired 30 years after they’ve been produced while we predict 40 years for other airframes.
Why would mig31 and su25 airframes be going on for 40 years and su27 aiframes be retired after 30 years? There are mig-21 airframes flying around which are soon to be 40 years old, so why couldn’t su-27 or other planes do it? Yes, flight hours are important. The way I see it, all these legacy airframes flying now were made in 1989 or during the very early 1990s. They flew maybe 150 hrs a year for those first few years before the russian military collapsed. Then they flew at best 30 hours a year for almost next 15 years. Then they flew maybe 60-ish hours a year for several years and now very recently, just a few years ago, their averages are maybe 100-120 hours a year with the prospect of flying 120-150 hours until end of their lifetime.

That works out to roughly 1600-1700 hours total by the start of 2015. Even the relatively short lived mig29 aiframes should thus have enough life in them to reach 2020. I’m reading about 3.000-4.000 hours for su27 airframes which would mean 2023-2030. Now all that IS theoretical, of course, as there are other issues influencing airframe airworthyness but we don’t have other data anyway.

Leaving all the above aside, here’s an interesting thought. if we DO assume that in 2020 there will be only modernized ex-legacy airframes left in service and if we assume one for one replacement with new airframes until 2020 – then we can also deduce how many legacy airframes there are in active service today. and the numbers basically equal those predicted a few posts earlier – how many new airframes will be produced within 2015-2019/2020 period. Which would suggest something like 100-ish su24, and something like 220 fighter airframes (su27 and mig29) to be replaced by mig29smt, mig35, su35, su30m2, su30sm and pak-fa. And one could assume there are more su27 left in active service than mig29. Of course i didn’t mention mig31 nor su25 here but situation is more clear with those. It seems evident from modernization plans that there are some 100-120 mig31 in service and that they will remain in service. Su25 numbers are a little more dodgy, but roughly 150-200 airframes seem plausible, with 100-ish of those remaining in service in 2020s.

while 9g limit may be the same, it’s different doing 9g with x payload and doing it with several times less payload. Trainer’s aiframe is simpler and doesn’t need to carry much payload nor maneouver with it. It doesn’t need a lot of fuel. It doesn’t need lots of space for avionics. It doesn’t need airframe shape and intake shape for high supersonic envelope, at best a transsonic envelope will suffice. (not to mention modern additions like low rcs shaping, requirements for ram, internal fuel and weapons) it all means the whole plane is simpler, smaller, with various subsystems smaller and simpler (for example landing gear can be really short and simple, as there’s no requirement for underbelly carriage of any payload).

It all adds up quite a bit in a much cheaper plane to buy and operate.

Before 2020? Meaning the prediction date is December 31st, 2019?
Big assumption here is that new contracts will come without a pause in production and that they will feature the same delivery dynamic. Due to economic troubles, the whole rearmamant plan may be slowed down a bit and stretched a few years. But lets say that won’t happen. So near best case scenario might be something like this:
sometime in 2018 last su34 from previous order are delivered to Ruaf. So prior to that, sometime in 2016 or so a new contract is drawn up, continuing production at 20 airframes a year. So by december 31st 2019 there should be 157 su34 delivered to ruaf. Maybe a few crash in accidents due to regular attrition rate but lets ignore that for a moment.

Irkut may get more su30sm contracts, or it may, as its head said a few years ago, turn more to civilian airliner business once ms-21 ramps up production at irkut plant. So i’d stick with the rumored 50 more su30sm contract (actually 12 was ordered for naval aviation, which leaves 38 more to be ordered?) before su30sm production ends at irkut.

I guess knaaz will be leaving su35 production line open for at least 12 or so planes a year, for export and what not. So pak-fa might get retooled su30m2 production line, possibly exapanding it. I don’t see ruaf being crazy for su35s, really. So if some other orders, like china’s or whoever, take away 24 or so planes from the production capacity, i don’t see ruaf paying knaaz to increase the capacity.

So I’d say another contract for su35s may come, but perhaps the reason why we’re not seeing it yet is because deal with china is waited upon, so one sees when the capacity will be there. 34 su35 today plus 14 more in 2015, plus 28-32 produced for ruaf and 24 produced for china (or any other customer) from 2016 to 2019. I do believe su35s production rate will actually be winding down towards 2019. There just doesn’t seem to be much demand for a plane of su35 class, either from ruaf itself or from other countries. Yes, that is just my personal opinion, as this whole post is.

So lets say a total of 76-80 su35s for ruaf before 2020.

There’s mig, which we know is making 16 leftover smt planes and 24 k planes. And possibly in 2016 a small contract is signed, as we recently learned. Even assuming a larger follow on contract by 2018 it doesn’t sound like more than 24 or so mig35 will be delivered to ruaf by the start of 2020.

I would assume a similar number of legacy, ex-soviet airframes to be retired by then. Since migs29 are allegedly in worse shape than su27, it sounds logical to me that some regiments that are now flying mig29 actually get flankers as soviet made su27 might still soldier on a few more years. Is there an example of that actually already happening?

edit: just read about a possible sale of su30sm to kazakhstan. If so, i’d rather bet whatever planes Kazakhstand gets means less production capacity for Ruaf, and that Russia is happy with that outcome as it means it can delay ruaf purchases while at the same time keep irkut working. With roughly 15 planes per year capacity it really depends on how many planes kazakhstand might order. something like 24-32 planes seems quite doable for Kazakh air force, so roughly 1.5 to 2 years worth of production. Possibly those too would be drawn out, so ruaf and kaf would both be getting 6-8 planes a year. yes, i am purely guessing again. if so, then russia’s air force would be getting some 50-55 su30sm in the 2015-2019 period. (31 more to complete current orders and 20ish more from the remaining rumored 38 order (50 rumored minus 12 ordered for navy))

C/B seem to have been produced from 1980 to 1994, give or take a year. So omething like a dozen planes a year once full rate production was achieved? It’d make 100 oldest mirage2000 25 years old or older. Assuming 220 hours per year (180 per pilot?) it works out at over 5500 hours even for the planes built in 1989. Dassault guarantees airframe life to 5000 hours so it may be that AdA decided it wouldn’t pay for refurbishment of airframes to go over 5000 hours (7000 hours was mentioned as another limit after refurbishment) but it’d rather just retire the planes and use rafales.

So, are there any insights in current numbers of unmodernized ex soviet airframes in active service with Ruaf? How many have been retired from active service since 2011, for example?