Educated guess.Because they are respectively the best and the worst one?

Typical fighter missions doesn’t usually contemplate to show sides to enemy radars for a significant time :unless you are forced into a dogfight you just show your front approaching the target and your rear flying away after having fired/drop your weapons.

Also A2A missile ranges are differentiated between head-on and tail-on engagement, with a consistent advantage in the first case.
That’s is the reason because any VLO aircraft after F-22 doesn’t even try to have a similar 360° degree stealth coverage:it just isn’t worth the extra costs and effort.

I believe the given number ranges are averages over all sides of the respective craft.

Well the story is there. If you track down the steps up to this point it becomes apparent. This day and age, it is hard to hide everything from everyone.

I think anyone who refuses to acknowledge that IS is a creation and is supported by the west (big scandal in Turkey with found out heavy supplies to IS, Turkey being the west’s hand in the middle east) are only fooling themselves.

They will be used to take out governments like Asad and when the time comes that they will have outlived their usefulness they will be “taken care of”

The only problem with this logic is that the west never put Al Qaeda under control, why will they manage to put IS?

The west created IS, the west is funding and supplying IS and is directly responsible for the thousands that are dying horrifically at their hands.

I am going off what Lenta reported, just sounds like the plane has enough widespread damage that repairing it might be messy. Oh well, crew lived, and you know what they say:

There was a Greek Mirage 2000 that crash landed in the sea about 15 years back and the Greeks restored it back to flying condition. How much worse can the Su-34 be? Plus it is a much bigger plane and probably more modulary constructed than the M2000.

Actually, I just realised what the dude said isn’t new at all but is just a word for word quote of what A. Davidenko has previously asserted *. So, one has to decide that either the T-50’s chief designer is dumbing down the F-22/35 to compensate for him and his team designing a turkey, or that their own RCS metrics differ from Western ones.

Erring toward the latter and using Davidenko’s numbers (0.1-1m^2 and 0.3 – 0.4m^2) consider the following:

F-22 has 2D TVC – a World first and unique, which results in a rear RCS of 0.4m^2

T-50 has a relatively ‘conventional’ back end resulting in a rear RCS of 1m^2 (but mitigating) it has a rear facing AESA with a jammer function and DIRCM, World firsts and (likely) remaining unique capabilities.

Which of the 2 has better SA and CM? Which of the 2 would leave you in a ‘World of hurt’ if you tried to sneak up on it, failed, and then had it turn to face you?

*http://rostec.ru/en/news/3958

I don’t know about that, but I have to say that throughout this entire discussion it only dawned on me that the rear of the T-50 is drastically different in terms my VLO to the F-22 when I read your post. I don’t know where my brains have been, but you are right, this may be the reason why the average values are that varied.

F**k me man… did you read a word I wrote?

RCS IS NOT A FUNCTION OF DISTANCE.

First of all I’d say you need to keep your emotions down and second, I never said it was. power of transmission and distance are not part of the equation that describes RCS, but they are important for the real world. That is why everybody (on this forum included) guestimates the maximum engagement distances for VLO aircraft on various occasions. That is the reason those original values came to light as (i guess) some kind of mark for comparisons.

If what you say -had real world implications- an F-22 would be below the clutter rejection threshold even 20 feet away from an antenna. That is not so though, is it?

You can beg all you want. 😉

But it (“the single value”) is virtually meaningless beyond power point presentations.

Move a couple of degrees off on the horizontal or vertical planes and “the single value” is not even close to applicable.

Nor is it applicable if the wavelength of the interrogating radar is different from that used to determine “the single value”.

Radar cross section is a function of radar wavelength as well as orientation of aircraft to radar emitter and receiver. It is not a function of distance.

For a search radar in the VHF band, the radar cross section of all fighters is significantly larger than for an X-band.

Although you make this a snappy comment, iirc the F-16(c) is accepted to have an RCS of ~1msq at 100km or ~60miles.
presumably (and I have no reason to doubt that) the US are using the same distance for their references to RCS.

It depends on angles and wavelengths.

The quoting of one single number to describe the property is total BS. Its always going to vary, and a factor of 10 is still an order of magnitude smaller than I would expect!

I beg to differ. Although it is true that the RCS is more than a single value, the head on RCS has been used as a reference for quite some time now. Having said that 0.1sqm RCS given as the lowest figure for the T-50 might simply not be low enough. As other members have already commented, there are RADARs out there now that already can track a target of that RCS in respectable distances. We have to be honest and admit that if the 0.1sqm is the head on RCS, then that is a bit on the high side.
I was hoping for a 0.01 maximum head on RCS ..

(not sure at what distance the quote is at, have to admit that)