In principle, its no more dead end than any other 4th gen, but given that Russia has heavily committed to Flankers you could probably argue it would be more effective to stick with one platform for domestic procurement (unless it is somehow a lot cheaper to operate for shoe-string export customers, which is dubious). I don’t think going for a new 5th gen platform makes sense unless the VVS commits to buying it, I would saddle MiG with UAV work.

MiG-35 is at this point welfare for the company. Though if the MiG-29M order for Egypt goes through….might not be a total money sinkhole for the near future.

How many must they order for the whole thing to float, do we know?

I still have a sliver of hope I will live to see it with RD-33MKM, more pylon versatility, and a serial AESA. Also in service with VKS with TVC.
One might call it…faith.

From a recent VDV ceremony, does anyone know which helicopter UAVs these are?

The more I think about it, the more the MiG 35 seems like a waste of time and resources. I think it’s a dead end and probably has been for a while now. I am sad MiG doesn’t/hasn’t/won’t come up with a 5th gen design -even if privately funded (plenty of ridiculously rich oligarchs in Russia).

Your rabid defense over your monks isn’t terribly respectful either. You don’t seem to understand that just because you have a belief, and this belief has existed for centuries, doesn’t warrant it some kind of holy respect.

And your defense of “majority believes it” is simply drivel. What happens if a part of Russia you live in becomes majority Muslim? Do you want their “traditions” to be pushed into the public sphere?

On the contrary, on a philosophical level, I do believe that the centuries put in behind an established religion that creates a tradition (for its faithful) is worthy of respect.

You don’t have to subscribe to it to respect it; you just do. It is a belief system that binds people and moves through time and physically, psychologically, mentally and spiritually affects them. That is enough heavy s&*^ right there to warrant respect.

my 2c

Plasmas do not have a charge they are neutral, it is only the individual ions that have a charge however balanced numbering means no net charge.With no net charge to the plasma there is no way to keep it attracted to the body of the aircraft unless russians have also developed the technology for active force fields. Ionizing a large quanitity of gas would require an enormous and continuous supply of power as it would have to do so constantly as it moved through the sky. Phase shift leads plasma to inherently be colored leaving a large visual footprint. In addition to this you have a big heat signature regardless of the temperature of the plasma because you have to have something on board generating the energy for it. With that kind of demand a battery simply wouldn’t cut it.

Also lets take into account that the atmosphere contains oxygen, nitrogen and CO2. Does anyone here actually know what a plasma is? A plasma is a substance that has been heated so far beyond its boiling point that the individual atomic nuclei are split from the electrons allowing the electrons to flow freely through the medium as ions.

If you wanted to turn the atmosphere around the aircraft into plasma you would have to produce so much heat that nothing short of a fully-heat shielded (and thus very heavy) aircraft is going to survive it, and it is still going to leave a massive IR signature. And such a heat shielded craft wouldnt be able to handle it for so long. Your only other option would be to store plasma on board in some form which would give you how long? A few seconds? If you want me to I’ll do the math for you, I’d wager even with a Tu-160 storing the plasma you’d have at best a few seconds

Forgive me if I am wrong, but I was under the impression that the gas inside the fluorescent light bulbs is a form of plasma (that actually has some RCS reduction characteristics) That doesn’t get too hot.

A dud because of circumstances- I don’t know how you can make any other judgements of the aircraft.

Clearly they did not outline RCS as the biggest factor in the plane, but FFS, it flew several times in only prototype form….that says nothing about where the bird could have gone given better timing.

It didn’t pass on its “genes” to anything else for MiG. That’s why I am saying that. Of course that’s only my 2 c .. It’s not worth more than an average opinion.

The objective of the highly efficient intake is to create uniform and high pressure recovery flow into the engine face. The PAK-FA’s engine duct is certainly not straight (see patent), and incorporates super & subsonic flow diffusers incorporated into the design. Because the duct is relatively short and varies in cross-sectional area, it will be susceptible to large separated flows, this problem is mitigated by the Gaussian bump/vortices generator type wedge in the inner-intake wall (called the ‘fixed wedge brake’ in the patent), which serves a similar function to the DSI. Combined with the ‘trough’ in the intake mouth, they minimise vortices, wake and boundary layer ingestion by the inlet- especially emanating from external transonic flow of the aerodynamic structure.

To give an end to this cycle, I believe I posed the question very early on.

With regards to the T-50’s (obvious) differences in RCS reduction measures as understood in western design. Russians either :

1. Could (do the same) but chose not to because they had something else up their sleeve
2. Couldn’t and did the best they could.

I think that sums it up pretty good.

all else is academic ..

It is sad that the 1.42 did not reach operational status as I would think that it would have been stealthier than the current Sukhoi PAK-FA looking at both designs.

Not a chance in a million. The first time I saw the prototype I was so unbelievably disappointed that MiG was so obviously unable to follow current trends in design. This thing looks outdated even next to an F-5. A terrible misunderstanding of where fighter design was going. By comparison, the ATF prototypes look like spaceships next to it. The PAK-fA is a lot better in that respect.