OT, I know, but regardless how the B-1/Tu-160 evolved it would been pretty interesting to see a fighter laid out like them. So instead of one 32,000 b st thrust engine you use four much simpler and easier to manipulate 8,000 b st engines with much smaller radar returns. Third World countries have cheap labor, so it probably fit them better than huge monolithic engines .

Soviet engines have less than stellar harmonics and suffer from a degree of shaft twisting when pushed hard. They wear out disproportionately in shorter time, because the engineers pushed a false narrative popular with leadership. Keep it simple, create it to be producible, and (most importantly) make it work.

Development of the Pak fa is in its 14th year now in 2016/17 And it is expected to enter service in 2017. If we consider that the Raptor entered service in December of 05, we can see that the difference in development times is negligible.

Considering the T-50 project isn’t even up to the complexity level of the F-22A program, small wonder its negligible difference in development time. But extrapolate out when the technology will be on par with the jet two decades older and you’re talking quite a bit extended amount of time. Meanwhile, they are surrounded by much smaller countries sporting next generation fighters beyond F-22A that may or may not be able to nullify T-50 without aid from the F-22A. Russia isn’t anywhere near the economy it was and it’s going to have to stop blowing its treasury on a war that is pointless and funding an insurgency that actually penalizes itself.

The only shortage of funds for PAKFA are those siphoned into operations. Russia lost its cash cow by using speculative trading to so overprice gas it made it affordable to by elsewhere. And then it turned out, there were deposits affordable to exploit at these new high prices. Then nature brought the price back down.

If Russia was less aggressive in the Ukraine – Crimea Peninsula aside – there would have been further soothing of Cold War hostility. It’s not cheap feeding steady supplies to rebels in eastern Ukraine, nor is it to bear down on a pointless civil war in Syria. PAKFA funding sure slowed down after all that other stuff heated up.

With the shootdown of the Su-24M over Turkey you also see much more push for funding of active missiles and electronic warfare pods. Syria is turning out like the impetus Beirut operations were for the U.S. If it keeps dragging out its going to be painful. And operations will only get more expensive and PAKFA further slowed.

So basically NG said, we’re short on reinvestment capital. Let’s wait for a cherry picked deal on another program.

First things first, test drive EJ200’s on an RF-4E.

Here I keep checking to see if anything of value was added to the thread today. Imagine my disappointment.

And the only pictures are garbage. Thanks for nothing.

MiG floated a single-engine design for export simultaneously with MiG-29. It was called two names, actually, available as MiG-23 or – to only one customer – the MiG-27. They even floated Al-31 powerplant with it. Nobody wanted it. It’s safety record left a sour taste in operators mouths. Shame, too, because an Al-31F powered MiG-23MLD with a PESA-based radar would have been interesting.

I wonder if a simplified Kuznetsov NK-32 or a non-swiveling Soyuz R-79V-300 wouldn’t have been a better basis for a single-engine multirole fighter. NK-32 production would have benefitted with additional orders, driving down Tu-160 costs. You don’t really lose much basing MiG-29 off a single big engine versus the twin RD-33’s. As popular as MiG-21 was, really, surprised the Chinese were the ones to push a single engine RD-33 fighter. MiG missed practically every potential market trying to force MiG-29 down every customers throat.

NK-321