Did Raptor use Luneburg lens during its combat deployment to Syria ?

Don’t know that, but I assume not. In fact Russian claims are that the signatures measured confirm their simulations for the F-22, and I also remember some USAF general referring concerns about Russia getting relevant knowledge about this particular aspect of the Raptor due to its deployment in Syria

Mounting a radar-reflector is only required if radars can’t see you without one :rolleyes:

That is funny, but what about this: maybe better not to increase RCS if the deployment is unexpected and you pretend to keep it unnoticed by your rivals… I mean, this works both ways, but what is the use of creating gossip without having some solid evidence? Imagine the PR disaster for Russia, had US noticed the deployment of the fighters and disclosed it before MoD… they would have killed the prestige of Russia’s MIC in a minute, without moving a finger. So maybe they did not detect it after all??

By western standards, very little makes sense in the development of this program. The deployment of (so sensitive) prototypes in a war zone makes no sense by any standards.
I can’t make heads or tails of any of this.

I won’t be surprised with any announcement or news about this program, from complete cancellation, to mounting a railgun on it.

I agree that this deployment was unusually audacious. It either shows lack of judgement or utmost confidence in the own capabilities and knowledge of the adversary’s ones… in any case I can think of some extremely interesting lessons the deployment could bring to Russian military, and also some ways in which the operation could be carried out in a not so absurd manner as it was presented.

The rest of the program (for me), except for some outlandish comments from officials blown out of proportion in the media, makes full sense, considering also the ups and downs such a lengthy program implies. I am 100% certain that it wont be cancelled, that would be simply absurd, given its gigantic relevance for the country in so many regards and the correspondingly huge investment of money, thought and effort on it. What I honestly don’t understand is that the West chooses to remain in denial of the capability of the platform being developed by Sukhoi and its potential for further development (due to a remarkably smart design philosophy), and continues to climb up a horse from which they will sooner or later have to dismount…

Part 2 of the PAK-FA special at Zvezda

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ7V78zz7c0

@haavarla:
Dont debate then. Chief designer of Sukhoi said they halved the landing distance of the Su-35 (quoted between 600 and 750 m) with the Su-57, take your own conclusions if you so wish.

@Levsha:

None can at normal combat weights on landing – unless they use an arrestor hook – that’s my point. Do we agree on this?

Dont know what are exactly the limits of the Su-57 and in what conditions. The improvement from the Su-35 (which is already a great performer in STOL) is quite significant to be dismissed IMO

When have you ever seen a Su-33 take off from the Kuznetsov with 6,500 kg hanging off it – that’s right, you haven’t. On a normal land runway the Su with need a 1,000 metres or so to take off with such a payload – at sea it would be the same.

Of course at sea with the speed of wind + carrier and specially the springboard, the TO distance is way shorter than what you say.

Lots of interesting data about actual STOBAR TO distances and weights here:
https://ak-12.livejournal.com/68596.html

And finally you can play around with this handy simulation tool:

http://cppcms.com/files/skijump/

When did Boeing say that?

You can easily google that.

EDIT: Part 1 of 4, PAK-FA special on “Military Acceptance”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DN2zCJ5WBn4

@St. John: I know, sink rates of a carrier landing are in other league compare with flare landings. But as Dr.Snufflebug says, landing gear has the right layout for a naval fighter and is uncommonly robust, so looks compatible with a carrier landing, especially if it can be executed at lower speeds than other planes.

@Dr.Snufflebug:
Agree on most points. But a reduction of Su-35 landing distance to the half is remarkable nevertheless (which is 750 m with chute as stated in Rosoboronexport info), may need something more than aero, even when I think the Su-57 is very special in that regard. As to Zvezda exaggerating: the reduction of the landing distance was claimed by Sukhoi’s chef designer, extrapolating it to carriers may be a Zvezda thing though. I assume the aircraft, if navalized, would resort to arrestor cables and so on for normal operation. But the potential capacity, under certain special circumstances (clear deck, enough carrier + overboard wind speed), to land even with landing strip unavailable on the whole length of the carrier would be very valuable. Naval fighters have to carry significant amounts of reserve fuel to have autonomy in case the landing strip is not available when they return to the carrier. If they managed this reduction in landing distance by reducing minimum speed, then reinforcements to the landing gear and structure could be kept to a minimum and reduce weight increase of a potential naval version.

Not sure how delivering some new missiles systems to the Syrians will change much overall. The Syrian military already must have one serious air defence system as it is – thousands of missiles available – hundreds of them already fired at the Israeli air force with little to show for it. One Israeli aircraft shot down.

Would you see no difference in the capacity of USAF if they still used Phantoms instead of F-22s? That is the rough equivalent of the SAMs Syria has today compared to state of the art. Not to speak of IAD infrastructure and the rest of supporting assets any serious military should have and are completely missing in Syrian case.
As to the rest of your assumptions, they are false too. Both in regards of the capacities of S-300 compared to S-200 (which can engage only one target at a time and has one missile per launcher, apart from having completely outdated electronics) to the fact that Syria will receive modern command and control equipment to coordinate their AD and see what the Russian radars see, which is alone a total game changer for IAF beyond the already difficult situation they have today after a modest modernisation of existing SAM systems and delivery of some Pantsirs (in case you didn’t notice, IAF only performs attacks with stand-off weapons since a while) and which has caused more loses than the single fighter acknowledged.

Is there a reliable source for those figures? For example, the wiki page refers amongst others to an article in Combar Aircraft by Piotr Butowski, which says “estimated”.
Remember the F-22 was around 14.5 tons empty until it suddenly wasn’t.

For the F-22:
https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/f-22/f-22-specifications.html

For the Su-57, there is no official specs, UAC site mentions them as “classified”. Wiki says 18.000 empty weight but this is probably previous to rework of the structure. Other sites mention 18.500 kg, paralay mentions 18.650 kg empty and 11.000 kg fuel. Any of available data claim lower weight and more fuel than the F-22

Hopefully we have more news on Su-57’s EW suite.

Im curious tho about Himalaya, and the number of aperture it got. Since all current potentially threatening radar are monopulse, Su-57 would be benefitted from having wingtip aperture to conduct Cross Eye jamming.

Wing tips do enclose Himalaya as far as I know…