Comparing the F-35 with the Pak Fa is like comparing a Harrier with a Su-27

And I agree. The question is…why don’t these other guys? They keep thinking it is comparable to the F-35. Well forget technology for a moment, but just thinking about the class of aircraft and mission it is designed for…they just aren’t comparable. And nobody looking to buy one or the other, will be pitting them against each other (again, forgetting all the other absurdities of this argument…for a moment).

But now that moment is over

Just one question, why is the comp-face straight on, and not (even slightly) angled downwards or inwards?

I’d like to apologise unreservedly to kapedani, it’s clear the engine RCS integrated solution will include a blocker. Clearly, the many hundreds of scientists & engineers in the know (and 3 in particular), feel S-ducts (and barn door fins) are yesterday’s tech.

Well there’s an easy answer to your first statement:

Its because you don’t understand dimensions 🙂 At least you’ve given up on the idea that I photoshoped the picture.

The answer to your second statement, is that you don’t understand magnitudes 🙂

What do I mean by magnitudes? Simple. The statement “RCS reduction” can have no meaning, unless it has a magnitude associated with it. Balsa wood is an RCS reducer. So are the RAM structures that inhabit the F-22s duct cavities.

Are they both “RCS reducers”? Yes. Do they have the same magnitude of RCS reduction? The answer is no.

So simply saying “it will have a radar blocker”, means nothing…when the simple PHYSICS of the design entail that it cannot have the same magnitude of RCS reduction as an S-duct RCS design.

Now I’ve explained this before. The issue with S-ducts is NOT the fact that the engine face is blocked or not. It has nothing to do with it. The issue is how many times you can bounce radar waves between RCS structures, before they go out into the open again. In an S-duct, where the walls of the duct are lined with special RCS structures (not just RAM), you can get several bounces of the radar energy before it leaves the duct. Each one absorbs energy.

In a radar blocker design…you get ONE bounce off the radar blocker, before the radar wave goes out into the open again.

Now unless the Russians have managed to leap-frog 30 years of RCS reduction technology in a matter of 6 months…i doubt that there is ANY amount of radar blockers they can put in there, that will yield the same…

…MAGNITUDE (there’s that word again) of energy absorption as an S-duct.

That doesn’t mean that there won’t be a blocker and that it won’t be a good one. It might just be (I doubt a very good one though). The issue is…that might be good enough for the F/A-1EF and the Rafale…but that ain’t good enough for the F-22 or F-35.

But to understand this, one needs to understand magnitudes…and why the Iranians managed to fly a “stealth plane” many months before the Russians did 🙂

Thats the question you’ll be facing fast forward 6 years from now?

When the Pak-Fa are operating out from Lipetsk Air Base.

I’m quite certain that is not a question I will be facing 6 years from now.

No doubt the RuAF will produce new capabilities and doctrine in Aerial warfare when the Pak-Fa are operating at squadron level with support from new/upgraded Flankers, Striker Su-34 and Mig-31s.

All 150 aircraft of the 2016 RuAF?

A mix of units that leaves the F-35 strangly under par on many spesific capability with its required performance i would say.

You had me at…”a mix of units”…

I don’t see your F-35 vs Pak-Fa compairson as a realistick benchmark in any way..
Two different aircraft design with two different operational missions.

No sh**! I wonder why some people in here then seem to think the T-50 will be competing with the F-35 for exports…and why it was specifically designed to match the F-35 🙂 Now all of a sudden “its not designed for the same thing as the F-35”. Really??

What is it designed for then? (BTW in cause you don’t get it, this is a rhetorical question, the answer to which, if you want it, you can find in my previous post).

If you are thinking the F-35 will be a match for Future Pak-Fa in A2A superiority mission, you are very much mistaken.

I would eat my shoe if I were mistaken in the assumption that the F-35 would both be stealthier, and would be able to detect this T-50 long before it could be detected by it, and could shoot its missiles long before the T-50 pilot has any idea what is going on. And this in a 1 vs 1 scenario. I’d eat all my shoes if this wasn’t true in the case of a real world scenario with support platforms.

That being said, yes the F-35 wasn’t designed for the air-superiority role 🙂 Nobody every really cared about that though.

It is quite clear F-35 will have more of a tactical ground support capability over the Pak-Fa in this manner.

Yep, and a damned good one at that too. Nothing the T-50 could ever hope to have in 6 years, or 16 years.

They have what they need in the CAS and general ground support role with aircraft like Su-25SM, Su-24M2 and Su-34.

All the more power to them if they have what they want.

Might the aircraft cost have something to say here..

They can get crop-dusters with machine-guns for around $13,000. Heck of a lot cheaper. If its the “budget” customer we are talking about, then we ain’t talking about much.

Oh god.. first you state we know nothing about its capabilities and then its suddenly much less LO vs the F-35

Capabilities as in…things like avionics and such. You know, things that matter. Not paint jobs.

We can know quite a bit about its RCS, just by looking at it. If indeed this is the final configuration of the thing, there’s little doubt it has far inferior RCS then the F-35. We’ve gone through this before (now you KNOW I was right about the intake configuration ;), despite the fact that all the people here claimed otherwise. You’d think by now you should have learned to listen to the other stuff I’ve said a bit more attentively.)

Ther has also been reports that there will be a singel squadron of Pak-Fa at Lipetsk around 2015, which in any case is more realistic.
There are many different reports floting around now.. whats your point?

You seriously don’t get my point?

What am I saying? I seriously asked YOU that question?

Sukhoi seems to have other goals here.

Sukhoi’s goals are to sell 50-60 aircraft to the RuAF in 2020? Well they should probably work at making it a bit more expensive then 🙂

Now warplanes 5 th generation commercially produced in the U.S. – F-22″Raptor”. According to Ivanov, one such aircraft worth 390 million dollars.

:rolleyes:

Pogosyan was quoted @ Farnborough last month as saying the T-50 would be “price competitive” with its foreign ‘analogues’ (i.e. F-35), though “significantly more expensive” than 4G fighters.

First of all, what was he supposed to say? Given that this thing is barely classifiable as a tech-demonstrator, Mr Pogosyan is about as competent at estimating its costs as is Mr. Ivanov.

Secondly, the F-35 isn’t its “analogue”, any more than the F-16 is the analogue of the MiG-31.

Third, one can buy Geo Metros these days for literally 150 bucks. It is price competitive. That doesn’t say anything for its capabilities (I mean, besides the fact that they don’t exist yet)

Oh no, not this garbage again. They first need to figure out how to rivet skin panels without deforming them…then work their way up to S-ducts 🙂 CGI alone doesn’t make good planes.

it’s a reasonable assessment that the Russian concept of balancing stealth with other requirements is very different from that which informed the F-22 design

Yes its called slapping things together on the cheap before the Indians start looking elsewhere.

The Russophobic anti-PAK-FA brigade (all 4 of them) can enjoy their fleeting moment of schoolyard glee…they’re due it, after their crushingly rude awakening

Yes Mr. Paralay…as always you are about the only reasonable sane voice in here. Your picture is 100% right…as your pictures have been consistently.

However you will agree that this prototype right now does NOT have a RAM blocker installed, and that what we are seeing with those fans is only the engine face.

And you will agree that there is no S-duct or covering of the engine face whatsoever in that intake (as your drawings indicate).

Albanian Air Force

BO-105 with a top-mounted thermal imager (ignore the cars)

Ahh I think I see the S-duct intake now! :p

RCS reduction is an engineering exercise in managing RF energy by converting much of it into heat and electricity. Plastics and resistive materials cannot achieve this alone, some efficient electrical conductors are required. And the simplest and most effective conductors are metallic. While light weight and low costs are admirable qualities, electrical performance must be the dominant factor in judging the worth of a RAM or RAS system.

Eh there you go again trying to infuse some sense into such a debate. Naughty naughty…

Russians are smart and skilled engineers, they would most probably want to avoid any over-complicated structures which may tweak the RCS a bit but require precise manufacturing which lets the price rise unnecessarily. I don’t think that they aim for the same RCS like F-22 has. It also would make no sense given the cost attached.

Again its a very silly argument to say “well the Russians are good engineers so they must have thought of something else!”.

Russian engineers have zero experience with developing such aircraft…so regardless of skill (which I have no doubt is nowhere near the level of skill US companies can afford to buy)…the fact that the US has 30 years advantage isn’t something that can be overcome with “wishful thinking”.

Yes the point is…it isn’t a stealthy aircraft like F-22. Thats the whole point.

Russians already developed superior RAM to that of the F-22 and other American variants. Lighter, and cheaper, AFAIK.

Did they now? According to whom? Oh I see…

“Source = some Russian link that I did not post.”

Ah that explains it. Now how much does US RAM cost per cubic meter vs. Russian RAM, and how much does an equal amount of each weigh? Now the real tough question, in terms of superiority- how well does each variant work at attenuating radar signals?

Now don’t ask questions like that…a “Russian link that he did not post” might not be able to answer that question. Of course all one has to do is look at the construction of this T-50 to realize that isn’t in the same league of F-22.

How well it “works” is the real question 🙂 For low cost…a wood and fabric aircraft will achieve desirable results for the amount of effort. Its lighter and cheaper. Its also…not comparable.

At least in 1 way. You’ll never know just how good any of the RAM is, so leave it alone. I just assume that both a US and Russian scientist aren’t idiots. Hard for you, I know.

Oh you can certainly know how good one is over the other…at least you can make an educated guess. I can make the educated guess that the extreme efforts undertaken to achieve the high tolerances of finish on the F-22 and the high effort put into the RAM covering and shaping of every detail on the F-22…will result in better performance than the riveted, spot-welded and deformed skin of the T-50.

I can make that educated guess without having to know a whole lot of the particulars of the RAM used.

You’re also assuming that the US tech is frozen, and hasn’t improved over time either.

Well there’s only one way this typical argument can work…if the US has done nothing over the past 20 years 🙂 And we all know how realistic this is.

Oh it also requires that somehow…magically…without having any experience in the field, Russian scientists have been able to accumulate the same amount of knowledge as US scientists form the past 30 years…without having to put any effort into it themselves…so that they can emerge today with something “better” since its “newer”.

Thats like saying that if Zastava starts developing a car today it will be better than a Mercedes 2010 model…since obviously…as anyone can understand…the Zastava engineers will have the benefit of starting in 2010 and therefore have all the accumulated knowledge of every Mercedes etc engineer on which to build upon.

Makes perfect sense.

However, the know-how rich Russian scientists do believe their RAM is superior to that of the current US one.

Of course they believe that.

Most of the time, Russians don’t boast about such things without reason or fact. Or at least some level of truth.

Most of the time Russian industry makes overconfident bloated fantastical claims which very rarely prove to be close to reality.

it’s fair to assume, they are probably right – the new Russian RAM is at least as good as what the US has on its aircraft.

Ahh…I believe you have won the argument.

They’re the engines, not radar blockers. That MiG-29 hasn’t flown in years, its probably at some open air display.

Like I said earlier, and which that picture demonstrates, one should beware of assuming the compressor face is close to the intake mouth based on a front-on view. Camera focal length can play tricks with photographs to make things like much closer than they really are.

I’m glad someone actually got what I was trying to say. There’s still hope for this thread 😉

BTW, you do all know that the MiG-29 in Kapedani’s photo is the remains of the machine at the once proud aviation museum of Khodynka.

Yes but thats irrelevant to the point I was making. The point is…viewed from the front in that angle, the engine face can APPEAR to be much closer to the inlet entrance, when in fact it is actually very deep.

What we see in that T-50 picture is the same effect…identical in fact…showing that what we are seeing is indeed the engine face and that there’s no way there is any “bending” going on in that intake.

First, a inlet which engine fan couldn’t be seen from front view or simply a bending duct is not a same thing to stealth.

Of course not. The point of the s-duct in the F-22 is to bounce the energy around into special RAM structures so that what comes out is next to nothing. That isn’t the same as simply “hiding” the face. But the T-50 doesn’t even do that.

that picture posted #395 is not an evidence to explain the distance from inlet’s lip of PAKFA to engine blade of PAKFA

Of course it is.

Thirdly, the MiG-29 really is a very small aircraft compare to PAKFA even to F-15 or F-14 which are obviously smaller than PAKFA

It doesn’t matter one bit. Its the photographic EFFECT you see…making it seem close to the intake entrance when it actually is deep inside it. Thats the point of the picture.

Ummm how old are you? 15 or 16?
The point rasied by others (and myself) is that the pictures shown of the intake appear to have some questions about them.

A picture you posted yourself was clearly fake…. yet it didnt even concern you.

:rolleyes:

This is not a fake picture

Once more you failed to understand the POINT of the “fake” montage picture. It was to show that the original…shows the same thing as the “fake”…not to try and pass off the fake as genuine.

So you have a picture of a Mig with radar blockers….. big bloody deal!

You also didn’t get my sarcasm.