three. plus fourth – inside the An-124;)

all the Russia on vacations till Tuesday

Any news on reasons for 52 needing 51’s tail fin?

“51 is so broken that they have to took many spare parts from 52”:D

meantime, 53 is being unloaded at Zhukovsky

Is it postponed or cancelled?

postponed…it’s neither 50-3 nor 50-4

Actually he was quite right last time he mentioned it and is right again this time.

Spheres are a comparitively AWFUL shape for low RCS, especially vs early warning systems.

F-22 RCS described as ‘marble-sized’ (at certain angles I guess) was the thought that came to my mind when I was looking at 101KS-V ball at MAKS
just one EOTS ball tens times bigger than marble. well, second thought was that they will modify it for Stage 2 airframe
… and then I saw a CONTAINER POD:D
on my question what the hell it has common with LO, UOMZ guy answered something like ‘you want stealth – you put pod off’
I decided not to continue discussion about why T-50 needs it at all then – to use darn expensive LO aircraft having barely LO pod in second wave attack seems unpractical

I know

AESA installed a-la F-22A on T-50 – angled up, but untreated radome hinge line – yes, that’s make me wonder, too
anyway, look at these on MiG-29K/KUB and F-15SE…

I won’t even bother reading wiki article on RCS. I present you Nightjar:

Nighjar I and Nightjar II were mostly RCS reduction tech programs – not actual vehicle – that among others tested LO and VLO shapes. Test article on photo most likely UAV inlet or exaust while round shape was just ‘other end’ aerodynamically shaped to behave well at RCS test pole (look at photo and you will understand what end was a subject of interest). Otherwise, this doesn’t mean that sphere is ‘bad’ shape for EOS ball.