XB-70Although the baked in RAM used in the F-35 is far more weather tolerant than our other types, the upkeep costs of the Lightning II is still going to be significantly higher than that of a 4th gen.
XB-70@FBW – It passed its bench testing phase already. Everyone does the bench phase before the flight phase. But passing that isn’t a 100% guarantee. Engines occasionally do require rework, and with tight budgets it is not certain that the Russian government would keep the program that is necessary.
XB-70@TomcatViP – But the UK can subcontract with Italian industry (or pretty much anyone’s) without having a partnership with their government. I really do not see any likely advantages there.
XB-70@SpudmanWP – The Gripen E and the F-35 cater to completely different markets. Gripen E is a pure budget fighter.
XB-70I don’t see Italy making a reliable partner at all. Excluding Greece, Italy is the king of debt in the EU. They face many, many years of financial and political uncertainty. Sweden would be a good partner. Their aerospace industry has considerable technical skill and they can certainly squeeze funds throughout the development cycle. I also think the UK can get a considerable amount of support from the Anglosphere. It is not at all guaranteed that Australia, Canada, and NZ will pour their whole future into the F-35.
XB-70FalconDude said: So have we got any news? Is the PAKFA project on its last legs or not?
It is way to early to tell. Truth be told, what happens with the “product 30” engines is a better indicator of the health of the program than any commentary on the aircraft itself. ALL of the distinguishing features of the Su-57 are dependent on the engines:
The specified RCS equivalent to “a tennis ball”
All aspect VLO
The ability for Mach 1.6 without reheat
A 900+ mile supersonic endurance
And the new engines likely improve IR reduction and electrical power generation (very important going forward into the future) as well. If the new engine design fails its last tests or if that program is cancelled than the Su-57 program will die. If it succeeds then they will start building them in earnest. But flight tests typically lasts for 2.5-3 years and the Product 30 didn’t fly until last December. It’s likely to be in testing up till the end of 2020 and so there won’t be any substantial orders till the tail end of that year or even 2021.
So pay attention to flight tests with the new engine. If they fly a bird with twin Product 30s (they won’t do this unless it has proved itself to be reliable) next year then it is performing well and the Su-57 program is healthy. If they don’t then…
XB-70Mr. Malaya said…
The BAE approach to this aircraft appears to be similar to its Frigate design- modular replacement of systems and structure to suit the operators role. Where one country might want pure A2A, another might want to mix things up by adding pods/bays, sensors or different weapons on the same basic infrastructure.
If they do that then they are going to have some ‘pleasant’ surprises. In a stealth design, all of the internal structures and arrangements really matter. You can’t just swap things out without an awful lot of engineering design work and testing and verification. It was all of the little differences between the A,B,&C (mostly internal) that caused the F-35 program to fall so far behind its original schedule and balloon in cost.
The British should aim for something of a budget stealth fighter.
XB-70PeeD said: Talking about afterburner, I’m not even sure it has one. Maybe all emphasis is on an air mixing nozzle but why then take the fan air from so far at the front?
It looks like it has a ring of injector nozzles for reheat to me. I can’t imagine what else that structure in the back would be. And, if you want to cool the engine’s exhaust, you do need to pull from the fan. The compressor actually heats air up quite a bit.
TooCool_12f said: …though it looks nice, chances are, this mock up doesn’t go much further than what it is now…
I kind of feel the same way. It needs enough budget set aside and then very good project management to keep things on schedule and within that budget – and so largely out of sight. The more political exposure it gets the more political infighting there will likely be and the less chance this project has to make it to completion. A single partner could be a good thing. But the partner nation must be equally committed and have appropriate technological and industrial expertise or it will just be a liability.
XB-70The mock up looks pretty sweet sporting that WWII era “night roundel”. Going with a traditional layout (not tailless) makes it much more feasible since they won’t need to prototype new TVC dependent control schemes – ditto with the system of systems approach. It’s still going to need very good project management to see the light of day though.
From a technical aspect the most intriguing thing to me so far is the inlet. There is no diverter nor a DSI bump. I remember reading an article last year about Rolls Royce discussing the possibility of designing an engine which can handle turbulent and uneven flow. This seems to fit well with that…but a lot can change over 17 years.
XB-70The Chinese and Russians have had joint drills for many years now, but has anyone heard of joint strategic bomber drills before?
XB-70Give them a decade or two of experience combined with an increase in tech availability and I have no doubt that Sukhoi should be able to get into the VLO range of RCS.
@SpudmanWP – VLO isn’t like a meter or a kilogram (or a decibel per square meter). There is no scientific consensus on what the term means. The Russians have said their spec is a metallic sphere the size of a “tennis ball”. So if you define VLO as -30dBsm then it isn’t going to be VLO. If you define it as -20dBsm then it is. And if you define it as -25dBsm then it will be if they just barely exceed their spec. But in all cases it is simply your interpretation of the term and others may legitimately argue otherwise.
That said, I’m pretty sure you will say that the F-35 is VLO. And the Russians are going to exceed its spec in under a decade with Okhotnik.
XB-70I am not saying that Sukhoi will not “eventually” gain the same level of knowledge, just that they do not have it now.
That’s a pretty bold statement, although I don’t think you realize it. When we built HaveBlue and even the follow on F-117 we didn’t have 3d printers, computers had very little processing power for simulations, computer aided design tools were in their infancy and not very reliable, and we were very limited in what we can do with composites. They don’t have any of those problems today. Heck, they even got the radar absorbent materials we used on the F-117, and they have had almost 20 years to improve on them. So, although Sukhoi may not have the same level of knowledge (and experience) as LM now has, it is certainly sufficient.
XB-70What are you trying to do, KGB? This place will go to hell if everyone tries to trash everyone else’s threads. And there isn’t a whole lot about the J-20 that is known as the Chinese got that whole program secured tight…so any attempt to gauge its capability will be imprecise.
XB-70I had forgotten that they were the Royal Flying Corps all throughout WWI.
XB-70Who knows the means of locating the F-22’s or whether it was real time or after analysis of mission data…
But your interpretation of that translation you keep putting out *alleges* it. It alleges that the Russians believed they may have been detected, and so it alleges that they either picked up a target lock on Himalayas or they picked up a search frequency at threat power levels and correlated it to its target. That’s it. And so they gained useful info but the USAF didn’t. I know that isn’t what you were trying to say when you brought it up, but that is in fact what you did.
Also, you might be way over your head in talking about stealth. If you don’t mind, I can provide you with some light reading material. You may find it interesting.
http://www.arl.army.mil/arlreports/2012/ARL-TN-0490.pdf
https://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedia/Navy%20handbook/4.11%20Radar%20Cross-Section%20(RCS).pdf
http://martinshough.com/aerialphenomena/RCSsphere.pdf
You cannot eyeball stealth. It just doesn’t work that way. From the microwaves 101 link you can see that RCS is a function of projected cross section, reflectivity, and directivity. And so their is a materials factor in there. And the difference it makes can be huge!
From the Radar Detection of Spherical Targets document, section 7i: “Solid spheres made of nonconductive materials will generally have an RCS of approximately
zero. Such types of object would include neoprene or polyethylene balloons (neglecting
payload equipment which may return an echo). However, balloons with metallised fabrics
are sometimes used for radar callibration and similar purposes, and would return an efficient
echo subject to all the considerations previously outlined. If an ordinary weather balloon
should be wet, or iced in severe cold, then it too may acquire a small RCS.”
Weather balloons can be several meters in diameter, and they have a supposedly unstealthy spherical shape. And yet if they are made of polymer material or canvas then they have no discernable RCS. The Army Research Laboratory paper is a study for a 1m diameter sphere. A solid metallic object would have a RCS of about 1dBsm. But both simulated models provided results typically better than -50dBsm. That is a reduction by better than 100,000.
So tell me about all of those features that you cited. What kind of contribution to RCS did you think they made? What if they are only in fact 1/100th of that? 1/1000th? 1/100,000th? Stealth isn’t as simple as you think. The Russians say they aim to achieve around -25dBsm. I haven’t seen anything to believe they can’t do that. And that is a RCS smaller than that of an air to air missile.
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