SwingKidAre you aware of the difference between the 1.44 and the 1.42? 1.44 is to 1.42 as EAP is to EF-2000. Purely an aerodynamic demonstrator. It doesn’t even have the representative production layout. The problem with a lot of those claims is that the OKB was talking about the projected 1.42 while showing the 1.44. Made a lot of people wonder if they had been partaking a little too freely of the vodka.
Smoke and mirrors. All “differences” were invented purely as a Mikoyan PR damage control ploy when the 1.44 was unveiled and denounced as an overpriced flying reflector. When in the history of Soviet or Russian aviation has a “purely aerodynamic demonstrator” ever been built during the fighter design process? To demonstrate what new technology advance, if not stealth? Flight itself? Non-retractable undercarriage? There were no target designators fitted, so no “internally-carried weapons” could have been tested, even though it had space reserved for them. And it was clearly intended for more than hi-speed taxi tests, since it flew. Hi-visibility canopy, canard control surfaces… There was even an ejection seat testbed with the same layout. This was nothing less than Mikoyan’s first, best, and failed attempt to design a stealth fighter without the required RCS-measuring facility. No other 1.42 with “lower RCS than F-22” ever existed, except in the imagination of those asking for money to design it all over again from scratch.
-SK
SwingKidGet real. Material and other factors can determine the stealthiness of an airframe. Claiming to be able to gauge an aircraft’s radar visibility solely by eye is ludicrous.
Seriously, after running enough RCS simulations it becomes really easy to tell where the “peaks” and “valleys” will be.
Materials are overrated. While a visual inspection won’t produce a precise pattern chart, flat faces and corner reflectors are quite easy to count, measure, and quantify as RCS values. Where these noisemakers are absent, “fit and finish” is also fairly easy to see in photographs from the way light reflects off surfaces. By the time you get past deciding that from this angle there are no visible perpendicular faces, corner reflectors or dents, you are already so far into “low RCS” that materials are irrelevant. The biggest challenge is to know what lies behind opaque but radio-transparent dielectric antenna housings, but even here some kind of hints are usually available.
Coated “cockpit glass”? Frontal hemisphere RCS. Might be important to, say, an F-16 driver flying around in an area where MiGs are prowling.
No disagreement about F-16. I was talking about Tu-160 with corner reflectors under the nose panels.
And as for the Tu-160s and the RAM-treated intakes…you are aware that engine compressor faces are major radar reflectors, right?
Yes, I think I read about that once.. 🙂
Again, ever heard of Keldysh?
The scientist or the space institute? I never heard of the latter having anything to do with terrestrial aircraft… :confused:
-SK
SwingKidN1, 2001. It has some 30 pages of flatnose-Floggers, and i have yet to see something as in-depth as that article. You can order it at places like http://www.aviapress.com
Holy mother of… What a site!! 😮
Thanks… 🙂
-SK
SwingKidThose MiG-27 aboard NITKA pics are from the excellent Mir Aviatsii article on the MiG-27, btw.
Which issue?
-SK
SwingKidWhat do you mean, “what does it take?” Weight? Money? Wire?
Step (1): Make 9 R-77s…
😉
-SK
SwingKidI have a question. If for example on this Su-25TM, it has 11 hardpoints, and I believe 8 underwing, 1 underfuselage and 2 wingtips, those. Only 2 underwing hardpoints can carry teh Vikhrs, what modifications would be required to allow the other hardpoints to carry the Vikhrs and any other weapons?
It depends on the weapon. For most, probably only more wiring needs to be added. Of course fuel tanks also need plumbing. Some missile weapons (e.g. Kh-25ML) have wide rocket plumes that prevent them being carried on inner pylons, because the smoke would be ingested by the aircraft engine. R-73 shouldn’t be on inner pylons either because the aircraft body would limit the seeker field of view.
In most cases it could probably be done, but the question is, why? How long does the Su-25T need to stay in the air in order to use 16 Vikhrs? Probably long enough, that it will need fuel tanks on the other pylons, instead of more Vikhrs. Internal fuel load of Su-25 is less than MiG-29.
-SK
SwingKidHey Swingkid! I was almost laughing out of my chair as well when I read that very sentence you mentioned. Now this was a good laugh….
Please… stop… too… many… jokes!!!
The Americans have invented RADAR?!? Shouldn’t that be, like, classified or something? Seriously, relations with China warming up, you don’t think they’d share that technology with Taiwan do you? Maybe it’s a bluff?
😀
And what, pray tell, “old technology sensors” have submarines been successfully hiding from for the past fifty years..? …mirrors reflecting the sun??
Wait… didn’t I read somewhere the Russians are already using active-radar torpedos?
Please, I can’t take it anymore… Someone tell that damn fool, everyone knows submarines are coated with RADAR-ABSORBANT MATERIAL!! 😡 😡 😡
I gotta stop reading this site during office hours…
-SK
SwingKid“China, Taiwan and other nations are still eagerly buying and building submarines, electric, diesel and nuclear. These U-boats, however, would be virtually useless in the narrow and shallow Taiwan Strait, detected by ships and aircraft with high-technology and then destroyed.”
And what, pray tell, are these “high-technology” sensors?
“The invention of radar, however, and subsequently satellite surveillance technology from the United States, meant that the advantages of being submerged were negated totally.”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! 😀 😀 😀
Oh.. oh… breathe. whew! Back to work.
-SK
SwingKidSo if shape means everything and materials mean nothing I wonder why RAM are even applied to any aircraft let alone aircraft like B-2s and F-117s.
Two bad musicians are standing next to each other. One is playing the electric guitar with a high-wattage amplifier and the other is playing the piccolo, and the noise is making you crazy. You have a gun. Is there any advantage to shooting the piccolo player, before the guitar player? Is there any advantage after?
There is very little RAM on any other operational aircraft besides F-117 and B-2. If it was so useful they would all be covered with it. The Have Blue F-177 prototype had none and the F-22 has many exposed metallic surfaces. RAM is only useful for small adjustments to RCS after shaping has done 95% of the job.
First of all you know everything about Russian RCS facilities how?
It helps to be an electromagneticist and understand RCS facilities in general, but my personal qualifications are irrelevant. Even if Russian research firms weren’t all advertising their facilities from the rooftops, we could read:
Page 22 (page 19 of the original document) outlines Soviet RCS research facilities. After the analysis of exisiting facilities at Aralsk, Kalinin and Voronezh, the authors conclude:
“With the advent of cruise missiles with inherently low radar cross sections, the Soviets require sophisticated facilities capable of measuring the radar cross section of smaller targets. In the past, such US ranges required carefully controlled, graded surfaces extending over great lengths – often several kilometers – against which precisely adjusted transmitters bounce radar waves onto pylon-mounted targets that, in turn, reflect the energy into closely calibrated receiver antennas. No such Soviet ranges are known to exist.“
Equally a real life test against a real system is a waste of time why?
A Tu-160 can’t rotate on the spot for a SAM radar. The type of 2D RCS diagram of the type Sens posted can’t be generated this way – let alone a 3D one. What will the Tu-160 do, fly upside-down? Even if it could be done this way – by the time the aircraft is flying, it’s too late to make meaningful RCS changes to the design. Flying against a SAM site is more useful to develop operational tactics for pilots, not to help airframe engineers.
Yet they have no RCS testing facilities and no precision manufacturing capability without any information too. I guess ignorance is bliss.
I just reduced my own physical height by more than a foot!
Meaningless.
I just lowered my arm!
Meaningful.
Which do Russian RCS-reduction discussions more closely resemble? Let the reader decide, while looking at the photo of Tu-160 nose-area corner reflectors.
Don’t get me wrong, I respect the honesty of Russian specialists. It’s just necessary to have specific technical knowledge to understand what they’re really saying, and some popular aviation authors don’t.
That proposal was to fill the nosecone area with a gas that can be ionised and temporarily turned into a plasma to reduce RCS when needed. It would certainly make more sense than active jamming and be much cheaper than wasting money on very expensive low RCS radar antennas.
Now you’re being ridiculous. Antenna design is quite fairly priced and is never a waste of money. Take it from an antenna designer – no investment in jamming or plasmas could possibly be more cost-effective. In fact, there is no better use of money in the whole world than to spend it on antenna design. I cannot emphasize that enough. Tell your army. Tell your government. Tell all your friends!! 😀
-SK
SwingKidYou´re entitled to your own personal opinion. Personally, I think he has the right to practice his religion as well as anyone else. Satanism was conceived to oppose Christianity. It´s just as stupid and irrational as the other, its origin.
“Ethics and morals,” example 2… 😉
-SK
SwingKidThe eight pylons are not identical. Only two of them are wired for Vikhr, max load = 16 missiles.
-SK
SwingKidIn the movie all Kh-22 missiles worked, first of all, the missiles didn’t work in their good days, nowadays, probably none of them is in such a state as to be used in any exercise or war. Even when they were fielded as “the” weapon, more than half of them exploded just 30 seconds after launch. I believe only 1/10 missiles made it to the target area, exploding somewhere near the target but never quite on top of it.
Never?
-SK
SwingKidReducing spikes and hotspots is fine, as long as we understand the limits of such methods. But to think that the Tu-160 has smaller RCS than the MiG-21 because of turbine coatings only exhibits a lack of understanding aggravated by media reporting.
Even if it were possible to coat turbine blades (and at least Richardson says it is not), graphite surfaces still reflect about 95% of the radar wave. The head-on RCS looking straight down the engine intake would be practically the same. The cases in which such RAM can have an effect is when radio energy enters the intake at an angle and must bounce around inside the RAM-lined intake before and after it’s reflected from the turbine blades. In this case the 5% reduction from RAM-coated compressor blades is nothing compared to the cumulative 0.95 x 0.95 x 0.95 x … effect of the bounces from the coated intakes anyway. In short the benefit to be gained from coating turbine blades with RAM should not offset the technological difficulty of doing it, and either way the pure “head-on” (as opposed to “frontal quarter”) RCS spike will be hardly reduced.
The most interesting form of RCS reduction for me is mentioned in aerospacetech’s quoted article and refers to the radar antennas behind the radio-transparent nosecone. In the F-16, a flat-plate antenna is used which has small RCS unless it is illuminated head-on (in which case the F-16 has locked the target and is painting it with radar anyway). In the B-1B an angled ESA is used. With such small antenna RCS and engine turbines not visible from the front or above, it makes sense to try to reduce reflections from the cockpit. But the corner reflectors all around the Tu-160 nose and the complex Cassegrain and parabolic antenna shapes used on Russian aircraft radars will dominate over any cockpit “spike”. The most realistic proposal Russians have made to reduce radar antenna RCS is to fill the nosecones with plasma – thereby rendering all the antenna equipment unusable. While this is a creative idea and probably a neat option to have when operating in EMCON mode, it’s not very practical and really exposes just how hopelessly desperate RCS reduction for existing Russian aircraft has become. What are needed are entirely new radars with low RCS properties designed from the start. Until then, engine and cockpit coatings are more of experimental than practical value.
-SK
SwingKidBut please bear with me, I tend to get spontaneously ****ed whenever anyone uses “sarcastic internet humor” against the “men of honor,” as you call them, unless it´s aimed at someone who has committed war crimes, of course.
Let’s bear with each other. An unclassified study of friendly fire and collateral damage is also an exercise in self-control. A little steam will inevitably escape here and there.
-SK
SwingKid🙂 🙂 🙂 a fan blade (but your link looks much better 😀
Is there a reliable source that says compressor blades were coated with something? My understanding is that these things need to be manufactured out of a single pure crystal of metal for them to withstand the heat of their revolutions per minute. I know more about radar than aerodynamics, but covering a supersonic turbine blade with iron ball paint or a quarter-wavelength dielectric layer doesn’t seem compatible with supersonic performance. :confused:
-SK
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