Su-34M is a reasonable concept. Hope to see some airframe upgrades (higher percentage of composites and so on), apart from the avionics upgrades etc.

…And a slicker paintjob.

wtf, did i just see the sweedish assault boat 90?

Yep, its licenced version, project 03160 ‘Raptor’: http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/raptor-project-03160-high-speed-patrol-boat/

It’s not licensed and it’s not a CB90 either. It’s very, very similar though, but if you compare them side-by-side you see a lot of differences.

Though… Upon further review I see that the boats in the clip are not only “Raptors”, also featured are some project 02510, another CB90-“lookalike” but also with a lot of differences:

It doesn’t cut the main spar, it’s well ahead of it.

Nor does the missile fin crossing the line in the drawing as seen from below mean anything. Are you unable to picture it in 3D? Compare it to the frontal view and you see that the fin fits and exactly why that line appears crossed from below. It isn’t difficult.

Also, there is already a special kind of launcher rail meant for this compartment, we’ve seen it mentioned in heaps of documentation. Add to that the fact that the hinging mechanism is visible on several of the prototypes (why would they even bother to actually bolt hinges onto it if it was only a dielectric panel?). We also know that there are reduced cross-section missiles being developed, as well as folding-fin varieties (a standard R-73 isn’t supposed to go in there anyway).

Funny that this is being debated 6 years on.

As far as side-looking radar/EW things go, we already know where those are positioned, and we even know what they look like behind the panels.

Eh, totally different doctrines. I mean, totally. The vast majority of Soviet fighter aircraft were wholly defensive in nature, short ranged, sparsely armed, designed to perform over WP/SU soil only, never far from base. They basically got locked in that mindset from WW2 and onwards.

As has been stated previously, things looked about the same east/west by the Korean war. Then it started diverging, more and more. So, they started off as point-defense fighters with cannons, later on chiefly “missile trucks” meant to be led by GC, fire missiles and then return to base. They were cheap, simple and not very versatile, had narrow engagement envelopes and almost no autonomous capability. They were highly numerous, though. Typically the entire plane was built around a single type of radar paired with a single type of missile… One might as well treat the entire “unit” as a sort of extended SAM-system, to be honest…

It wasn’t until the late 1970’s that began to change and they adopted a more “western” idea of what a fighter should be able to do, i.e. have some kind of autonomy, have decent range, display some versatility in role and loadout (some flavor of “multi-role” that is) and so on. Obviously this kind of versatility has huge implications for avionics, networking and so on, as well, and the Soviets lagged behind in that department exactly because of the choice not to develop such aircraft even when others did (and, obviously semiconductor development lagged behind over there as well, but that was a result of their dinosaurian economy that didn’t quite catch onto the IT revolution until the mid-1980’s).

Even with that change of heart though, the Su-27 and MiG-29 were dumbed down in their first decade of service with lackluster arsenals, bad radars (far below design specs) and over-reliance on GC (and their export versions, as per standard Soviet practice were even more dumbed down) and in the case of the MiG-29 baseline models – awful range. Their true potential was only beginning to be sniffed upon by the mid-1990’s, severely delayed needless to say, thanks to both doctrinal and economic factors. Truth be told, something akin to the Su-35S should have been around by the early 1990’s if it hadn’t been for all that jazz.

So, yeah. Western fighters were “superior” in most ways, except for when it comes to certain kinetics and what not (and some curious Soviet innovations such as nimble HMD-paired off-bore missiles and the networking schemes of the Foxhounds, for instance).

But then again the Soviets never actually tried to build something like an F-4 at the time. They stuck to putting a radar in front of an engine, slapping some wings onto it (typically re-used from previous designs, for simplicity’s sake) and then hang four huge honking missiles under it. Those off-the-shelf wings not working all that great? Slap on some wing fences and other quick fixes… Oh well, not the most elegant thing around but we can build a couple of thousands and totally block out any prospective attack on the motherland, all is well, then.

Worth mentioning though is that several of the Soviet design bureaus produced a big bunch of other, bolder and way more advanced designs but those didn’t get greenlighted. Because doctrine.

Yeah, wow. That’s frustrating. 😀

It’s amazing that even considering the total mess of a patch job that the T-50-5R is, it’s still incredibly beautiful.

Goodness, I can’t wait to see some similar in-flight footage of the T-50-6. Just imagine.

*drools*

Yes, these are well known problems with the early batches of MiG-29 in the 80s. How is that relevant today?

True, and India clearly understood that shoddy Soviet export pieces were entirely different from all the Flankers and MiGs they’ve ordered since, from independent Russia. So, in other words what went down in the 80’s and early 90’s is entirely irrelevant.

Off topic but wow, that city sure has gone through a serious makeover recently. Whole waterfront and center looks brand new, nothing like before. Have they done anything to the naval facilities?

http://bmpd.livejournal.com/1970886.html

Some decent photos from Aviadarts in Crimea.

Su-35S got its radome color changed.