I’ll quite possibly sound stupid now, but where exactly does the engine draw its oxidizer from? I see no intakes whatsoever.

—edit— Oh, I just noticed “air-fuel system” in the description! Pardon me.

Fascinating, if I am interpreting this correctly. Independent like a rocket, but it’s still a turbine, yes? Are there any relevant precedents to look at? Haven’t seen such a setup before (I’m pretty god damn ignorant about all of this stuff TBH).

—edit 2— But man, where’s the “sustaining” part gonna be in that? Not gonna be a lot of mass to play with there even if you’d compress it crazy much. Being able to grab the oxidizer from outside is usually what makes a sustainer.

Gosh, I feel extremely stupid now but I just can’t get my head around it. I mean, I’m not totally sober but I’m typically not this thick even after a good number of pints. If any kind soul can explain what this is all about in layman’s terms, I’ll be forever grateful. 🙂

The rudder paint scheme is a little bit different.

Also, there’s no cheek radar antennae provisions any more.

No behind-cockpit EODAS ball. No corner reflector either.

There’s also some probes/protrusions missing.

What else, Berkut?

The intake boundary layer mesh is stealth shaped (diamond).

I remember having read that Russian laser guidance is different from the classic semiactive laser seeker which aims for a laser reflected off the target. Some Russian missiles have backwards-facing detectors which guide the missile toward the lens of the laser designator. Someone could shed more light into this…

The Russian Vihr missile does that, it stays in the laser beam and goes wherever the beam is pointing. I’m pretty sure that the point of this is to keep the missile light and fast (and cheap) with a very clever yet deceptively simple guidance system, while the guidance is still pretty much jam-resistant (any ECM/APS systems carried by the target are pretty much entirely unable to “dazzle” it or otherwise disrupt its guidance for example).

There are obviously drawbacks to it as well, you can’t use “external” designators for instance, and the entire firing process has to be in line of sight.

Tu-4LL with the NK-12!

Talk about assymetrical thrust if you crank them all up.

It behooves one to have a deeper understanding of political systems if one wants to comment on them. The “socialist-style” way of running certain things isn’t “socialism”. It’s “statism”. Why does this distinction matter? Well, are we going to call fascist regimes “socialist-style”?

Nah, it has very little to do with actual “socialism” per se, as we have already concluded. But most of these things are “remnants” of a socialist society (or glaring indications of its origins). I kinda figured that was what MadRat was getting at (since we’re talking about Russia post-RSFSR, after all). Hence the quotation marks all throughout. There is nothing particular in “socialism” that says that the defense industry has to be run a certain way, but in Russia’s case there a lot of less-than-optimal administrative “solutions” that do originate in the all-in socialist society in which they were first conceived. For instance…

EDIT: Basically, Russia’s defense industry isn’t run the way it is in Europe or the US. And the most obvious difference is the degree of direct state involvement. How’s that?

to my knowledge Russias capitalism is far more aggressive than in US

In some ways, arguably yes. It’s a proper capitalistic market economy, has a real low flat tax (a capitalist’s dream), a decent middle class, a slice of really rich and powerful people at the very top and a lot of poor at the very bottom and so on and so forth. Basically as far from socialist as you can get, for better and for worse.

But the “socialist-style” way of running certain things is a different matter. The state has large (often controlling) stakes in most of the massive enterprises involved in the defense business, it fiddles directly with the R&D, too many things are undiversified, inefficient and unprofitable but kept afloat “artificially” and so on. The recent crises have led to positive changes (better late than never I guess), but as MadRat correctly points out there is a lack of pragmatism (especially sustainable thinking) and that eventually backfires.

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The given plane has a new variant of colouring of fighters of the Russian Naval Aviation – dark grey top and a light grey-blue camouflage from below.

IMHO they should have stuck to the plain matte light grey of the Mikoyan K/KUB/M/M2/35 prototypes/demos. That was top-notch.

And I think they should do it with the Su-30SM’s in VMF service too – they should also sport that overall matte light grey as seen on the MiG demos, or perhaps the two-tone grey of the Sukhoi MKx prototype/demonstrator (#502). Looks clean and modern.

I really can’t get my head around how Russia is reasoning about it a lot of the time. The MiG-29K/KUB can be made to look like a proper modern, lean and mean 4½/4++ generation naval fighter, as we have seen earlier… Yet they just had to screw it up when it finally was accepted into service by painting it in a billion different colors and with that butt-ugly glossy dark grey on top.

Why?!

Note that I really don’t mind multi-tone camouflage in general. Like, the non-dark Su-35S has it going real well. But that’s one of the somewhat rare examples in Russia where it actually works…

Also, let’s say they really have to do camouflage for whatever reason… Then why make it look like it’s the 1950’s? That dark top/light bottom that we have seen an awful lot of these days (whether it’s “aubergine” or grey) has an uncanny resemblance to say the Royal Navy of the 50’s and 60’s, complete with the shiny finish that really accentuates the dimples/unevenness of the skin and sooner or later starts flaking like dry pastry.

Russia makes some of the world’s most beautiful and capable aircraft across all classes/categories, yet their taste (and paint industry) seems to need a bit of a shakeup. In my opinion, of course.

Thanks, now I got that off my chest. Carry on (and sorry if I offended anybody).

Top Gun 2 script is actually written now and production is in the early stages. It’s coming. And its going to center around drones. I’m guessing sort of ‘Deal of the Century’ scenario where drones turn on the inventors and the man-machine combination has to destroy it/them. Avoids painting any nation-states as bad guys. And avoids PC fault lines. Shame. I was hoping for a super villain flying either Su-37 Terminator or J-20 Stealth canard, backed by MiG-28M (Saegeh lookalikes) and the F-14A. I still hope its about the F-35C and not about F-35B or F/A-18E. There is still the outside chance they steal the title as best airborne flight shots from Sky Fighters aka Les chevaliers du Ciel.

Didn’t the abysmally bad flick “Stealth” deal with something like that earlier? It was an AI gone haywire, flying the latest uber stealth plane (in effect a drone, even though the plane could be flown piloted as well). Then I guess they threw in some peripheral Su-37’s for good measure, but the out-of-control AI was the main antagonist (and later it had a change of “heart” …Uh, a truly cringeworthy plot, I’m not sorry for spoiling it).