So Gripen NG is getting a PAK-FA-esque sensor suite? Cute.

Any news on the airframe changes (apart from the minor ones we saw on the tech demo)?

I don’t confess to know much about the IL-476 programme and I appreciate the arguments of both supporters & critics. However, going through recent UAC documents I couldn’t help but notice the production of the type is centred around wholly new fabrication technologies (much of it imported), and hitherto not utilised on such a large scale for fundamental components.

For example laser cutting, electron beam & laser welding, non-autoclave PMCs, large scale 5-axis milling*. It’s almost as if the Ulyanovsk plant (and no doubt others) want to get to grips with these new technologies @ the lowest possible programme risk- this may go some way to explain the rationale behind the 476. JMTs.

* http://xn--80aake4anahvit.xn--p1ai/blogs/43694/

I was expecting this very thing to become apparent with time, i.e. the rationale that you are implying. I am not too familiar with the programme either, but I was sure there was something more substantial behind it than the matters brought up within the earlier polemic.

Can and did it … 🙂
R-179-300 for S-37 “Berkut”, power 21000 kg

21000 kgf/206kN wet? :O Not bad, not bad…

Really, when you take a look at everything that is going on among the programme subcontractors and especially what Sukhoi themselves have been up to for the past 20+ years – i.e. extensive RCS research (look at the scientific papers Pogosyan has co-authored for example), the development, construction and flight of an earlier S-ducted composite fighter with internal weapon bays etc, I don’t understand why people seem to think that the current PAK-FA programme is bound to result in something mediocre.

Especially considering that it has been said all along that the first stage of the programme with the early prototypes and so on will appear rather “rough” and lack a lot of technologies and gizmos compared to things projected for later stages and more importantly – the serials. Perhaps people are having troubles understanding this development philosophy or something, I don’t know. Granted it is a very patchy endeavour though, with the pieces of the puzzle scattered all across space and time, but at this point almost four years after the first flight of the first mega-basic airframe it’s all beginning to come together IMO.

Does anybody have a guess on when the new canopy will be fitted by the way? Beginning with T-50-6? Has there been any updates on that? I only recall a few bits and pieces from last year, when the production was being set up, and they were pretty secretive about it all.

Top speed of the F-14D is Mach 1,88. Its ramp-system=inlet is fixed. The max possible speed of every fighter is given by its inlet- and outlet system what produces the lionshare of thrust from supersonic speeds. To prevent hit damage to every fighter, which starts from Mach 1,8+ soft speed limits (red-scale or order) were set or hard ones by inlet limitations.

AFAIK they fixed the inlet ramps because they were ridiculously maintenance heavy, the same reason they got rid of the little pseudocanards earlier. So quite paradoxically certain performance characteristics kept getting worse with every new version despite weight reductions and increased thrust. 😀 A lot of things got better though, of course, and those things were far more useful anyway.

Do we know how far the Russians have come along?

They have studied the field for ages and they did carry out test flights of multiple scramjet vehicles at 5-6 mach, continuously since the early 1990’s I think. Some of which actually were collabs with the US aerospace industry, and later the Israeli ditto afaik.

I am not entirely sure how the famous Freeze/Kholod hypersonic vehicle turned out, but under development now is the Needle/Igla system among other things. And of course the “Brahmos-2”. Here are some nice looking gadgets from the past decade:

But all that stuff fits better in a dedicated thread, for sure.

I’ll repeat what I said at Dailytech:

Very good points indeed. It sounds like conjuring up a Saturn V and placing a flag on the moon in 1936, a mere decade after Goddard flew the first proper liquid fuelled rocket. Or something.

By all accounts, the technology just isn’t mature for that kind of thing. Sure, research can be done and developments can be underway, but as in the case of the late 1930’s/early 1940’s Silbervogel in relation to the aforementioned rockets, what various magazines are relaying now sounds far too optimistic.

Also, it’s interesting that T-50-5 has placeholders instead of the KS suite. It was supposed to have all the Sh-121/N036’s installed though, right?

And if the T50-7 will have a noticably different appearance from the first four prototypes then its possible that T50-6 will be used for testing the new modifications which are to be applied at T50-7 so it takes extra one or two years for completing the tests and build a new prototype 🙂 We may be very old when this bird arrives the final shape 😀

Well, as has been mentioned before this has been planned all along, or at least for a considerable while.

We’ve seen many little changes over the course of this initial prototype program, that dorsal panel for example. Whatever the reason for that was, the solution to it needs to be incorporated in the production lines for serial airframes, and “stealthified” in terms of materials and what not. The same goes for other subtle changes.

On the topic of stealth, there’s probably a lot of “stealthification” involved in T-50-6 and onwards, both externally in terms of coatings and omissions of various minor protrusions, and internally in terms of structural details/materials et cetera, but the overall “shape” of the aircraft itself is probably not going to change.

The design process that led to the current bunch of prototypes has dealt thoroughly with shape for a long time and the current set of prototypes themselves (and various test beds) have evaluated the real life aerodynamics, shaping, integration of base avionics and controls, ejection system and so on and so forth. Call them ambitious wind tunnel models if you will.

We’ve been treated with little glimpses of closer-to-serial concepts (like T-50-6 models and what not), and as expected they’re visually different only in terms of stealthy things such as coatings. Now, such models aren’t necessarily very reliable sources for speculation but I think in this case that they pretty much nail it. We also know that some things have been developed and produced though yet to be installed, like the new canopy. That has to be tried out in situ as well, and a “KNS-2” fits like a glove over this scheme.

In light of all that’s known I myself highly doubt we’ll see a jump like T-10-1 to T-10S, or even the slightly less dramatic YF-22 to F-22. No, it’ll get cleaner, incorporate a bunch of refined components and all, but that’s it. As such, it won’t necessarily take years and years either until these things pop up. Surely it will take some time, but the slow, creaky start up phase is long gone and the experience, tooling, routines etc. are now all where they should be. That has to get it going faster. They’re probably already underway.