Ahem… I made that one and posted it here in the Frankenplane Prototypes thread. 😀

But thanks for the feedback.

The Su-34, yes. That’d look awesome, same goes for Su-25. Well, not in black but in that dark matte grey thing. The watered out eggplant-baby blue combo is absolutely hideous in my opinion.

Il-76/476 sure would look good in it too, or would that be too C-17ish? Well, not a bad thing in my book.

Hmmm… What else. I was going to say MiG-29SMT/UPG/whatever, but the “new” splinter schemes do look pretty fresh.

Tu-160 and Tu-22M look good the way they are if you ask me. The white swan is the white swan, after all, and the contrast to Blackjack has always been cool. Besides, anti-flash white reminds me of one of my favorite jet bombers of all time, the Victor.

If I was to change something about them, it’d be the way their names are painted up front. I guess I wouldn’t object to them being painted darker either, but I think I’d find that boring somehow. Anyway, I don’t really know how I’d rather see the names depicted anyway, so whatever. Besides, the traditional cyrillic and the VVS stripes strikes me as very Russian, so while I prefer a more toned-down approach the aesthetics there are probably more in tune with what they like.

One thing I would love to see is a low vis roundel though… Akin to PAK-FAs, but all gray.

Sorry, an entire post with random opinions. Bear with me, people. 😀

Such a shame that Sukhoi guys are apparently just a bunch of n00bs and dont read forums like these that are full of experten. 🙁 Wish this would be news only thread, and not “tired old discussions thread”.

Yeah, I’ll second that right away. It’s a news thread and that’s what we ought to discuss. I think that this Tigershark dude is just out to provoke with his short sighted rambling and I’m actually a tad ashamed I fell for the bait.

As far as news go, love those hires photos KnAAPO put up. It must’ve been freaking cold during T-50-3’s inaugural flight, by the way:

Lush contrails despite what I’d assume a pretty moderate altitude.

This question must have been asked a billion times before but… Why do they keep insisting on trying out their new toys out in the middle of the Siberian winter?

russia wanted low risk so chose similar design to flanker.

A more reasonable assumption would be that Russia (Sukhoi, in fact) wanted the engines widely separated to allow for independent thrust vectoring to augment the aerodynamic control surfaces and possibly also for better safety. Add to that the lift vs. drag advantages and so on. In short, they wanted kickass performance and they undoubtedly do believe that they have the peripheral technology to bridge any kind of “stealth” gap vis a vis the competitors.

Of course the Flankeresque approach is something Sukhoi is most familliar with and thus could be regarded as an “low risk” approach seen from that perspective, but we do have reason to believe that the current choice has deeper implications than that.

I think attack helos are a horrible mis-spending and are only justifiable
for certain SOF operations, where some additional firepower may be warranted.
so i vote for Mi-24 or Mi-17

I second this. The sound move would be to spend their money on multirole helicopters. The NH90 might be too expensive for them (and has been plagued by delays and what not) but something along the lines of the Battlehawk or the Mi-35 would do the trick. That, and/or COIN a/c with decent rough airfield and STOL capabilities (there are tons of them and they’re not too pricey) would be a much better investment.

Don’t get me wrong, dedicated attack helicopters do constitute an asset to be reckoned with in many situations, but their reputation is well over-inflated. Considering the narrow niche they fill in I find it hard to justify such costly acquisitions by armed forces the size (and especially in the situation) of Iraqs. AHs should be considered a luxury for those who have everything else fully covered and still have heaps of dough over for that extra little bit of icing on the cake.

But if they really do want them for some reason, Mi-28 is probably their best bet. To me it just sounds like Iraqi top brass having watched too many US action films though.

I decided to contribute as well, I hope that’s okay. Here’s my Frankenfitter:

It’s a Polish Air Force Su-22UM (original image here) mated to a fattened-up F-4 Phantom radome, A-4 Skyhawk side intakes (source) and the IRST/FLIR of a SAAB J35J Draken (from my private photo collection).

…Oh, and it’s in something reminscent of 1960’s USAF markings. Photoshop galore.

Wtf #2… how was the fuel expected to enter the engines at the end of the propellers?

Look no further than ramjet-powered helicopter blades. One (quite unsuccessful but at the very least, functional) example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiller_YH-32_Hornet

Goes to show that it’s possible, though.

Does anyone know how things are progressing at LII ? There hasn’t been any news about T-50’s testing in months (i mean pictures on sites like RP). I think the last big thing that happened was 51 returning to flying …it seems terribly quiet again.:confused:

Sukhoi reported on October 16th that the T-50-4 will conduct its maiden flight from the factory air field (KnAAPO) in the “near future”. That’s the latest piece of news that we have.