well thats not what they said is it. They’ve already built the advanced version, but they want to get it in service quicker. Not unlike the approach they take with most fighter jets now, Typhoon, F22 etc.

They may have already built and flown the advanced version but until it has military certification it might as well be used to ship air mail for the Post Office. It won’t get it into service quicker at all, infact it will only serve to further delay the boondoggle of a program. It’s a joke.

2013, 2015, or later.
Why do some people make so much fuss about entry in service dates?
What’s the rush?
Did anyone gave a deadline to the Russians?
Is there a war coming?

🙂 Indian may just have a deadline in mind, they know what a priority it is to set out a firm contract with the Russians after past lessons learned.

Besides deadlines are fun, just take a look at any F-35 thread to see the wonderful entertainment a setback or two can create.
I also can’t but help but think the vast majority of posts in regards to delays can be summed up in one sweet word “Schadenfreude” though “spite” comes a close second.

http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4499912&c=EUR&s=AIR

Selex Deal Will Put AESA Radars on RAF Typhoons

By Andrew Chuter

Published: 16 Feb 2010 08:04

1. The Royal Air Force could be test flying an active electronically scanned array radar on a Typhoon fighter within three years following a deal between the British Ministry of Defence and Selex Galileo to develop and build the key new sensor as part of a technology demonstrator program.

Three years! That means Typhoon force won’t actually have AESA for at least five or six years, possibly longer. It really does make me wonder if the Typhoon will ever be bought up to the standards that were promised so long ago. Whether it reaches the desired standard before it either runs out of airframe hours or is surpssed by foreign fighters is anyones guess.
Sad to see such a potentially fantastic aircraft treated this way.

That is exactly why I call the generations definition bullsh!t.

Main 5th gen qualifiers are stealth, supercruise, sensor fusion, internal weapons etc. but F-35 does not supercruise and is arguably not even VLO enough to be called stealth, most eurocanards can supercruise, Typhoon and Rafale have sensor fusion, at least to some degree and internal weapons were common even with F-106, even if for completely other reasons than low RCS.

It just doesn’t fit. The only ‘clean’ 5th gen would be Raptor and later PAK-FA, everything else is questionable.

Thats a valid point about the F-35, however, the term appears to be used by all manufacturers and governments to describe their products. I think we’ll all just have to live with it as it shows no sign of going away anytime soon, if at all.

typhoonfan, it’s well known that russia concentrated all its available resources in strategic systems during the ‘dark days’, at the expense of tactical ones like fighters and tanks.

Really, than how did the Su-34, T-50, Su-35 come about if all funding and personel were working on Strategic systems? You’ve oversimplified it I think as the bottom line is for the RuAF the T-50 has been the most important task at hand. We know that it is regarded as extremely important to Russia hence Mr Putins close following and involvement in the project. His own statements make that perfectly clear infact!

All depends on political priority. If Russian govt puts the T-50 on No.1 status and releases funds, then T-50s will be flying in series in 2015, even if it should be with IRBIS radar and avionics from Su-35S.

I’d say that the exact date is absolutely impossible to guess. Could be anywhere between 2015-2022 and the ‘final’ configuration for Russian armed forces is also open to arguments.

But the T-50 has undoubtably been the RuAF and governments first priority for the past half a decade or so yet we have still seen many setbacks and delays. Based on that I don’t think just having the T-50 as top political priority alone is enough to get T-50 in the hands of the military by 2015. One must remember it’s not the Soviet times when Russia could throw people and money wildly at a project and have a good chance of success, alot has changed for the worse there, especially in the aerospace industry.

any reason why we should trust you ?

It is not his trust you should question but the RuAF and Sukhoi’s. The reason for that has been pointed out in this thread by Levsha. If we go by the development cycle so far we can see we have been let down over and over again. I think many of us were shocked that it did actually start flying this year after year after year of delays and false first flight dates, I know I sure was.
The hard fact of it is that the odds for the T-50 entering military units by 2015 are weighted very firmly against Sukhoi pulling this off based on past performance of this project. To pull it off would be a miracle to put it mildly.

Write up from APA is released

Assessing the Sukhoi PAK-FA

Sukhoi PAK-FA – Russia’s Strategic ‘Game Changer’

How can the T-50 be labled a game changer?
I ask this as it only exists in the prototype form and is far from entering service. Once operational in its basic form it then has to compete with a fully mature F-22 force that would have had 15 years of operational experience behind it. he even claims “The Sukhoi PAK-FA is the new, younger, tougher kid on the block” but again how can it be tougher if it exists in prototype form and doesn’t even yet work as a fully functioning fighter aircrat!
He also says regarding the F-22 that “Its concept design is now twenty years old” but he hasn’t realised the T-50 is the very same concept, infact a direct copy of the concept, eg supercruise, LPI radar, internal bays, stealth in radar and IR spectrums, sensor fusion etc etc. I found it most bizarre he couldn’t see that as it’s clear as daylight!
I think the whole article is a poorly exectued excercise in scaremongering that takes the T-50 manufacturers claims as gospel, a niave thing to do.