soyuz1917There are coatings and then there are coatings and whatever coatings are used inside engines are not what is being talked about here.
The Russian machine tool industry has a roughly 20 year gap to close. It was only in 2008 or 2009 that Russia started producing its own CO2 laser cutter heads domestically — a technology that we’ve had in the West since before I can remember. There are dozens of different “nano” coatings developed by different manufacturers of cutting tools in the West, all are really the same thing, but the production process is always a bit different to get around each others patents mostly, NCD coatings, Zirconium Nitride (ZrN); Hafnium nitride, Chromium nitride etc…. It’s actually difficult for me to sit here and call any of this stuff “nano-technology” with a straight face because most of it predates the term.
Rosnano has a big bank account and nothing to invest in. Poor Chubais has been running around the whole country looking for projects and the sad fact is there are very few of them and of the 9 billion he has to play with less than 10% has been invested in actual R&D or manufacturing and it’s been almost 2 years now. The one bright spot is he has been able to keep the vultures out of the honey and there is little evidence in the open source literature of any Rosnano funds ending up in any Swiss bank accounts so far.
There is talk already of pulling the state corporation status that Rosnano has and just privatizing whatever its currently sitting on. If that happens the company will probably quickly morph into a Russian investment fund abroad because they simply havent been able to invest the money in Russia.
soyuz1917some of the reports on the Yasen from the shipyard are rather odd and claim that the “technical defects” that caused this latest delay are really just manpower shortages and that export work is getting priority. There are also some sources claiming induction in early 2011 after only about 6 months of trials. Both claims are probably nonsense and I would bet on a 2012-2013 commissioning.
At one point, it was supposed to be launched in December of 2009 and commissioned by the end of 2010. That May 2010 date was already another 5 month delay.
http://www.russiandefenseblog.org/?s=yasen
As for why they are mentioning 3 SLCM’s, its simple — nobody knows what the ship will actually carry.
soyuz1917Im sure Moscow is very worried about Iran sending it a message….
The Russians have already imposed sanctions on Iran in the form of stopping all gasoline deliveries. The S-300’s are nothing when compared to Lukoil pulling out of Iran. The Iranians are paying a 20% premium above market prices to get gasoline today — its ripping their economy a new hole. The US has nothing to complain about when it comes to Moscow-Tehran ties. The Russians have not shown any serious support for the regime and while they are opposed to the most stringent of sanctions that doesnt make them friends of Iran, they simply know that completely bankrupting the country will only lead to refugee spill over into their own backyard. For an Iranian, it’s a hop and a skip across the Caspian into Russia and from there not that long of a bus ride to a nice and rich EU border.
soyuz1917You have a source saying Klimov halted production? The AI-222-25 is really a Motor Sich product. Any problems at Klimov should theoretically not seriously impact supply. If Klimov cant make the engine the people at Motor Sich will happily take the work share.
As of January 4, the VVS was still planning on taking delivery of 9 Yak-130’s in 2010.
soyuz1917The new satellite will carry an AESA radar antenna and its just a modern SAR sat similar to the one they designed for China, but with a new AESA antenna. The system is called Arkon, but the sats are just military versions of Meteor-M with a radar.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYkvIhiu5Ck
you can get a glimpse of it in this video at 5 minutes 20 seconds if you can put up with the horrible English 🙂
Rus is still a paper only project right now as far as I can tell though it looks like it may actually be built.
Angara has been delayed 1 year thanks to budget cuts, but the first flight will be in 2012.
soyuz1917Again, with AESA’s there is still only 1 beam at any given moment in time. The radar is smart enough to remember where each target is and it can prioritize targets but there is only ever 1 beam at a time. There is no constant beam on one target in that situation.
AESA’s advantages are beam agility, but physics is still physics. The more resolution you want the slower the scan. That video is sale pitch nonsense. That radar is not in an LPI mode for sure. Its some some form of a fast scan mode so that resolution is not going to do against a stealth aircraft.
The more tricks you play with the beam the slower the scan and less range you get.
One thing is for sure, your 6 sectors are not getting 6 separate beams at the same time. It does not work that way. You have one beam formed at a time, but because there is no mechanical steering you get ridiculously fast beam firing. The faster and more dispersed the firing the less resolution.
soyuz1917There are huge problems with LPI techniques. You narrow that beam enough and it will take you 30-60 seconds to cover that 120 degree arc. Pencil thin beams are really great when you know where you need to be looking and not so great when you are clueless. The mode on the Irbis that allows it to see stealth objects with RCS’s below 0.1 meters at 90km’s uses a very narrow beam and takes the radar 60 seconds to complete a single pass. A slow 60 second scan can be a bit suicidal against a super cruising target IMHO.
LPI is great if your enemy is Flanker with the RCS of a bus and not so great if your target is a PAK-FA.
soyuz1917Sorry to have to tell you this, but your AESA can only broadcast one signal at a time too. AESA’s can not split their beam into two because of this simple thing called physics. Those T/R modules all have to operate in tandem for the return signal to make any sense. The only modules that dont operate in tandem are the ones that are broken and arent broadcasting at all.
What AESA’s can do is operate a lot faster because there is no manual beam steering so it gives you the illusion of multiple beams because we are talking in tiny fractions of a second here. If the enemy has a slow processor in that RWR on his plane he wont be done processing by the time your radar is done doing its work. But if the RWR has enough processing power that illusion of multiple simultaneous beams wont fool it. And of course, Russian RWR development is no more stagnant than their radar development. Whatever the US lead is, its not that big.
soyuz1917soyuz1917There is actually no question that essentially all the various LPI techniques reduce detection range. Those max range figures you get from manufacturers are not for LPI modes.
Finally, PESA’s like Bars have a few LPI tricks of their own these days. The block 1 Bars radars had basically no LPI tricks built into them, but the subsequent versions of the radar are supposed to have some interesting new modes.
soyuz1917SS-27 production will be 20 missiles this year, basically the factory running at full capacity. Roughly 400 missiles over 20 years, 80 of which used up for test fires in that period, 25-50 more taken away given the odd budget or technical problem that may pop up over those years and you have a fleet of 300 odd SS-27/RS-24’s 20 years from now.
I concur with your math.
Only 367 missiles are operational now so not much more decline ahead.
Tu-95 fleet is shrinking at 1-2 planes a year. By 2030 the Tu-95 fleet is basically gone because the rate of retirement will only increase, but a PAK-DA prototype or two should be making an appearance at that time.
soyuz1917Feel less bad for the American than any Russians involved, those chaps are going to Siberia by the sound of things.
This sounds like another Wadan shipyard style fiasco. The original Russian buyer basically stole state funds to buy the yard, couldnt secure orders from the Russian navy he thought (because he thought he bribed the right people) he had in the bag and was forced to sell/give the yard over to a one of the member of the Gazprom board to avoid bankruptcy and a possible prison sentence. The original sale was supposed to have been with Kremlin backing but when Merkel “congratulated” Medvedev on the first deal he had no idea what she was talking about it. The first buyer totally made up his Kremlin connections and the Germans bought his BS because they were just happy to unload a useless Soviet era budget hole on any Russian they could find. The second “buyer” (really the Russian state) had no choice but to step in to save face and save what assets could still be saved. Stuff like this is what happens when you have Russian style corruption — it permeates everything on every level.
You could make a movie out of the Wadan yard fiasco without embellishing one thing.
soyuz1917Between the PAK-FA flying and this, I’m just surprised sferrin hasnt suffered a burst blood vessel yet.
soyuz1917He obviously meant conventional and nuclear as well as summing boomers with attack subs and special purpose subs because that’s the only way you can get the 60 submarines in service today # he spouted.
They dont need 1:1 parity to insure deterrence either and during the Cold War it was more like 2.5 Soviet subs for every 1 NATO boat….
soyuz1917They haven’t even perfected the Tu-204-120CE. The Chinese operator has all but given up on accepting the follow on 4 airframes because of something like 164 technical defects in the 1st plane (about 20 of which UAC had yet to address as of Q4 2009 after over a year of work). Any new variant of the Il-96 would take YEARS to certify because it would basically be a complete redesign of the airframe. It needs not only new engines, but an entirely new wing.
The Tu-204SM program is going a bit better with 3 airframes to be built this year, but the plane has not been certified in Russia or anywhere else yet and no deliveries will be made until 2011. The PS-90A2 engine is a great engine, but its basically 75% a P&W product. There is basically nothing Russian in the engine.
On the Il-76 end, its just painful to watch. Construction has started on the first Il-746 and Putin had to renegotiate the 2005 deal with Jordan and god only knows if China will still get her Il’s. They are still nominally in the Indian tanker tender, but few people think the Il has a real shot.
The SSJ is still not quite done with certification. The plane has very little Russian in it and will have even less because of problems at NPO Saturn forcing them to give more work share to Snecma. The 4th prototype is using engines off the first because Saturn lost 200 engineers — they quit and found better jobs.
An-148 deliveries are slow but at least it’s certified and actually in service! It would sell better if they had the infrastructure to properly repair it, but it is a bright spot. It’s not merely a question of after service though, but timely delivery too. Problems in Ukraine have delayed construction in Russia by about 6 months — unacceptable. The recent sale of 18 An-148’s to an Indian carrier is the only good news in a year.
Sooo many problems….
Their one saving grace is that UAC today has basically direct and seemingly unlimited access to the Kremlin’s wallet. As long as those foreign reserves keep climbing at 4 billion a week they can fix the problems, but then AVIC is sitting on pretty much the same story. :diablo:
And the Russian price advantage is basically gone thanks to ruble appreciation, 14% so far this year. A Chechen crane operator in Sochi is pulling in $1200 a month. That is not cheap labor.
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