soyuz1917http://en.rian.ru/russia/20080201/98171637.html
there will be more of this if their #’s go up. You cant ignore the fleet for so long and then expect to up the tempo and not suffer for it.
soyuz1917if you want more details I cant give them to you. I can only tell you what open source media like interfax-avn print. They interview a general and he gives very generic details, thats how it works.
As for their having all these exercises, interfax-avn also reported that submarine patrols were down 20% in 2007 from the 2006 level because of the age and repair needs of the fleet. I suspect even if aviation hours were way up in 2007 the age and general neglect of various components the fleet will start to be felt soon just like it is in the navy. In 2006 the navy put a lot of subs to sea and by 2007 they were no longer able to do this at the same level. I suspect the Russian air force wont be able to maintain the current level of activity for long without a string of accidents and groundings. They ignorned huge chunks of their inventory for 10+ years and now they cant just sorty all this stuff without that neglect coming back to bite them. They’ve lost two trainers in the past week or two in accidents, one of them today 🙁
God, I have no life.
soyuz1917does no one have access to interfax-avn? Flight hours in the Russian air force were 80 hour at the average last year. Strategic aviation probably flew a little more, but even if it did they werent flying 200 hours a year like the NATO norm. Carrier aviation got a little over 100 hours last year according to an interview with a Su-33 pilot I saw on Zvezdanews. I have seen reports back in 2006 that Il-76 pilots are in fact flying 200 hours but they and maybe some of the pilots in Chechnya are about the only ones.
80 and 100 are decent enough hours so that basic flight skills are okay but just that — basic. Maybe some units are getting 120-150, but most arent. They were flying as little as 40 not long ago so 80 is a serious improvement especially given the $90 oil prices that effect the Russian air force like all others. Russian oil firms want to export their product and not to sell it at a discount to the state so there is a constant conflict over fuel (the officers and generals also supplement their income by stealing fuel).
soyuz1917they’ve had no problem developing new seekers for the Kh-35 and the Klub families (though the land attack seeker seems to be in trouble) for if there was any need at all to replace the older seekers on these ASM’s I imagine the electronic base is in place to do it rather quickly.
soyuz1917its a doctrinal thing for the Americans such things werent necessary because there were no soviet super carriers out there posing a significant threat. For the soviets such missiles were and are a necessity. But no matter how you slice it the US never developed a reliable ASM in this class.
soyuz1917the AGM-53 had datalink and reliability problems until the very end. That and costs reasons were why the program was canceled.
soyuz1917what has the submarine force turned into exactly? 4 Delta IV’s are recently out of refit, at least one, the Bryansk, saw massive upgrade. The Delta III’s have seen at least some work on them too.
Nerpa isnt going to India. Pantera is back in the fleet. So the Akula fleet looks to be okay.
We know nothing about the state of any Oscars so they could be doing badly or they could be okay, nobody without a top secret clearance somewhere can know.
They launched the first and probably last Pr. 20120 boat in 2007. The Borei has no missiles but the boat is ready. There are 3 Lada keels in the pipeline and one is in service.
The fleet looks to be doing okay. The surface fleet is still in complete tatters, but the sub force has stayed steady for a long time. They have repaired a lot of subs, improved a few and even commissioned some news ones.
No one except the US can rival the Russian submarine fleet. No european nation is even close and the Chinese certainly are still 2 decades away from reaching parity on the nuclear side of their fleet.
soyuz1917transfer of technology
soyuz1917delays and price escalations in the weapons business, you dont say? I’ve NEVER heard of such problems!
Really this stuff is the rule and not the exception, east or west. Defense contractors routinely come in late and over budget. The Gorshkov doubling in price is crazy though, but all the other problems are all routine stuff. If the Indians were buying French or American equivalents they would be in the same situation. The French told the Indians yesterday that they would have no production ready AESA until 2012!!! Even the Zhuk-AE will be production ready in 2010. Go and buy French and wait another 4 years for operational AESA’s or buy Russian and expect a few quality control problems or buy American and expect to pay twice as much and get lousy ToT in the process.
soyuz1917The data processor on the BARS is or was Indian for a long time because there was no Russian counterpart. I think since then its been replaced but maybe not.
They used a Russian signal processor though. When BARS was being developed the Russian chip industry was in an even more dreadful state than it is now and there was no Russian data processor capable of doing the job.
From what I’ve read the Russians have kept up fairly well in antenna development but when it comes to the computing power they had to use Indian components.
Sistema (which owns the largest Russian cellular operator among other things) and its many chip making subsidiaries are now sitting on a lot of money and there is investement across the board in chips in Russia today so I dont think the old problems exist today at the level that they existed a few years ago.
NIIP goes to MiKron a Sistema subsidiary for chips. There is so much money in this company right now that I dont invision many problems for them in the future. Sistema is moving into the Indian cell phone market too. They just bought a 51% stake in Shyam of India. They are borrowing 10 billion dollars to further their expansion efforts in a host of areas. Their CEO has talked openly of becoming a Russian Samsung. They still have a long way to go, but the money is there and they have Putins support which is what really matters.
soyuz1917they absolutely did more than just give it a RAM and canopy coating. At MAKS they were very careful to keep the intakes covered up so I think it’s probably a given that that they did something to the intakes too. The pitot is gone and that too is going to lower RCS a tiny bit. If they cut the RCS in half that cuts detection range by 25%, right? I forget how the math works exactly, but its something on that scale.
I dont understand why you think the eurocanards are significantly more advanced air frames. When they install those 14.5 ton engine on the flanker there is little question that it will supercruise. The only question is in what configuration it will be able to supercruise exactly. The eurocanards have better electronics but with the Russians installing French targeting pods and various other French and Italian goodies these days even that difference wont be great.
soyuz1917they would be content with such a parity. :diablo:
soyuz1917I dont imagine these ships impress any navy aside from maybe some African navy, today but there was a clip on Zvezda talking with one of the Kuznetsov pilots where he said flight time for carrier pilots was now over 100 hours a year which at least means basic skills are OKAY. He seemed happy about the air time they’ve been getting. Overall average flight hours in the Russian air force climbed over 80 for the first time in a long time in 2007. Rising from the ashes will take many many years, but the progress is obvious.
The ships in the carrier group have apparently been upgraded with new communications and navigations systems, though from the vids I’ve seen its the same old navigation radars so I dont know what they actually upgraded, GPS maybe? I havent spotted any new antennas or anything. The new radios are probably R-419M derivatives.
soyuz1917Russian Bears according to US sources were not able to find the carriers near Guam just several months ago. They got within 300 mile by pure lucky guess work.
The fact is the US-PU system is barely existent, at present there are no Russian SAR sats even if they have the technology and at present their Il-38’s are flying around with 20 year old electronics, only 1 has been upgraded with Sea Dragon and it’s just a flying testbed. I dont even want to talk about Tu-142’s. In 10 years a lot of this wont be true anymore and their odds will be better. But at present god help them in a shooting war.
Maybe a Bear-H will get lucky and stumble across a carrier and then live long enough to send out a message to the rest of the fleet. :dev2:
This is of course to be expected when you invest no real money in your navy for 15 years. They need new sensors and new platforms for their sensors. This talk of missiles is pointless when they dont have the sensors.
soyuz1917well its obvious AESA’s have much better beam agility, but its not as if modern PESA’s are like 50 year old MSA’s in this area either. Clearly, the AESA will have a more diverse collection of LPI modes than any PESA, but a modern PESA should have a decent collection of LPI functions built into it, I dont pretend to have access to classified information or to even comprehend all the math involved (not my area of research at all), but a modern PESA should create some of the same problems an AESA creates for RWR developers. They certainly arent just dumb 20kw flashlights.
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