Funnily enough, the Tu-160 RCS was reduced to 1/6th its original value after a program of modifications including RAM in the intake ducts. Its not always possible to tell RCS by eye 😉

I believe that the quote about the B-1/Tu-160 referred to a B-1 with external stores versus a Tu-160 with internal stores.

I’ve got a good article in Air Fleet 35 on Russian AEW/AWACS.

The A-50 was never meant to be the definitive solution. In testing in the early 80s, deficiencies were noted in the Shmel radar, but it was a dramatic improvement on the Tu-126. Contrary to Western reports, the Tu-126 had no lookdown capabilities at all. The Shmel radar had good lookdown performance. Detection range for a fighter was 300-350km lookup, 220km lookdown. Where it lacked was in computing power, which restricted the number of targets tracked to 50, with 10 simultaneous intercepts controlled. The airframe was also less than ideal; it had low-bypass ratio turbofans that weren’t as fuel efficient as they could be, and aerodynamics weren’t great.

This was all clear even as the A-50 entered testing, and in 1984 Beriev were ordered to prepare an upgraded A-50M with dramatically improved Shmel-2 radar and D-90 (later known as PS-90A) high bypass ratio engines.

About 24 A-50s were produced by 1991. A further 20 would have built up to the mid 90s, at which point production would have switched to the A-50M, but the collapse of the USSR stopped all production plans for the A-50 series.

The Russian airforce then planned a less ambitious upgrade, the A-50U with improved Shmel-M radar. A mockup was built in 1990, and a production A-50 started conversion in 1993. It was meant to fly in 1995, and then be rolled out across the fleet, but was never completed and never flew with the upgraded radar.

F404 has a lower bypass ratio than the RD-33. This means it burns more fuel in dry thrust than the RD-33. When it comes to reheat, the RD-33 has more oxygen remaining because more of the air went around the core. This gives it a greater possible thrust boost in reheat, but also needs more fuel to burn up the extra oxygen.

“Today, the F-22’s Common Integrated Processor main mission computers operate at 10.5 billion instructions per second and have 300 megabytes of memory.”

If you don’t know the difference between instructions per second and clock speed, then this discussion is pointless.

There is not one big processor in the CIP doing all those instructions. There are up to 66 individual processing modules in there.

(http://www.raytheon.com/products/f22_cip/)

Each module contains multiple processors. Dividing 10.5 BIPS by 66 gives just 159 MIPS per module. You could achieve that performance level with three Pentium 133MHz chips. I have more memory than the CIP in my PocketPC.

I’m posting the diagrams SK has found regarding the Luch (“Ray”) display which was used to launch ARMs from the SU-22M4.

The Kh-25MP missile is assigned to destroy active ground radars with known or unknown coordinates at all weather conditions, day or night.

To do this, the pod LO-86E is attached to the aircraft centerline pylon 0. The LO-86E Device Ensures:

1. Searching of active ground radars and tracking them with the missile head.
2. Determining the correct missile launch distance.
3. Self-monitoring and checking the missile head operational capability.
4. The visual information is shown on the “Luc” (Ray) indicator.

To operate the LO-86E device, a special control panel is needed in the cockpit.

The “Luc” (Ray) indicator shows symbols such as:

1. Search sector symbols, -20, -10, 0, 10, 20 degrees
2. Symbol of a target when “scan ‘
3. Symbol of a target when “track ‘ for left and right missile head independently
4. Symbol of a target when ‘ lock on ‘ for left and right missile head independently
5. Symbol when missile launch is allowed for left and right missile head independently “

One of my favourite aircraft- here are some interesting grabs from a Discovery TV show.

Some RCS data. Just to think about, maybe. 😉
MiG-21: 4qm
MiG-29: 3qm
RafaleD: 2qm
B-1B: 0,75qm
(data from Doug Richardson, STEALTH)
Still having no idea, it is not difficult to see, that RCS has nothing to do with size. 🙂

Every figure there is wrong.
Examples:

MiG-21: 3 sq m
MiG-29: 10-15 sq m (when armed)