I do have to say that I do find it somewhat intriguing that a “non-black” program that has been known to the public for some years has only a limited ammount of information known about it.

Clearly, the PAK-FA is not a black project on the scale of the F-117 or Mig-25 for example!

Nothing too shocking there, it is how the Russians have operated in the past. Remember how long they kept the MFI a secret, even AFTER it was a dead program? They talked about Meteorit for a good long while too, but the missile itself was only revealed recently.

sferrin, Otaku & Jon,

I suggest you guys take a breather, stop bickering like schoolgirls and start trying to have polite constructive conversations – you’re bringing the tone of the forum down and ruining what was otherwise a perfectly ok thread.

And its no good any one of you saying, “the other guys started it, I was just responding to his posts, I’m the one trying to be constructive… blah blah blah” – the fact is you play off one another and its getting a bit much.

Sorry to go off the handle like that but I was enjoying this thread until your argument started.

[color=red]Perfectly good advice, and the three of you would be wise to follow it. Tossing insults around for absolutely no reason whatsoever other than the fact that you simply disagree with the other person is a good way to get yourself evicted.[/color]

WOW when GlobalSecurity shows a nation that the U.S. accuses of being a danger has advanced Russian planes, all of a sudden you now claim, “it doesn’t prove or disprove anything” you Yanks/Yank-Tech Lovers are just PATHETIC, PATHETIC I said” you sink to new debts to make your selves feel good.:D 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀

How does that prove or disprove what Syria operates? How am I some sort of “Yank-Tech Lover”? Why can’t you offer anything constructive regarding issues you don’t agree with instead of insults? What right do you have to refer to anyone on this forum as “PATHETIC, PATHETIC” simply because they don’t toe your Party line?

And GlobalSecurity only lists Belarus, China, Russia, and the Ukraine as Su-27 operators here:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/su-27-specs.htm

That means that Ethiopia, Eritrea, Angola, Vietnam, etc don’t operate the aircraft, right? Because GlobalSecurity says so?

Actually it doesn’t prove or disprove anything, to settle the argument conclusively you’d have to find an image of one. All that page does is provide validity to the theory that Syria does operate the SMT.

A MiG-29G may have been evaluated, but I’m pretty sure all of them that were around were sold to Poland. And where do you get MiG-29SM from? MiG-29S (as in the fatback FULCRUM-C), yes, we got those from Moldova, but an SM?

The “new” Tu-160s are technically “new” airframes (these are separate from the refurbished test fleet jets). They were constructed by completing aircraft left on the line at Kazan when work stopped a good while ago. So technically they are completely new jets, albeit constructed out of preexisting, “aged” components (aged is a relative term, as yes they are technically old, but they have no flight hours or fatigue on them to speak of obviously).

the Russian ability to build and maintain stealth aircraft is well non-existant.

So was America’s ability to do so, until they went and did it. Russia may well prove capable in this regard. Because we have no baseline for comparison, we’ll simply have to wait and see.

Seems to me the Raptor is the new F-15 but this time theres no Su-27 around the corner or coming on its way to better it a few years later – that means extremely serious problems for Russia and any of its clients. :diablo:

F-15 successes in USAF service have less to do with the aircraft and more to do with the caliber of opposition and the training of the pilots. Put a competent Russian pilot in a PAK-FA and a less-experienced pilot in an F-22, and the Russian pilot may well end up victorious the majority of the time. Besides, Russia’s main PAK-FA ustomer appears to be India, and they aren’t going to have to worry about squaring off against the USAF any time soon, so the performance of the PAK-FA against USAF-crewed Raptors is irrelevant in that regard.

That doesn’t make sense… the TOPOL and TOPOL-M were both already MIRVed missiles.

Topol was tested as a MIRV’ed weapon in 1983, but was only deployed with a single warhead. Topol-M has always been a single-warhead system. With Topol units being replaced or deactivated, it makes sense for Topol-M to form the basis of a new MIRV’ed weapon. Russia claimed it was working on such a weapon as far back as 2003, and in 2005 they stated that the desired configuration was three MIRVs and four decoys.