Frankly, making those things fly is not an easy task (and Bae, again, choose the most awkward config). A non converging Flight software might be what refrain a public announcement (or what matter the most for some), the market.

Just imagine, the bird being publicly depicted in flight and the next week an uncontrolled crash (I mean departure of soft controlled flight).

Anyway, this is highly premature but I fear here another ‘Phoon disaster. Poor Brits, being a taxpayer in UK is not that easy anymore…

Probably cheaper to crash a Taranis than three F-22s. In fact it’s probably cheaper to crash a Taranis than operate three F-22s for a year. ~$1m for every 20 flying hours. Have any of those Boeing GBIs actually hit anything in the last 5 years. How much do they cost each? All they have to do is crash and they can’t even do that properly. Poor Yanks. Not easy being a US taxpayer anymore.

http://mostlymissiledefense.com/2012/07/24/ballistic-missile-defense-how-much-does-a-gbi-interceptor-cost-july-24-2012/

And don’t you think it’d be bloody difficult to cover up a crash in this day and age anyway?

More valid question is IMHO can AIM-120 even operate at 25000 meters? Sure an armed MiG-31 can not fly in level at 25000 meters, but it can easily climb, fly for a few minutes with minus SEP and then descend.

For a similar discussion about MiG-25 I had posted this:
http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?126978-How-many-F-22-would-it-take-to-shutdown-MiG-25RBS-reconn-flights&p=2079616#post2079616

see the last part how R-27RE’s performance is affected with altitude. IDK about AIM-120, but A/B/C/C-5 has shorter legs than R-27RE, so it should peform even worse.

Depends on what it’s intercepting. If the item it’s intercepting has sod all manoeuvrability at that altitude, then yes. It won’t turn very fast, but then neither will the target. But after a 5 mile climb against a target 30km away it will likely have lost a lot of energy but then the air is very thin wrt drag. The furthest kill to date is from 35km away with an AIM-120C fired by a Dutch F-16.

The MiG-25 and MiG-31 are interceptors not fighters, it’s important to note the difference. Interceptors are mainly targeted against bombers and spy planes not enemy fighters.

The service ceiling of a combat aircraft is well below the maximum height possible with an unarmed or even stripped-down aircraft. Jane’s attributes a combat ceiling of 20,600 m (67,600 ft), and a maximum cruising speed at height of Mach 2.35 to the M-G-31. Perhaps a forum member with a copy of Belyakov’s book can tell us what figures he cites.

What we often forget when talking about maximum speed is the process of actually getting there. A MiG-31 isn’t going to turn to run particularly fast at high altitude even subsonic/transonic. If already at high supersonic speeds we’re looking at a turn radius the size of a county.

Going to throw some thoughts at this. First off, the OP’s quote of 124,000ft is the zoom climb ceiling and might not even have been a standard plane, such is the practice with these record attempts. The actual service ceiling is actually around 70,000ft, which isn’t much more than an F-15, Typhoon (or F-22 when it isn’t restricted to 44,000ft).

As regards the R-33S missiles. SARH doesn’t inspire much confidence for me. In the Ethiopian-Eritrean war 24 R-27Rs were fired, with only one kill, or about half the success rate achieved by early AIM-7Ds in Vietnam. By comparison the ARH AIM-120 has a 59% combat success rate and even the SARH AIM-7M achieved 34% with F-15s in Desert Storm. I have absolutely zero confidence in the ability of SARH against modern jamming when fired from BVR, none whatsoever.

The altitude consideration does highlight issues with the current altitude restrictions on the F-22 though? What is the effective range of an AMRAAM if it has to climb 5 miles whilst going after a target?

62k feet is not that high, even AIM-7M missile has the capability to reach it, so it is no where close to being invulnerable. However I agree on the conclusion to a degree; its missiles and kinematics combined with zalson radar will provide much better kill range and NEZ to any other 4, 4+ gen fighters; be it F-15 or Eurofighter or anything. It can fire its missiles before the enemy, and if something not goes accordingly to the plan, it can retreat at will without punishment. And this is not a longshot, a MiG-31 can approach to 30-40 kilometers distance to those types, and still have enough energy (speed and altitude) to run away safely. A pair of R-33 or R-40 missiles fired from 30 kilometers will surely have some excellent Pk.

How does it guide the SARH missile whilst running? And whilst being fast, it isn’t that great at turning to run even at medium altitudes, at 70,000ft it will barely turn at all.

The Koreans have form. Remember the process that led up to the F-15K order? By the time it was over, it was obvious that the sole purpose was to get a better price & specification from Boeing. It worked, but at the expense of the other bidders.

Did they get a better price from Lockheed though?

Interesting read, and it just hit me just how heavily politics weigh in purchase of fighter a/c over the world,
to the point that both capability & cost are merely useful as to justify (or blame) the political choice in the first instance.
I’m going to have to re-evaluate usefulness of both cost and performance here

You only have to look at the farce that was the South Korean fighter bidding process. If it could even be termed a bidding process.

Is the F-35 even on offer to India?

PPP is averaged across the whole economy. But there are different PPPs applicable to particular sectors or goods. The PPP for gold, for example, is about the same as the exchange rate converted price, everywhere. US prices in general are lower than in France, but healthcare costs more in the USA than France. And so on. The military PPP is probably not the same as that for the whole economy. You also need to adjust for different budgeting practices: does the Russian military budget include everything that the NATO definition does? There might also be quality differences, as said.

The Russian military budget for ‘National Defence’ excludes ca 1/3rd of the NATO definition. Therefore, if one adds them in one gets a 50% higher figure – which is what SIPRI publishes. Adjusting for PPP (whole economy average) & different budget coverage, Russian spending in 2012 comes out at ca $152 bn, UK $58 bn, & France $54 bn.

As for China – well, yes. The 2005 ICP benchmark for China is widely argued to have been flawed in ways that tended to understate Chinese real GDP. It’s likely that the 2011 benchmark will produce a higher figure. But as Dr. Snufflebug says, don’t forget quality differences, & also allow for differential PPPs. Look at housing prices in some Chinese cities, for example, & you realise that not all costs are low.

And I’d better join the others in getting back on topic.

What do you mean by ‘averaged’ exactly? Inflation figures are supposedly averaged across the board, yet there are several different ways of working them out, none truthful, and they have changed over time. You can make the figure whatever you like based on the weightings applied for each sector and the same goes for PPP conversions, it’s absolute nonsense. As Snufflebug mentioned they only consider exactly alike items, which basically means comparing the cost of US and European fashion and tech brands in the US with the price of the same brands in China. For reasons already mentioned, that will give a hopelessly contrived result because you’re basically using the cost of Gucci handbags and PS4s to create a PPP conversion. For a 33% reduction in labour costs, companies wouldn’t up-route and set-up half-way across the world and then ship all their goods back, and labour costs for given tasks are perhaps the best measure of PPP since the end output is intentionally identical. Realistically I would put Russia and China at ~$6tr and >$20tr respectively.

Don’t know where you’ve got those military spending figures from either. Simply building and maintaining Russia’s nuclear arsenal would cost more than the UK and French budget combined (if done in Western Europe).

Look at housing prices in some European cities. In fact ‘housing’ is a bit of a misnomer, since you probably won’t have any more than an apartment unless you have a 9-figure personal wealth.