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India's First Stealth Fighter To Fly In 4 Months
xmpcray writes "Less than four months from now, India's first stealth fighter will fly for the first time. It is called the Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft, or FGFA, and is being developed in Russia by Sukhoi. Several of the technologies being developed for the stealth fighter have evolved from those used in the Sukhoi 30 MKI. Considered the most maneuverable fighter in the world, the Sukhoi 30 MKI uses thrust vectored engines, which deflect the exhaust from its engines to extreme angles, enabling the jet to pull off violent maneuvers like a flat spin — where the jet literally spins around on its axis."
The end of last year, a couple videos came out with an American F-15 pilot talking about what it was like going up against the Indian Air Force Su-30MKI. It was quite interesting, as the vectored thrust did offer additional maneuverability but it came at a cost. That isn't to say that this new jet and training wont overcome that advantage, but it was a glimpse into the world of air to air combat I don't think makes it out into the civilian world all that often. The clips were put up on youtube - I'll link to both.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKEa-R37PeU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ibgAQ7lv0w
Basically if I understand it correctly the vectored thrust allowed them to turn, but they would lose airspeed and altitude in the process. As the fighter types say - speed is life - and once it happened they were apparently easy pickings. This FlightGlobal writeup about it may do a better job of explaining.
But I wonder is how much longer this will matter. The Lockheed video on their DAS for the F-35 pretty much asserts that the system makes maneuverability irrelevant. I realize that it's a vendor sales presentation, but at the same time I know off-bore-sight missiles are pretty much a done deal. Stealthiness helps some, but I doubt it would be enough as these systems keep improving. It seems soon the primary factor in air to air combat will be the quality of radar and missiles that are available.
When I bring this up with current military folks, they say they think rules of engagement will keep it from going that far. I can see that in situations where one side has complete air superiority - but if it comes to evenly matched sides, I think ROE will be out the window when sticking to it means losing. The whole thing is rather disconcerting as we seem to be developing better ways to kill just as quickly as all our other tech is advancing but I don't see leaps in our ability to live peacefully or get along keeping up with it all.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
There's a pretty good software fix for combating stealth fighters. It involves radar information sharing between many radar sources. Take a little piece of the picture from many different radar sources, and share them, and someone's going to get enough of a picture to launch a missile at. Guess what the F-22 can do?
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Well, the US won't sell to just anybody. In fact even some of their closest allies can't even get the F22 (Israel/Australia), which may be the best Air Sup fighter in the world, but won't be avail in sufficient numbers to make a real difference.
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/US-State-Dept-Throws-A-Wrench-Into-Exports-Allied-Shipbuilding-05321/
Here's a case where the US may lose business to an ally because of politics.
This is why the French were so successful for so long, they didn't care who they sold to.
In fact with the restrictions that the US demands now, it becomes much easier to buy elsewhere, and there is great incentive to produce weapons/platforms capable of taking on the second tier US stuff which they are exporting.
Am I the only one that looked at the thing and thought "it doesn't look very stealthy." No, I'm not talking about the paint. Just the fact that the intakes and some other features look like they are going to be big scatterers and contribute significantly to RCS. My understanding is that vectored thrust also has a significant thermal and radar signature... This sort of seems like Russia trying maintain prestige and credibility against F-22 with someone else conveniently picking up a big chunk of the tab. Then again, India is probably buying them to neutralize Pakastani F-16's, so it may be worth the investment in their minds. I'd have a hard time believing that these would give even F-15E's or Super Hornets a tough time.
Vectored exhaust also allows for some incredible stunts. There's a video of a Russian jet flying backwards briefly. It gains a lot of forward speed, then uses the exhaust to flip over.
Long term, are manned aircraft going to be still used for air superiority?
Cost effectiveness might be a key factor. Drone aircraft don't need to be manufactured to fly for years and thousands of missions. They could be made just good enough to survive 10 to 100 or so sorties, with a 10% failure rate considered acceptable for the first mission. Drone operators could train using simulators and a small number of better quality drone aircraft. For the missions needing drones to loiter over an area for a prolonged period, a different model of drone would be used - you don't need high speed jet interceptors if the enemy has no aircraft left. Also, drones wouldn't need to have the dogfighting performance of an F-35. They could be slower and less maneueverable - but packed with missiles and with a radar system capable of defeating stealth aircraft.
Drone aircraft wouldn't need to be "recalled" or inspected. If a fault is found that might cause a crash, no point in fixing it unless the problem is severe. You could manufacture thousands of them and leave them stored in special packing canisters. Unpack a few every few years and use them testing them to get empirical measurements of average 'shelf life'.
I think that with these and other cost saving measures, you could probably manufacture 3 to 5 drone aircraft for the cost of one manned aircraft with similar capabilities. The MQ-9 Reaper is about 1/3 the cost of the Apache helicopter it supplants. As long as you could guarantee that the drones would always work despite enemy jamming (possible with mesh networking, phase array communication antenna and one time pad encryption, I think) then they would be the only game in town.
Besides, controlled flat spins look badass.
The Indians and Russians may call it the"Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft" but they are wrong it will not be a 5th generation fighter. Simply put if you use the F-22 as a yardstick there is no other publicly disclosed aircraft that comes close to qualifying as a 5fth generation aircraft the closest you really get is generation 4.5. The F-35 dose not really even come close. A comparison would be the Seawolf ssn and the Virgina ssn. The Virgina class submarine was designed and built at a later point than the Seawolf. However you could easily say the Seawolf is a superior boat The Seawolf and the F-22 were designed to take The Russians at the hight of their power and after the USSRs failure there is no need/very little need for the top shelf equipment. So we are left with the F-35 and Virginia good in the own right but not nearly as bad-ass as the F-22 and The Seawolf. Yes I know the F-35 and F-22 fill different roles so a direct comparison is a little off, but there is a reason why we wont sell the 22 to any other nation not even our closes allies. So back to my point. This fighter will not be a 5th generation aircraft. There is a quick way to tell when a true 5th generation aircraft comes out that isnt from the USA. The US air force would probably triple the number of 22's that they purchase.
Which only worked because the Argentinians weren't very good. Against a proper adversary, slamming on the brakes in a fight is an extremely bad idea and will get you killed rapidly. As they say, speed is life. It doesn't really help all that much to be behind the other guy when he has a couple hundred knots on you and is zooming away.
That's an outrageous claim. The Argentineans were not bad pilots in fact considering their equipment and the ineptitude of some of their leaders they gave the Royal Navy a proper spanking. The Argentines would not have succeeded in inflicting such heavy losses on the Royal Navy if they were bad pilots. The British were plan lucky they didn't loose any carriers. These guys were flying from bases on mainland Argentina to the Falklands which was at the very limit's of their range. The Argentine strikers were laden down with bombs, they had no effective ECM assets and very few air to surface missiles which meant they had to go in with dumb bombs and that made them fairly easy meat for SAMs. Since they didn't have any escorts either they also suffered heavily at the hands of the Harriers. Any attempt by the Argentines to operate fighters over the islands failed because once they got there the supersonic Mirage couldn't use the considerable speed and power advantages it had over the subsonic Harriers (read: the Harrier had no afterburners and the Mirages couldn't use theirs) because if they had done that the MIrages would have run out of fuel before getting home. Effectively the Argentinean Mirage pilots had 10 minutes max over target area before they had to return to base. All of this gave the more maneuverable Harrier a huge advantage. If the junta had actually had the brains to land heavy construction equipment along with the initial invasion forces and extended the Port Stanley runway ASAP (which foreign observers considered to be the obvious thing to do) the boot would have been on the other foot since it would have allowed for the forward deployment a portion the sizable fleet of Argentine AF Mirage fighters to the Falklands and they would have had no performance or patrol time restrictions. It has been argued that extending the runway would have been impossible because of local conditions. However, the British extended the Port Stanley runway after the war to allow F-4 operations out of Port Stanley so that argument is BS.
You have a poor understanding of the systems.
Datalink is capable of two way communication, yes. But that is by no means it's main strength. It's main strength lies in it's ability to work with other aircraft, while one or more aircraft cruise undetected at a higher "stealthiness" level. They can get their data from other F22s, AWACS, ground stations, or other aircraft with similar systems once they come online.
So picture a CAP flight of four F-22s. Two are flying forward, with a 5-10 Nautical mile separation from the trailing pair of aircraft.
The lead planes are radio silent, they are on passive sensors only, and all the other features that make an F-22 as stealthy as possible are in use.
Meanwhile the two trailing aircraft are lit up like Christmas trees. Active radar, data link, talking to each other, talking to AWACS, ect, etc, etc.
The "stealthed" planes aren't blind. They have a composite of their passive sensors, the uplink from both of their flight mates, AWACS, and possibly dozens of data points. They don't *need* radar, they can see just as well without it, through the (for them) passive data link.
The flight sees a flight of four unfriendlys off somewhere and vectors to engage. The unfriendlys see this, and figuring they have numerical advantage turn to engage.
Meanwhile, the two aircraft they do see are cruising toward them nice and slow at say, 400 knots or so, while the two stealthy aircraft have gone supersonic. They're in weapons range before the enemy aircraft even know they exist. With a little luck, they're out of the sky before with know they exist too.
This is just one very simple, basic tactic that uses this concept. There are many more tactics you can build on this new technology.
As it comes into it's own, Air Forces will adapt, and come to expect these tactics, and they will have to evolve further. But it's still an edge.
To answer your point about the MiG-31: Data links have existed in American inventories for years as well. The F-22s use a new standard called Link 22, which replaces a roughly 10 year old standard called Link 16. Link 4 was introduced in the 1950s... But they've never been this mature, nor well integrated, or "smart". I don't know much about Russian MiG-31 data systems, but I believe you may be referring to the MiG-31BM variant. It's only about 10 years old, and exists in very few numbers. It's possible the Russians have had data link capability longer than that, but again, the existing of data links themselves are not what people who understand this plane are excited about.
Even so, the West has trailed behind the Soviets / Russians in other ways in the past. The passive sensor suites on the MiG 29 for example shocked western analysts when we finally got our hands on them. They weren't out of our capability to produce, but they far outstripped anything we had deployed. Vectored thrust is another area they've lead. The F-22 is the first serious production attempt at vectored thrust by the U.S., where the Russians have had several aircraft in production for years that utilize it.
All this is besides the point though. Data link is nice. Stealth is really nice. Having both in a well integrated package along with well trained pilots who understand how it works, who can coordinate attacks together to exploit it's advantages? That's a potential game changer.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
Let me be a little more verbose. If by "reasonably equipped enemy" you mean "enemy that a) has nuclear weapons and b) has a delivery system that can reliably penetrate the Aegis air defenses", I think there are very few "reasonably equipped enemies" to worry about.
Let me put this another way: The people who actually think about carrier deployment for a living have probably at least a passing familiarity with the notion of weapons that might go boom near carriers, and some rudimentary notions about how to prevent such a scenario.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Interesting aircraft but probably the only aircraft that shot itself down on occassion. Turbocharger blades were known to come loose and remove one of the tails. That led to some improved metallurgy that was very useful in the early military jets.
Now that's stranger than fiction.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
At what point does a fictional character die? When their death is written, when it is published, or when the reader reads it? If I haven't read about the character's death yet, are they still alive to me? Or are they already dead, and I'm simply not aware of it?
I suppose it depends where the character is considered to live. We could say that the character lives within the story -- but what life does the story have if no one is reading it? I think that the story and its characters take on life within the mind and imagination of the reader. Therefore, the author destines a character to their demise, and the reader brings that destiny to fruition.
The F35 is a global project with several countries footing the development bill, and many US allies purchasing it for their own air forces...
Not only that, but some allies will be building it themselves. Turkey will produce most of their F-35's at their own factory, and Israel has expressed interest in doing the same thing.
The only stumbling block in exports seems to be the software code. The UK threatened to pull out of the program at one time because the US wouldn't completely share the source code. The Department of Defense thought the UK's export controls weren't strong enough, and that they'd end up sharing secrets with unauthorized countries.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I very much doubt that maneouverability will become irrelevant. The last time someone put all their trust in weaponry at the expense of maneouverability it did not go so well for them.
I've got an even more recent example for you of "technology X makes practice Y obsolete", and it also deals with fighter planes. In the late 50's, various eggheads in defense think tanks said that the era of dogfighting was over, that air to air missiles were all that mattered. They said turn rate, acceleration, energy manueverability, and guns were no longer factors. So the Navy didn't even put a canon in the F-4.
Ten years later, "obsolete" MiG-17's were shooting down F-4's, often armed with nothing more than a canon. Seems our missiles had a nasty habit of missing their targets, and then our pilots, with no dogfighting skills and no canons for close-combat, were getting chewed up by 20 year old fighters that had no missiles and no radar.
USAF put a canon in their version of the F-4, the Navy started Top Gun to teach dogfighting again, and in the wake of the Vietnam War, we took the lessons learned and produced the Teen series of fighters... the F-14, F-15, and soon after, the F-16 and F/A-18, the finest fighters ever made. The Vietnam experience also shaped the A-10, the best ground attack aircraft ever made, period.
And now... once again, we're tossing aside lessons hard-learned, and buying into the notion that a new technology will make dogfighting obsolete. The Navy and Marine Corps/Royal Navy versions of the F-35, once again, will not even include a built-in canon.
We never learn.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel