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Russian Stealth Fighter Makes Its First Flight
An anonymous reader writes "The long-awaited Russian stealth fighter, codenamed PAK FA or T-50, has had its first test flight today. This Google translation of a Russian article has a photo of the jet. Production is supposed to begin in 2015; the AP reports that India is helping with development. It's reportedly designed to compete with America's F-22 (first flight: 1997). Relatedly, according to Wikipedia, Japan is planning to fly its own stealth fighter, the ATD-X, which we have previously discussed, in 2011."
To answer your question for the US the Iraqi war. For Russia they downed a drone just last year with a fighter.
Every time somebody says that Fighters are not needed anymore something happens that prove that idea wrong.
Same with Aircraft Carriers and Tanks.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Disclosure: I was an avionics tech on the original Stealth Fighter, the F-117A, back in the late 80's-early '90s. (37th TFW, Tonopah Test Range).
Back then, stealth was achieved by a combination of architecture (the angles), materials, and flying the thing under certain profiles (that is, you avoid flying too close to enemy radar installations, fly at night, etc). The whole idea was to be a literal hole in the sky, or at least make enemy radars less effective - enough to get in, do your job, and get out. The results have been somewhat mixed - during our whole Desert Storm tour, not a single F-117 got so much as a paint chip, let alone a bullet hole - sand and heat was a bigger danger to the things than lead. OTOH, one was shot down over Bosnia during the late 1990's.
When it comes to stealth? You either fly quietly, or you get noticed by enemy A/A and fighters. Modern stealth tech has taken a step back from the looks of it, and appears to have cast aside the whole idea of sneaking around, which IMHO was the whole point to stealth in the first place. Also, the F-117A was, in essence, a small tactical bomber - it has no dogfighting ability to speak of (no guns, and A/A missiles would be damned clumsy to use from one - doing that would make you even less aerodynamic than you already are, and carrying even one air-to-air missile would eat half of your bomb load). Old-school, we snuck around, making sure that the only time you noticed one of our jets was from the explosion its bombs made on your property. The Russian jet and the F-22 take a different tack - they only want to make it a little bit harder for an already-flying missile to find them, without sacrificing speed and maneuverability too much. But - if you load either one with a full bomb load, those round bombs will happily give your position away to the first radar dish that you come even partially close to.
So use them only for air superiority, you say... cool - but the whole point of air superiority is to own the sky, and noticeably so. ;) Any other role besides those two (e.g. ground support), and you face the same big risk as any other aircraft - that of being taken down by the first piece of dumb lead to fly in your direction.
Long story short, stealth is useful in limited circumstances at best, and even at this time doesn't really justify its expense and R&D outside of those circumstances.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
You must be kidding.
Education - teachers and college professors get paid barely enough to literally survive, when they get paid at all. After the exodus of the Jewish scholarly elite, and the subsequent evacuation of any non-Jews that had academic credentials, Russian education is barely starting to recover...
Healthcare - hospitals are in shambles. If I remember correctly, you would have to bribe every nurse and orderly in turn to get clean(er) sheets and non-expired medication. Better to bring your own, bought on the black market.
Housing - it is not lacking in strength, but it's barely above the level of trailer parks in amenities
Moscow and St. Petersburg city centers are not a good indicator of the conditions in Russia. They are about as sophisticated as the West, at Western (or higher) prices. Given that a chief physician of a large hospital makes about $1000-1500/month while paying New York prices for groceries and only about 1/2 as much for housing, it should give you a lot of pause before making these ridiculous comparisons.
Entitlements don't bankrupt us at all. Old people do need money to eat and get health care. If if not for social security, medicare, etc, people would just have to redirect what they now pay in taxes towards savings for retirement, or spend more on supporting their elderly parents, etc. It's not like all that money people are now using to put food on the table, keep their homes warm, and get medical treatment would magically be available to build super-weapons instead.
to keep Russia bankrupt trying to catch up to it.
1. Come up with super tech military program
2. Fund it until it becomes too costly
3. Wait for the other guy to spin up to compete against it
4. Move the bar further out
The story of the F-15, as related to me by an Air Force guy. The Russians come out with a new interceptor, the MiG-25. In reality it's a lead sled, can go really freakin' fast in one direction and fire off some missiles but it has very little flexibility and is not that good of an aircraft. But since we don't have good intel on it, we start guessing as to what it's capabilities would be, making up all sorts of shit. The Air Force freaks out and demands we build a counter and that eventually became the F-15, fully capable of doing everything the Foxbat was supposed to do. Total overkill.
Doublechecked wiki, this story is confirmed there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mig-25
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Very good observation. As a person who has lived in Russia some 10 years in total, I can say that Russian government even though one of the people (for better or worse) has traditionally been one that will pursue bold objectives without taking notice of the more at-hand problems, such may be criminality, morale, education (well that one may be an exception now, and thank gods for that) etc. Too many older folks or their trusted descendants sit in the corridors of power in Kremlin that do not want to deviate from old style of doing things - still envisioning grand Mother Russia not only very potent but in fact aiding the rest of the world. Whether it does so at the cost of its own citizens, is of no concern to these few individuals in power - to them it is the image and glory that counts. Russia's ambitions cover as much ground as its whole land and more. In time, they will learn to see be realistic, only despotic communism could handle (and did so for limited time, as history shows) the kind of progress seen there until '89. New Russia must understand that it has to choose between happy people and happy but overambitious leaders. When the balance is restored, it perhaps can become productive without using its people. As someone who has seen a lot of misery there but also a lot of absolutely ingenious minds, I would say it has what it takes, but is still with one foot in the mess that was left after the last "party" collapsed. That's nothing new though...
J-10 is definitely at least 4th generation, and the upgraded (J10-B) variety is almost certainly 4.5-gen - and that should be finalized really soon.
The J-10 is considered to be a 4th generation fighter, but the Chinese did not engineer the plane themselves - it is based heavily on the IAI Lavi, Russian engines, and Israeli flight controls (not the same as the Lavi.) The J-10 is the second attempt at the J-9 which was cancelled long long ago and even as such took nearly 20 years of development to get to where it is, even though it is basically a foreign born aircraft. Needless to say, the Chinese will be buying their PAK-FAs, just likey they do their other Sukhois (and engines, and electronics, and flight control systems...)
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