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."

Comments

Well, now we'll restart the F-22

[tjstork]

That changes the whole argument on the F-22 being killed now, doesn't it? We'll see calls coming out to restart F-22 production, but probably an F-22 B where some of the stealth stuff that drives up operational costs gets dropped in the interest of being just a good first line fighter.

Re:Well, now we'll restart the F-22

[rev_sanchez]

I think we're moving away from high cost fighters and into fleets of low cost drones. The google tells me that an F22 runs about $150+ million each and a predator drone runs about $4.5 million. The training/maintenance/and other support costs are much lower for drones and the costs should go down since you'll make many, many more drones than larger aircraft.

I know our drones now aren't air to air fighters yet but a squadron of drone fighters would probably run a lot cheaper and be nearly as effective as a couple of big expensive planes. I'd also expect that it might be a little easier to stealth up a drone than something that has to carry a person and a drone could perform manuvers that a plane couldn't do safely with a human pilot inside. Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo, and PC game makers have also been training a generation of drone pilots for free.

Re:Well, now we'll restart the F-22

[GooberToo]

Maybe, maybe not.

The answer is absolutely yes. They started engineering stealth aircraft before the Soviet Union collapsed. They have maintained their program in a drastically reduced capacity until such times they can afford to ramp it back up. They found a partner which allowed them to continue their efforts on a reduced budget.

In absolutely terms, their efforts never stopped. The F22 did not spur this plane. Rather, the F117 spurred it on, which is very much in the midst of the cold war.

Re:Who cares?

[baap]

I live by the F-22 production plant and I want the project to start up because:

1. We need the jobs. (Armchair economists can kiss my ass about "efficiency" and "utilization")
2. I love seeing them fly over when they come off of the production line.
3. Just having such a superior fighter will make other countries think twice about fucking with us (SOL with terrorists though)
4. The F-35 is for fags
5. The F-16 is a fat old lady
6. China will be flexing their muscle more in the near future (now) and we'll need this
7. China will license the Russian fighter and we'll need the F-22
8. Air Force pilots need something new to fly

I like your enthusiasm for the F-22 restart - just a little correction. India's participation in developing this aircraft will imply a limitation on licensing, especially to perceived threats such as China. So it'll be interesting - here we have Russia returning to its Soviet - style grande aviation engineering but also India, the world's largest democracy and one of America's most important strategic ally in the region. Id think itd be naive for the US to think of it as a strategic threat. /\ \/

Foolish assumption.

[tjstork]

Old people do need money to eat and get health care

You assume that because they need it, they should get it. At the other end of the scale is a child that needs an education. If there's only one dollar out there, and the old guy wants it, versus the child, I'd say, give it to the child, and let the old guy die.

Can aircraft keep ahead of missile tech?

[jollyreaper]

The viability of manned aircraft is a question of technology. By the end of WWII, proximity-fused shells on US Navy ships made convention air attack against them a suicide mission. If the US Navy was forced to fight an identical opponent in '46, air attack would likely have been abandoned. The Japanese resorted to suicide attacks in part because conventional attacks were already suicide, at least a crash dive might let you get a hit. The cruise missile a refinement of the suicide plane concept. The idea of dive-bombing or torpedoing a warship from the air quickly fell out of favor. But that was ok for airplanes since they could carry missiles and engage from beyond the range of return fire. While aircraft did indeed use gravity bombs and later guided bombs against naval targets in the following decades, that was usually in third-world wars or against small patrol ships. Nobody would think of risking that against a proper warship.

The rise of the SAM's made things trickier for land-attack craft. A multi-million dollar jet is risked attacking tanks that are worth maybe $200k. The attrition rate under the 6 Day War was so high it was thought the end of manned combat aircraft had been reached. But subsequent development of Wild Weasel tactics and improved ECM put the SAM's on the defensive. But technology continues to improve. The early missiles were laughable. The F-4 went to Vietnam armed only with missiles and did not achieve an air-to-air kill until the gatling-equipped version arrived. But missile tech is very, very good now. The last gun kill achieved by the Air Force was an A-10 versus a Hind in Gulf War 1.

The question now is one of development cycles. The F-22 program started in '81 and didn't go operational until 2005. Ridiculous! How many SAM generations came during that time? And how much cheaper will those weapons be? The damn B-2's cost a billion bucks a pop and are irreplaceable. We're not cranking up the production lines for any more. And what are they good for, truly? To carry cruise missiles? Why do we need a fancy bomber for that? Why not just load cruise missiles on C-17's and kick them out the back a thousand miles from target? There, now you have cargo-bombers and can buy more aiframes for the same money.

The Poles kept cavalry units up until WWII. They finally were disabused of the idea by Germans with panzers. I think it's going to take a similar catastrophe to move us past the idea of manned combat aircraft.

Re:Stealth is not a magic bullet.

[greyhueofdoubt]

I can corroborate the 14:1 kill ratio. I've participated in green flag excercises at Nellis and our pilots (in f-16s) came back fully defeated (pretend killed) after every mission. That is not to say that our pilots are not good- they are, and they have had chances to prove that in several combat zones.

Simply put, the F-22 dominates the sky. Every aspect of the aircraft is superior in terms of performance. One thing that is left out in these discussions is pilot task saturation; in the F-22, the aircraft computers take care of many tasks, and does them better than humanly possible, allowing the pilot to focus more on flying. My conscience tells me to leave it at that, considering the sensitivity of the subject, but you can probably find more information somewhere else.

As someone who has been working on fighters for almost a decade, I am still continually amazed by everything I learn about the F-22. I've personally heard generals and some colonels who have been flying since the f-4 was new say that the F-22 was to them an entirely new paradigm in combat flight. They couldn't say enough good things about it.

I know I probably sound like a shill for lockheed-martin, but I'm trying to counteract the dozens of posts that lament the f-22 as already outdated, as merely an incremental improvement on the f-15, or as an aircraft that could be suitably replaced by its cost in f-16s. None of those things are true.

-b