India's First Stealth Fighter To Fly In 4 Months 611
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."
Good for US overall (Score:3, Insightful)
Although I'd rather everybody were coming to American companies for such technology — rather than to Russia, as the Indians did for this fighter — a strong India is good for US.
Their values are the closest to ours in that neighborhood and it is good to have a counterweight to the ambitious China.
And, hey, maybe, the Indians will share some of the load world-wide, that Americans (and the British) are currently managing almost entirely on our own. Perhaps, people will even begin blaming them (and burn their flag), when they screw up [umb.edu]...
Re:Interesting stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
But I wonder is how much longer this will matter. The Lockheed video on their DAS [youtube.com] 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.
Something Lockheed makes makes India's planes' maneuverability irrelevant? How so? We're going to be fighting each other or something? Is Lockheed going to be selling their stuff to Pakistan?
Re:Interesting stuff (Score:4, Insightful)
Since the beginning of the Cold War, people have kept predicting the end of dogfighting ... and they've kept being proven wrong.
More generally, people keep predicting that whichever type of war is being fought at the moment is the future of warfare and all other types are obsolete ... and they keep being proven wrong.
Re:Good for US overall (Score:3, Insightful)
And, hey, maybe, the Indians will share some of the load world-wide, that Americans (and the British) are currently managing almost entirely on our own.
I really don't think it will be all that great. It could just as easily check our power in the region. Personally, I think we need to be checked. We really need to start thinking about our budget priorities. Just because we can project power around the world doesn't mean we can afford to keep doing it. Aircraft like that would be a threat to our very expensive carrier groups. Maybe not an attack from Indian aircraft, but what's stopping the Russians from selling them to Iran?
Besides, there was a time the US could never envision war with Germany. India has the bodies for a very large army, they have the budget for advanced weapons systems. Certainly more than we could fight half-way around the world. We need to address our dependence on foreign oil...now. The money we're putting into maintaining 12 aircraft carrier groups and trying to maintain our military presence in Asscrapistan is killing us.
Re:Interesting stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
And... sends troops across borders, and provides weapons and cash to murderous FARC militants, and jails his political opponents, and provides support to places like Cuba (who jail their own people for trying to leave). Chavez is a lot more than an election-rigger. He's a totalitarian socialist thug who has oil cash to play with.
Re:Interesting stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, come on, has he destroyed entire villages? Has he tied up his own son in a bag and thrown him in the river as punishment for insubordination? Has he killed nuns? These are the kinds of things you expect from a good latin American dictator. I don't even think there's any evidence of him torturing people. The dictators have gotten soft.
Re:Interesting stuff (Score:4, Insightful)
Hahaha! Spoken like a true gringo! Dude, get your head out of your arse for just a second and ask, well, just about ANYONE from just about anywhere in South or Central America who was born before 1980, about your country's wonderful record in that region over say the last 100 years. From arming, funding and training murderous bastards to propping up dictators that "disappeared" thousands of their own people, to rigging elections, to assassinating elected leaders. Oh yeah, Hugo has a wonderful precedent, in fact, almost "template" to follow that was created by your country.
Tthere's only so much hypocrisy the rest of the world can handle. Or is this yet another case of do as I say, not as I do?
Jeez Louise!
Re:Interesting stuff (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
Re:Interesting stuff (Score:3, Insightful)
In the paragraph you quoted, there is no mention of India. It says "makes maneuverability irrelevant." India isn't the only ones looking at this sort of capability.
Re:Interesting stuff (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, silly me. I was referring to the actual present. I keep forgetting that it's OK for the dictatorial head of a murderous socialist regimes to name himself president for life, shut down not-propogandizing-for-him media, "disappear" elected officials that disagree with him, and all of that cool stuff now, because in the past, something else happened.
Re:Huts and dirt roads and India needs a fighter? (Score:2, Insightful)
About all I can say about that is, you really don't know anything about India.
But since you think you know something about India... you'll never learn anything.
Re:Long term (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, these drones are drones. There's still a pilot - who isn't in the plane.
Second, you can get MORE piloting skill using drones. AND you can push the aircraft much harder. The reason is obvious. Your ace pilots won't get killed. Morover, even in a hot shooting war, a fighter pilot won't be in an actual dogfight more than a few minutes of a mission (most of the time is taken up getting to the combat zone, finding a target, etc). So, you could have your weaker, less talented pilots handle flying the drone fighters to the battle and have your ace pilots take over when the aircraft is in range of an enemy fighter.
Finally, the cost difference
Imagine a piloted aircraft up against 5 or 10 to one odds (because the country that pays for drones and doesn't have to pay for all those costs I mentioned in the post above can spend that money buying more drones). Every one of those drone aircraft has a pilot at the stick just as good as he is, or better. The drones can pull as many Gs as their airframe can take.
Outcome is obvious.
Re:Interesting stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
Trench warfare was once the future of warfare. Standing in a line firing muskets at each other was once the height of battle tactics. Weapons and tactics become obsolete in warfare all the time. Virtually every war is fought differently than the previous ones. So, while people may be wrong about any particular thing becoming the "future of warfare", they're very often right about tactics and weapons becoming obsolete. If you hold on to old and outmoded battle tactics and weapons and prepare for the next war as if it will be fought like the last one, you get run over.
Dangerous Thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
Something Lockheed makes makes India's planes' maneuverability(sic) irrelevant? How so?
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 [wikipedia.org] for them.
And more to the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does it matter if it is "worse"? I get really tired of this more equivalence people try to pull. "Oh there were bad thugs in the past so that excuses this thug now!" No, it doesn't. NEITHER is excusable. Did the US do some bad shit in central america? You bet your ass. However that doesn't mean that it is a good thing that there are now people doing bad shit there that aren't associated with America. They are still thugs, still assholes.
I mean this would be like saying you can't criticize Bush for his spying on Americans because people like Putin, Kim Jong Il, and so on do it worse. Ummm, just because they do it worse doesn't make it ok.
What amazes me are the people suckered in by his "socialist" stance. The guy is NOT a socialist. He's a totalitarian thug. He just uses socialist propaganda to get power. However because he spews rhetoric people like, they completely overlook what he actually does.
Re:Interesting stuff (Score:3, Insightful)
If the F22 didn't appear to have all the hallmarks of a lemon, there would be no problem.
The US had it right in the 50s and 60s by not putting all its eggs in one basket, so if some of the aircraft turn out to suck, at least you have something else to fall back on. The F22 is a monumental gamble, and all we get from Lockheed is talk and more talk.
Re:Interesting stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
Whatever one thinks of Chavez, your post is seriously misleading.
1. "OK for the dictatorial head of a murderous socialist regimes to name himself president for life."
(a) It's a strange dictator who wins by free and fair elections, multiple times.
(b) Who has he had killed?
(c) I know he calls himself a socialist, but he's more of a New Dealer.
(d) In what universe is changing the law so that you can run for election any number of times the same as making yourself president for life? Not everyone thinks term limits are a good idea. The US did not used to have them.
2. "shut down not-propogandizing-for-him media, "disappear" elected officials that disagree with him"
(a) If a major US television station had (i) collaborated in the (unconstitutional) attempted military overthrow of the United States government, and (ii) consistently referred to Obama as "the nigger" on air, do you think that such a station would be allowed to continue to broadcast? I have a bridge for sale if you think so.
(b) What credible reports are there of Chavez having people offed? I haven't seen any.
If you don't like the guy, then fine. There's no need to make shit up.
Re:Long term (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And more to the point (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry but he *is* a socialist, in fact given socialisms now solid one hundred year track record he is the perfect REAL socialist. What I mean by that is not the socialist that only exists in the minds of sheltered academics and western middle class over priviliged youth but the real rubber hits the road meat space traditional Socialist. He and all those who have come before him that have followed the "socialist playbook" to a tee where the middle class agitates the lower class to help stage a revolution against the upper class have *always* followed immediately by re-distributing the upper classes wealth and power to themselves and left the lower classes where they are (or worse off). They then immediately institute "temporary" totalitarianism to prevent the "counter revolution"...powers which then never go away. In dozens of countries time and time again it has played out in exactly the same way every.single.time.
That is the real outcome of the extreme lefts high minded ideal, not the fantasy that they have in their heads of some utopia but state power and thuggery in the hands of a few. It happened in Russia to Trotsky and the "high minded" supporters of equality, it happened in Spain just before the Fascists arrived, it happened in Cuba, China and now Venezuela. Just like Fascism is the real world outcome of the far rights fantasy of utopia, State Totalitarianism is the real world outcome of the far lefts. As with any ideology, it only works in moderation along side other systems of organisation based on the people within the society.
As the most successful countries show the best recipe seems to be a dash of socialism here, a pound of capitalism there and everything in moderation.
Re:Interesting stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, they may have been murderous bastards, but they were our murderous bastards.
Re:Interesting stuff (Score:4, Insightful)
In air to air combat, killing your opponent before they get anywhere close to you is the goal. Aviation Week wrote years ago about the ratio of losses "at the merge" (i.e. when the two opposing forces actually pass each other and engage at close range). The goal of the F-22 is to end the battle before the merge. Launch radar guided missiles from well outside the opposing force's missile range, clean up the remnants with infrared missiles at closer range, and not need to deal with a messy knife-fight. All the while, your stealth prevents the opponent from getting a good missile shot.
What if enemy also has stealth?
Also, keep in mind that stealth didn't prevent one F-117 from getting shot down by a missile in combat. It can't be 100% stealthy in the end, so there's always a way around.
So far as I know, AA missiles are the end-all-be-all mostly in theory so far; in practice, even in more recent conflicts with fighter jets on both sides, most air fights tend to end in close-range dogfights using cannons mostly (well, unless you have a major generation gap - like a MiG-15 on one side and an F-16 on another).
Still, when all is said and done, F-22 is 5th gen, while Su-30 is "4.5". I've no doubt which one would win a dogfight - missiles, cannons, whatever.
Re:Wrong headline (Score:1, Insightful)
The Su-30MKI was jointly designed by Russia's Sukhoi and India's (HAL). The MKI's airframe is a development of the Russian Su-27 while most of the avionics were developed by India
source - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Su-30MKI#cite_note-13 [wikipedia.org]
Re:Dangerous Thinking (Score:4, Insightful)
Carrier groups are prime targets for short ranged nukes.
Re:Now Entering the Third Stage of Military Histor (Score:4, Insightful)
You overreach.
Technology will continue to be a giant advantage for the next 30 years or so, at least. I question your understanding of military technology portfolios.
World War I was a war of attrition. WWII, also, but to a lesser degree.
IT is not so predominant among the worlds' armies that it dominates. Understanding a technology doesn't mean the ability to solve engineering/production challenges, weaponize it, train troops, and then operate the new capability.
In fact, we are coming to a moment in time where the sophistication of our capabilities may render obsolete various styles of warfare. The "fog of war" is dying a slow death.
Re:Dangerous Thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Interesting stuff (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Dangerous Thinking (Score:4, Insightful)
But that's the point - the carrier doesn't need maneouverability because it has all the other ships in the battlegroup plus its own aircraft to defend it. If you reach the situation where your carrier is needing to dodge and weave then ur doin it toterli rong, and you've probably already lost.
A fighter plane doesn't have that luxury, which is why interkin3tic's comparison is not just invalid but irrelevant.
Re:5th Gen (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Dangerous Thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not so sure. You seem to forget that carrier fleets are as much a result of political posturing as necessity and are a direct outgrowth of US experiences in the WWII in the Pacific, which is to put it diplomatically a classic case of "fighting the last war". Also the US has never been truly tested on the seas against anyone but militarily 3rd-rate, impoverished countries. I seem to recall a saying the submariners are rather fond of, to the effect that in case of a serious modern naval conflict there would be only two classes of ships at seas: submarines and ... "targets"!
Something else to ponder: the Soviet Union never invested in the massive carriers, focusing rather heavily on fast, long-range submarines instead. Presumably they also had "people thinking about fleet deployment for a living", don't you think? Or do you suppose they were all idiots, far beneath the American Super-Men, The Masters of the Universe?
Re:Long term (Score:3, Insightful)
They said the same thing about parachutes in WWI.
Re:Interesting stuff (Score:3, Insightful)
And a tank costs a lot more than a pickup truck. So what? If the F-22 can maintain, say, a 20:1 kill ratio against other aircraft, then the 5:1 cost disparity is more than justified. Not to mention the fact that you can reduce operating costs since you no longer need to maintain such a large fleet, so you long-term costs may be more like 2:1 or even lower.
Re:Dangerous Thinking (Score:3, Insightful)
Idiots? No, but they couldn't afford it, so they went to the next best thing. They do have one carrier now I believe, but could never afford to field as many as the US can.
I know this is the internet, were bashing Americans is what all the cool kids do, but if you're going to insult Americans, try not to do so from a position of ignorance. I know, its tough.
Re:Interesting stuff (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Dangerous Thinking (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Dangerous Thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
Also the US has never been truly tested on the seas against anyone but militarily 3rd-rate, impoverished countries.
Japan was a militarily 3rd-rate impoverished country?
I seem to recall a saying the submariners are rather fond of, to the effect that in case of a serious modern naval conflict there would be only two classes of ships at seas: submarines and ... "targets"!
Submarines are historically the biggest threat to aircraft carriers (the Wasp and Yorktown come to mind) but they aren't invulnerable. Submarines have several drawbacks:
1) They can't keep up with a fast moving surface task force without giving away their location and losing sonar effectiveness. The best way for them to engage such a task force is to lie in wait for it but this isn't always possible if your enemy doesn't cooperate and go where you think he's going to go.
2) They can't communicate in real time with their base and thus have a harder time taking advantage of other sensor platforms (aircraft, satellites, etc) that would help them locate their targets.
3) They can't take advantage of long range stand-off weapons (missiles) without giving away their location.
4) Their primary sensor platform (passive sonar) requires a fair amount of time to develop a targeting solution (see target motion analysis). This process is rendered much harder when tracking a target that is taking evasive action (random changes in course or speed) to complicate the process. Active sonar removes this limitation but gives away their location and subjects them to counter-attack.
In summary, it's a mistake to dismiss the submarine threat but it's also a mistake to assume that they will rule the waves in a future conflict. Submarines can only dominate the oceans in the absence of an effective ASW strategy (see the Pacific in WW2). When such a strategy is implemented they are certainly manageable (see the Atlantic in WW2). We have a competent ASW strategy and the best technology in the world for the task. We also have the most effective ASW weapon available -- our own submarines.
Something else to ponder: the Soviet Union never invested in the massive carriers, focusing rather heavily on fast, long-range submarines instead. Presumably they also had "people thinking about fleet deployment for a living", don't you think?
The Soviets had a completely different strategy than NATO did. It's the difference between sea control [wikipedia.org] and sea denial [wikipedia.org]. The Soviets didn't have to control the shipping lanes to win WW3. They just had to close them to NATO shipping and choke off supplies and reinforcements from North America. It's much cheaper to build a sea denial force than it is to build a sea control force and doesn't require the same level of institutional experience.
It should be noted that every power that's ever tried a sea denial strategy ultimately failed and lost whatever war they were fighting. Germany in the World Wars is the best known example but there are others from history. Unless you can win command of the sea you are going to have an awfully hard time defeating a Western military power. Command of the sea has been the secret to our success since the beginning. If it wasn't for Salamis [wikipedia.org] there probably wouldn't even be such a thing as Western civilization.