Russian Stealth Fighter Makes Its First Flight 418
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."
Well, now we'll restart the F-22 (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:1, Interesting)
If we ever get into The Big One with Russia, we're going to toss ICBMs at each other, so who cares about fighters anyway?
Aircraft are for our misadventures in small, nearly defenseless countries, and Predator is better at that.
Re:Well, now we'll restart the F-22 (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Stealthy ? (Score:2, Interesting)
Joking aside, the T-50 certainly isn't all-aspect stealthy in the manner of the F-22. The exhaust and nozzles are conventionally shaped. Perhaps the Russians are trying to go for the best mix of stealthiness and affordable price tag.
Does someone at NATO have a sense of humour? (Score:3, Interesting)
...or did someone fabricate this part of the Wikipedia article?
The Sukhoi PAK FA... NATO reporting name: Firefox
The man behind the curtain... (Score:2, Interesting)
I wouldn't be surprised if Lockheed Martin/Boeing secretly funded Russia's stealth fighter project to justify restarting production on the F-22. That would be business as usual - gotta keep the wheels of the industrial military complex spinning.
Re:Who cares? (Score:3, Interesting)
I live by the F-22 production plant and I want the project to start up because:
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. /\ \/
Re:do you have to think in Russian to fly it? (Score:1, Interesting)
NATO reporting name: Firefox :)
Firefox, artificial intellect, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083943/ ...
Coincidence?
Foolish assumption. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Well, now we'll restart the F-22 (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Can aircraft keep ahead of missile tech? (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Well, now we'll restart the F-22 (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Well, now we'll restart the F-22 (Score:3, Interesting)
In the days of mechanical aperature radars, absolutely.
Now with AESA radar [wikipedia.org], the beam is much smaller and harder to determine direction. The analogy is that if the old radars were flashlights, new radars are like laser pointers: they don't even know you're looking at them most of the time, and if they do they can't determine where the beam is coming from.
This Russian fighter; the F22; F35; and F15s, F16s, and F18s with retrofits have AESA radar.
Re:Foolish assumption. (Score:3, Interesting)
My point was that unless you personally, as a rational, self-sufficient person, plan on killing yourself instead of retiring, you have to plan for the future
I smoked a pack a day for 20 years and have a heart condition. I won't live that long, so I want every cent to go towards my son.
Re:Nah, time for a new fighter program (Score:3, Interesting)
Are you really sure that F-15 can outrun a missile? Because that wikipedia entry proves that a MiG-25 very well can.
Re:Who cares? (Score:3, Interesting)
You would be naive to think that an aircraft of this complexity can be "reverse engineered". I do not think, in fact, that history bears a single example since WWII at least of any foreign military aircraft being reverse engineered into a successful combat aircraft.
With any advanced aircraft the "secret" of success is not the plane itself so much than the whole vast production system that builds it. The tooling plans are actually some of the most valuable secrets.
Perhaps the closest example of a successful combat plane clone was Israel's Kfir, derived from the Dassault Mirage. But this success required Israel to steal the complete Mirage plans, including the all-important tooling plans, to be able to buy actual production equipment from France, and to buy the engines from the U.S.
Re:Can aircraft keep ahead of missile tech? (Score:3, Interesting)
Ridiculous! How many SAM generations came during that time?
You call into question the number of generations out one side of your mouth and point out the duration of a single generation out the other. Somehow the irony seems to have been missed.
There hasn't been very many generations. Period. Second of all, in order to create a generation which can counter, you generally have to know what it is you're countering. At best they have a lot of speculation. Third of all, the math doesn't even make sense. Why spend billions creating new target/trigger mechanisms to counter a threat which your not likely to see for at least a decade and immediately know little to nothing about. Fourth, had they started a generation to counter a threat, at that time, they would have no clue what is it they are suppose to counter, and even if they did, the technology gap (counter the counter) between then and how is likely to be huge.
And what are they good for, truly? To carry cruise missiles?
No, dropping bombs. Imagine that, a bomber dropping bombs. Who would of thought. The fact that you're one, confused about its primary role, and two, still have no clue what a bomber is used for, pretty well puts and end to the discussion. Why your comment has been modded up is beyond me.
I think it's going to take a similar catastrophe to move us past the idea of manned combat aircraft.
Not likely. Right now there are some serious limitations to unmanned fighters. The likes of the F22 and F35 are likely to be the last of their kind but they are expected to be in service for the next thirty to fifty years. The fact their anticipated service life is so long pretty well implies that not only do our unmanned fighters have a very long way to do, but that everyone else has a vastly farther distance to travel. Take a serious look around at technological capabilities of other countries. The only countries likely to be able to field an unmanned fighter capable of providing a serious threat to an F22 or F35 is likely to be our ally and even still, likely to be at least a decade away. And that decade could easily be two or more. Aside from Russia, its likely to be a decade or two before another fighter poses a significant air risk to eh F22 and F35, let alone an unmanned vehicle. Furthermore, its extremely unlikely that the first generation of unmanned fighters will be a significant threat to planes like the F22 and F35 because of high latencies between CnC and the aircraft which means some type of advanced AI is going to be required to compensate - and even still, they must first be able to find the aircraft to even engage.
Long story short, you post may be "interesting", but its interesting in the same way any other fiction is.
Re:Stealth is not a magic bullet. (Score:4, Interesting)
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