The U.S. housing bubble over a decade later:
The US housing bubble was created... they changed the rules regarding loans from banks... previously if a bank gave you a loan you could not possibly pay back then you didn't have to pay it back, so they used to demand all sorts of information from the people they lent money to to make sure even if they or their partner lost their job they could still pay the loan back.
The problem was that house values and house prices started going up because a good way to make money was to buy a house and do it up and then sell it again a few years later to make a much bigger profit than could possibly be earned in interest on a saving account.
Banks would give anyone a loan because they knew if the person couldn't pay the loan back they could get their money back by seizing and selling the house because house prices kept going up.
Obviously they can't keep going up forever so you end up with people with a million dollar loan on a house that is now only worth 500 thousand that they paid 1.5 million for... well they can seize the house and sell it but they will still be half a million out of pocket and their customer is now homeless and having to pay rent and is even less able to pay off the loan... and the whole pyramid scheme collapsed.... but it is OK because the Banks were owned by very very rich people and the government of the country that all the little people pay tax for but the very very rich seem to be able to dodge paying tax at the rates they should be paying, so of course those very very rich families that owned banks got a 750 billion dollar bail out and their CEOs got 25 million dollar bonuses for the great job they did... while the people who couldn't pay back their loans were kicked out onto the street...
Paul Metz* (in his YF-23 book) claimed the S-71 had some proto stealth qualities.
Have heard such claims before, but as I said... the Chinese and Soviets had no problems tracking SR-71s from takeoff to landing and often from a country away... China with flights over Vietnam were able to track it from China, and the Soviets were able to track SR-71s that never entered their airspace either.
Aerodynamically to fly that fast it was very slim and low drag and in many ways that is good from a RCS perspective.
The main stealth feature would be the engines and engine intakes which would be rather more stealthy than the huge air intakes of the MiG-25 and MiG-31, but stealth feature is an exaggeration, the surface heating meant the MiG-25 could detect the aircraft at 130km plus range with its IRST... which is why the MiG-31 continued to carry the IR guided R-40TD missile because in a head on shot it would have been the first weapon they fired followed by an R-33 to shoot it down head on.
When it comes to stealth, most stealth aircraft can be tracked using L band but not precise enough to get a target lock. The L-band RADARs in the Su-57 are a very good counter-stealth asset. They can cue the its X-band RADARs to concentrate radio energy on a certain sector.
When it comes to anti stealth the Russians go a step further... their ground based NEBO system has long wave and short wave radar but they don't operate them separately, they operate them together and combine their signal performance to create a hybrid system that is much much better than either system on its own would be.
They do the same on the Su-57 except they combine the nose mounted Ku/Ka band AESA with the wing mounted L band AESA, but also the IRST system to get rather better performance than any of those systems could achieve on their own.
Metz* = I think he got it right that the main reason the U.S. developed stealth was because of the USSR's SAM network.
It was more about the money though... even in the 1990s the US knew the B-2 would never penetrate Soviet airspace at altitude and that flying low was going to be necessary for all their strategic aircraft.... which was damaging their B-52s and B-1Bs because flying low at high speed can be a very rough ride depending on the weather.
The Soviets realised a missile is going to be more stealthy than any aircraft and it is also easier to make a missile travel at very high speed than to make a bomber fly fast.
Sending 100 bombers into enemy airspace means the enemy has to shoot down 100 targets... having those bombers be converted to cruise missile carriers with 12 missiles per bomber with a flight range of 5,000km means the enemy air defence is not dealing with 100 targets, they are dealing with 1,200 targets.... and this will be about 4 or 5 hours after Russian ICBMs and SLBMs have already hit and devastated the country and its air defence resources...
Their next gen strategic aircraft will be carrying 12 or so missiles still but in the 2030s those 12 missiles are going to be two stage scramjet powered missiles flying at mach 12 at perhaps 40km altitude... and their next gen aircraft are Tu-160s and PAK DAs... a supersonic swing wing aircraft and a flying wing... the latter will be naturally stealthy with no vertical tails etc, but it wont be expensive... subsonic wont matter when it carries mach 12 missiles with 10,000km flight ranges.
MiG-25 vs SR-71: but for how long could each plane fly at Mach 3?
The MiG-25 could fly at mach 2.83 for about 5 minutes and mach 2.6 for about 20 minutes and mach 2.4 all day long.
At Mach 2.6 it could fly 750km in about 13 minutes and it would then launch its missiles and turn around and fly back to base, which it could do at a similar speed.
It ran its turbojet engines as turbojet engines which is amazing.
The SR-71 could fly mach 3.1 all day long and could peak at about mach 3.3 at the most in optimal weather conditions.
The MiG-25 could operate normally at 20km altitude but holds the world record in a stripped down model at 37km altitude.
The shape of the SR-71 with its long nose meant it could not perform well at high altitude as the nose would stall and drop.
Both are very well designed aircraft... and seeing as how the US claims the T-34 is an American design because it was developed from about four different vehicles that eventually ended in the T-34 the Christie suspension... which had to be rejigged for heavier vehicles to make it useful, then the Soviets could claim the SR-71 because it was made out of Soviet Titanium... without the Soviet Titanium it could not have been made...
The Mig-25 was designed as a counter to the SR-71 and the Valkyrie bomber. Only the SR-71 made it into service in small numbers but the Mig-25 program went ahead and was produced in numbers - both as an interceptor and a recce plane. In operations the maximum speed was limited to Mach 2.8 and the engine was quite thirsty giving it fairly limited range, but like the SR-71 it was a remarkable aircraft for it's time.
The R-40TD probably would have been the missile the MiG-25 would have used to shoot down an SR-71 if they had actually crossed paths... fired head on.
Not counting the X-15 because it was rocket-powered and had a tendency to be a terminal career shortener.
Not counting Buran and MiG Spiral and the US Space Shuttles either...
I wonder what the PAK DP will be. Rather, it will be adapted to combat hypersonic missiles once the West develops and implements them
The purpose of the speed is to allow threats to be intercepted further away from their targets so you have more chances for a kill.
If a MiG-29 could intercept a target 500km from the airfield and an Su-27 could intercept the target at 1,000km, the advantage of the MiG-31 is that it could climb and accelerate to a much higher speed and its missiles reach rather further so it could attack a target 1,500km away but would have to fly subsonic home.
The other point is that when the MiG-31 gets to 750km away from its own airfield that will be about 13 minutes after takeoff and the other MiG an the Sukhoi wont be that far out in that time so it intercepts further out and fast giving the target less time to launch its attack/weapons on target. Shooting down bombers instead of having to deal with all its missiles is important.
The SR-71 was produced in small numers. After each flight they had nearly to rebuild the whole thing. The engines were finished after only a few flights.
The MiG-25 was a mass produced interceptor and recon/bomber plane. That´s why its top speed was limited to save maintenance time/spare parts and so on.
The SR-71 was so expensive they cancelled it quite a few times... mostly because of the cost and also because it was claimed that satellites could do a better job... but they kept bringing it back because obviously an aircraft operating 20km above the ground carrying the latest new camera invented that morning is going to do a better job than a camera fitted to a satellite that was launched 4 years ago and is 500km up and might not be passing over the area you want a good look at any time soon.
It was very capable, but never crossed any Russian airspace.
In comparison quite a few countries operated MiG-25s.
The west was actually surprised how cheap they managed to make it... steel instead of titanium etc etc... silver mesh over the engines instead of more efficient but more expensive gold mesh...
The La-250 Anaconda was plagued with problems and the program was dropped in favour of the Tu-128. The Tu-128 wasn't exactly a "success" either but it had one thing going for it - it had range.
Exactly... I have mentioned a few times that the PAK DA will be very fast, but I think in a few years time when the PAK DA is entering service and they have a few spare Tu-22M3s around the place that a huge super powerful AESA nose mounted radar and a belly packed with long range and medium range and short range self defence AAMs might be something that is interesting.... not just to fill gaps but also as a bomber escort to shoot down enemy SAMs and aircraft...
The new improved performance engines they were working on for the Tu-160M could be fitted to them too to further improve performance...
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