Su-47 Berkut and MiG 1.44

Just for clarity, there should be no connection between this aircraft and the word hypersonic, this aircraft is at best supersonic but no where near fast enough to be called hypersonic... perhaps mach 2.3 at best.

it is certainly experimental, but for stealth and low speed and supersonic speed manouver performance... not for super high speed flight.

MAKS-2019

Experimental fighter Su-47 "Berkut" in MAKS-2019
















https://saidpvo.livejournal.com/881151.html

Funny how the human brain craves symmetry... notice the projections on either side of the engines with the white tips.... most western drawings and depictions of this aircraft show both being the same length, when you can clearly see one is longer than the other...

Wow WTF.
Is that the actual 1980s mockup?
So Su-47 was really the '80s Soviet stealth fighter?

And thats a navy cammo

hoom wrote:Wow WTF.
Is that the actual 1980s mockup?
So Su-47 was really the '80s Soviet stealth fighter?

Υes.

A full-size mock-up of the Sukhoi Design Bureau’s first call in the 1980s to create a fifth-generation fighter — the S-22 product — a twin-engine fighter project with a reverse sweep wing. Photo from the anniversary publication "80 years of Sukhoi Design Bureau"

hoom wrote:Wow WTF.
Is that the actual 1980s mockup?
So Su-47 was really the '80s Soviet stealth fighter?

And thats a navy cammo

Beautiful, isn't it ?

I prefer this one to su-57.

The pic shatters a long time myth about Soviet/Russian inability to make a stealth design in the 1980/90s.
The mock up has a very clear stealth aproach. So, another myth busted. very nice pic in deed, its like the soulmate of the YF-23.

Manov wrote:The pic shatters  a long time myth about Soviet/Russian inability to make a stealth design in the 1980/90s.
The mock up has a very clear stealth aproach. So, another myth busted. very nice pic in deed, its like the soulmate of the YF-23.

The funny thing is that they let US make all the r&d and take their conclusions for their own work.

Cheap way. Chinese did the same with the f-35 and will start the j-31 very soon.

That being said a mockup is relatively easy to produce and requires no real effort because it does not have to fly or even be effective... it is just there to look good and show the general layout.

The Soviets didn't really need a stealth fighter in the early 1980s... a stealth fighter is intended to enter enemy air space and start destroying their air defences, their airforce, and their command and control network... HQs, Comms centres, electrical power grid, etc etc.

Russians these days will be using their Stealth fighters largely to defend Russian airspace and to operate near the front line and provide information using sensors to improve their view and understanding of what is going on in real time...

mnztr wrote:

GarryB wrote:
The Soviets didn't really need a stealth fighter in the early 1980s... a stealth fighter is intended to enter enemy air space and start destroying their air defences, their airforce, and their command and control network... HQs, Comms centres, electrical power grid, etc etc.

Russians these days will be using their Stealth fighters largely to defend Russian airspace and to operate near the front line and provide information using sensors to improve their view and understanding of what is going on in real time...

That is nonsense. The best means of defence is attack. if you are in a war, you want to strike the enemies heavily defended bases. If you can destroy their planes on the ground and disable runways, that is the most efficient way to degrade their war fighting ability. The more dangrous plane is pretty harmless when its on the ground. Interdiction is the most effective way of fighting a war and the further back from the front line you can attack the enemy the better.

Sure, but thats what SRBM/MRBMs and stand-off LACMs are for.  Why use manned fighters for deep interdiction against concerted defenses (and risk both pilots lives and expensive high performance aircraft) when you can launch larger numbers of inexpensive missiles that collectively carry much greater firepower,  and are much harder to intercept?

Manned fighters can follow up once NATO defenses are suppressed.

Manned flights for precision destruction of enemy military forces would have been useful to weaken Europe for that land invasion and subsequent occupation of NATOs dreams, but the reality is that Europe was not something they wanted to take control of and possess... Europe was and is a threat and what they want is to either live in peaceful coexistence with that threat, or to eliminate that threat with nuclear strikes to obliterate its potential to harm Russia.... they don't need eye wateringly expensive stealth fighters for that... IRBMs and long range Cruise missiles would do the job fine.

They produced SS-20s rather than stealth fighters... that is a historical fact...

GarryB wrote:Manned flights for precision destruction of enemy military forces would have been useful to weaken Europe for that land invasion and subsequent occupation of NATOs dreams, but the reality is that Europe was not something they wanted to take control of and possess... Europe was and is a threat and what they want is to either live in peaceful coexistence with that threat, or to eliminate that threat with nuclear strikes to obliterate its potential to harm Russia.... they don't need eye wateringly expensive stealth fighters for that... IRBMs and long range Cruise missiles would do the job fine.

They produced SS-20s rather than stealth fighters... that is a historical fact...

agree but still a weird and nice looking fighter

Well it is interesting to see that they were still working on the technology even though it wasn't directly at the time useful to them... I am sure work done then was useful designing later designs both shown publicly and kept secret.

The shape looks more aerodynamic focused than stealth focused to me, but if this was a naval platform the it does not surprise me that not much became of it because the navy really didn't have enormous resources at the time and still don't really.

Regarding their choice of a ballistic missile over a strike aircraft... Australia had the same choice at the same time and they went the other way... instead of cruise missiles or ballistic missiles they went for the F-111 instead.

Of course that is not to say the Su-24 didn't continue to be used and the Su-34 was developed and of course the Tu-22M family was developed for long range strike, but for a war against europe it will be ballistic missiles and stand off Kh-32 and Zircon and Kinzhal type weapons as well as cruise missile types...

Found on a french forum. It was during su-47 development. Looks like the US designs for the f-22 competition.

They are not detailed enough to actually fly... most likely scaled models for wind tunnel testing.

Actually... looking carefully they both have the outlines of the forward swept wings and canard foreplanes, but the one on the left blue model uses triangular for planes while the silver one on the right seem to be more like the main wings shape.

I would suspect the idea is to use them with the extra metal attached to test the performance of a big wing in a wind tunnel and perhaps RCS... then remove the front section leaving the forward swept wing and canards and test in the wind tunnel and RCS tests... and then again perhaps without the canards...

Not flyable. You can see tge size of the people next to it. They are small models.

They probably analyzed the US solutions for a 5th gen aircraft.

Scale models are cheaper and quicker to make than full sized prototypes so sometimes scale models are made to test aerodynamics in real flight.. these are clearly not designed to actually fly.

No, I doubt they did this to analyse what the US did... I rather expect to analyse what the Americans were doing they made accurate models... making models of such size is actually rather expensive so they would want to put US models in wind tunnels to test aerodynamics and get an idea of flight performance potential, but they would also hang the model up and point their radars and IR devices at it to get 3D radar and and IR signatures for them at the same time.

Looking closely at the image of the two models the one on the right looks like the stealthy model in post 30 above... the cockpit area is more like a MiG-29 than the final model that was revealed, but ironically the pointy canards are on the stealthy model in post 30 with a ridged back spine.

The actual aircraft we see most often has a round fuselage with the cockpit canopy sitting on top and it has a flat spine and the canard shape with the square tips.

The two side by side models are a mix the blue one has the flat spine and the canopy of the Berkut, while the (more?)stealthy page 30 design has a raised spine and sharp triangular canards and a blended cockpit fuselage like the MiG-29 or Su-27 on the silver model.

Both use the forward swept wing arrangement.

I suggested these models might have been used before testing the real Berkut... perhaps they were after and were intended to be a quick alternative to the redesign that was the PAK FA Su-57.

I am sure the forward swept wing design was useful for testing, but AFAIK it was found to be best for subsonic designs, which is not great for a plane that is supposed to supercruise a bit.

Isos wrote:Found on a french forum. It was during su-47 development. Looks like the US designs for the f-22 competition.

This image is fake. The original shows two Burkut (Su-47) models, the wings have been altered in Photoshop. You can still see the original Berkut wings and canard if you look carefully.

Manov wrote:The pic shatters  a long time myth about Soviet/Russian inability to make a stealth design in the 1980/90s.
The mock up has a very clear stealth aproach. So, another myth busted. very nice pic in deed, its like the soulmate of the YF-23.

Sadly, no it doesn't. There are Soviet era designs that might support your argument better, but this isn't one of them. Its primarily shaped for aerodynamics, as GarryB says, but possibly might be intended for somewhat reduced RCS. The primary techniques of stealth are shaping, including first and foremost planform alignment, and were not used in any currently published Soviet era fighter design. Western propaganda of curvy F-19 type stealth models seems to have successfully concealed faceting and planform alignment techniques from the USSR until the B-2 and F-117 were unveiled.

Funny how the people who literally wrote the book on stealth (i.e. the mathematics based on the physics) are supposedly
unable to design stealth aircraft. Westerners should listen to themselves talk, you sure sound like chauvinist retards.

The F-35 is an example of the inanity that permeates western "thought". For the longest time we had whining fanbois
piss all over the place about how circular nacelles defeat stealth. Yet for the F-35 they are fine. No, you fanboi clowns
do not get to conveniently forget your retarded spew.

kvs wrote:Funny how the people who literally wrote the book on stealth (i.e. the mathematics based on the physics) are supposedly
unable to design stealth aircraft.   Westerners should listen to themselves talk, you sure sound like chauvinist retards.

The F-35 is an example of the inanity that permeates western "thought".   For the longest time we had whining fanbois
piss all over the place about how circular nacelles defeat stealth.   Yet for the F-35 they are fine.   No, you fanboi clowns
do not get to conveniently forget your retarded spew.

Presumably you mean Pyotr Ufimtsev. His treatise was a very technical one on a way to calculate one class of radar reflections in a specific use case which was highly useful to Lockheed engineers when calculating the RCS of their faceted aircraft designs. This is not in any way like 'writing the book on stealth'.

As to the rest of this diatribe, I'm not sure how to respond.

The USSR had plenty of talented engineers who I have a lot of respect for. For a variety of reasons they didn't crack the principles of stealth until 1990 however. I'm sure today Russia could design a truly stealthy aircraft if they were required to. I think the jury is still out on exactly where the Su-57 fits in here. My personal belief is the PAKFA RCS requirement was probably more akin to the first revision of the US ATF requirements, described by Dan Raymer as "pretty good from the front", than the second revision which he described as "incredible from almost all directions".

Presumably you mean Pyotr Ufimtsev. His treatise was a very technical one on a way to calculate one class of radar reflections in a specific use case which was highly useful to Lockheed engineers when calculating the RCS of their faceted aircraft designs. This is not in any way like 'writing the book on stealth'.

Up until the time they read his work their development consisted of building scale models and testing them... a very slow and expensive method of development.

After reading his work they were able to use it to create a mathematical model to essentially map radar propagation and reflection and therefore start using computer models to make designs and test much more rapidly... without it it is likely they would still have faceted designs like the F-117 despite the improved processing power of computers.

The USSR had plenty of talented engineers who I have a lot of respect for. For a variety of reasons they didn't crack the principles of stealth until 1990 however. I'm sure today Russia could design a truly stealthy aircraft if they were required to. I think the jury is still out on exactly where the Su-57 fits in here. My personal belief is the PAKFA RCS requirement was probably more akin to the first revision of the US ATF requirements, described by Dan Raymer as "pretty good from the front", than the second revision which he described as "incredible from almost all directions".

Of course... what the Russians want is Ford class aircraft carriers and F-22 stealth fighters because their requirements are exactly the same as the US and they think exactly the same way.... I remember in the 1980s the military book the US released under Reagan showing the T-80 as being a Soviet M1 Abrams, and the Tunguska as being a Gepard SPAAG.

The Soviets could easily design a stealth fighter or bomber. They clearly didn't have the materials technology of production equipment to make a fighter as stealthy as a US aircraft simply because the level of tolerance would be beyond them... but guess what... they don't see stealth as anything but a feature of an aircraft and developments on both sides will rapidly negate any real advantage they might get spending trillions of dollars to achieve unrealistic levels of stealth.

The cost of production and maintenance would mean they could not afford a useful number of aircraft, and the performance of Israeli F-35s in Syria suggests they are not stealthy enough to be used over Syria which makes them slower and shorter ranged and slower and vastly more expensive to buy and operate over their F-16 alternative aircraft.

For the price of the F-117 programme they could have instead developed 2,000km range stealthy cruise missiles and built about 10,000 and gotten much better value for money.

Of course Hindsight is 20/20.