S-70 "Okhotnik" UCAV

Should mention that it states that it will have a low altitude flight speed of 1,400km/h, which is pretty fast for a fighter aircraft... but then it will have very low drag and probably a reasonably powerful jet engine.

This suggests that it will be used to penetrate enemy air space at low altitude presumably to launch attacks using internal weapons against ground based air defence networks.

The interesting thing would be when used against enemy air power it could fly at high altitude and use high speed supersonic performance to operate ahead of the aircraft it is supporting... now we know that US stealth works by deflecting radar waves away from where they are directed from to make them harder to track, but imagine a high flying aircraft directing radar signals down at them... those signals wont be reflected back up to the drones but might be reflected in the direction of the fighters the drones are supporting or vice versa when Su-35s and MiG-35s and Su-57s and A-100s are scanning for targets the high flying drones might catch reflections... certainly L band reflections might be triangulated with drones and Su-57s and Su-35s all detecting reflections might allow precise locations to be calculated and long range IIR guided missiles launched to intercept optically these radar evading targets.

Either way high altitude rather high speed drones launching missiles can get rather extra reach no matter what sort of missiles they launch meaning extra flight range for all types of missile whether it is current solid rocket motor powered missiles or near future scramjet powered hypersonic missiles...

The S-70 drone in question is clearly related to the Su-57 but seems to have rather bigger span area with only one engine so the internal volume should be rather good even without a super thick profile as shown by the above images of it sitting on a runway.

It clearly has a thin high speed low drag profile, which is not what I would expect from the long range strategic PAK DA even though both are flying wing designs...

dino00 wrote:

He is making friends!

This UCAV has a distinctly different rear wing shape than the images posted early the thread:



Note that the flaps beside the exhaust nozzle are aligned with the flaps farther out and and are perhaps rhomboidal in shape.

The images of the model on the tarmac show a distinct V indent and the shape of the flaps on either side of the nozzle
is different and its surface area larger.

That model from the airshow is a different aircraft... it is way too small for a start, has a different engine, and has fixed undercarriage, while the UAV in the photos with other aircraft nearby is rather big and has fins near the engine exhaust... I think the photo of the uav in the satellite photo are the same as the ones of the UAV on the runway... there are small control surfaces on either side of the engine at the rear which is rather interesting too.

marcellogo wrote:

kvs wrote:


This UCAV has a distinctly different rear wing shape than the images posted early the thread:


Note that the flaps beside the exhaust nozzle are aligned with the flaps farther out and and are perhaps rhomboidal in shape.

The images of the model on the tarmac show a distinct V indent and the shape of the flaps on either side of the nozzle
is different and its surface area larger.

Yes, great find.
On your opinion: it substantiated the already made hypothesis about the possibility of going supersonic?

The W wing shape seems to be common to these flying wing drones and for proposed supersonic belnded wing body
jets. I think the subsonic-supersonic aspect is determined by flight range and utility. Making the UCAV quieter and
giving it longer range is worth something since the task recon. Supersonic speed is not excluded by the design,
especially with such a powerful engine in such a small frame. But as with the X-47B, the choice is made to keep
the maximum speed below 1.0 Mach.

According to the panel installed next, it is a model of Okhotnik, able to fly :

Thanks for posting that... it shows the answer clear and in English...

Scalable flight demonstrator of the hunter UCAV... so it is a scale model of the Hunter and not the hunter itself.

That clearly suggests they will have different sized versions for different roles and missions... the one on the air field is the biggest one for use with Su-57 stealth fighters, but smaller scaled models could be used for other purposes like recon or enemy airspace penetration... or perhaps even ELINT ops.

I still say there is no way this Okhotnik is supersonic ….
I mean the USAF got a pitch from Lockheed for a supersonic stealth bomber the FB-22

You are confusing a few things here... first of all Russia already has a supersonic bomber... it is called Blackjack and they are making more so they have a viable force of them in case they need them.

This model has nothing to do with strategic bombing and is only related to the PAK DA because it appears they will both be flying wings, but that is about as similar as they will get because the PAK DA is not intended to operate with Tu-160s... it is supposed to operate on its own so it does not need to be and likely wont be supersonic.

This drone is supposed to operate with the Su-57 so being able to fly supersonic would be useful... it has the same wing sweep and a similar wing profile thickness to the supersonic Su-57 and it would likely share the same high thrust engine which makes supersonic flight quite reasonable... especially as it will have full thrust vectoring... which American flying wing bomber aircraft don't really have.

This drone doesn't need to be a quiet supersonic type as it will be operating with Su-57s and likely Su-35s which wont be quiet either...

every photo you have ever seen of a B-1 or a Tu-160 …. has its wings in cruise mode …. about 30 degrees

Have you seen them penetrating enemy airspace at high speed? That is when they operate at higher dash speeds... the B-1B is half the plane that the Tu-160 is BTW, those four 13 ton thrust engines are less powerful than the engines already in the Su-57s let alone the new ones they have planned, while the Tu-160 has 25 ton thrust engines at the moment... very nearly twice the thrust...

why would the pragmatic Russians bother to make the Su-70 supersonic
when they already have the Tu-160 that can hit Mach 2 ?
it just doesn't make any sense

WTF is an Su-70?

This drone is a drone and not a strategic bomber... who heard of a strategic bomber the size of a MiG-35 for goodness sake?

They will make the S-70 supersonic so it can operate ahead of supersonic Su-57s and Su-35s penetrating enemy airspace to take the enemy down rather than sit back and wait for blows to come.

you are talking about adding enormous program risk to achieve a minimal gain
you will add costs way beyond reason
and increase the project timeframe ridiculously to achieve a very questionable gain
its called the "risk/reward ratio"

The engine they will use will be from the Su-57 which already has 3D thrust vectoring... the engine is already easily powerful enough to get the very low drag flying wing design to high speed... do the math... the drone is only 25 tons and has a very low drag design and a rather powerful thrust vectoring engine inside it...

It wont have a very high thrust to weight ratio but high speed flight does not require it... the MiG-31 weighs over 40 tons and has two 15 ton engines that can propel it to Mach 2.8 plus even when carrying the biggest, heaviest AAMs in the world.

Well assuming two long weapon bays on each side of the single engine that could possibly be four Kh-31 missiles or Kh-35 missiles... or perhaps two of each that could operate a long way from shore... from a high altitude launch they could be rather potent from a stealthy drone launch.

I suspect the radar sensor array the drone would carry could be enormous and therefore have rather excellent detection range against sea targets too...

Nato ships have also L band long range radar that can detect stealth. Same as those russian radars that most of people talk about when it comes to detect stealth. But they also have more carriers with them so they can send fighters to intercept them.

The RQ4 destruction showed that subsonic "stealth drones" are a joke wheb it comes to confront modern air defence systems.

What they need is a the same drone but supersonic so that it can run on the ships before they guide fighter onto it and launch its anti ship missiles.

I would agree with what you said, but there are a few problems.

First of all L band radar is an active radar that will give away the position of the ships that use it at distances much greater than that radar can detect targets... a bit like shining a torch in the dark... you can always see the torch much further away than the distance you can see things in the beam of the torch.

Second these are drones, and attack drones at that so they are expendable so sending them out to fly at high altitude where they can efficiently cruise to much greater ranges than it could possibly fly at low altitudes means it can fly fast and far and search large areas and when it finds a target it has until the ships missiles reach it to launch all its weapons and notify its operators that there are ships there that are firing upon it... the ship can detect it all day with L band radar but does the SAM launched at it detect it at a useful range... plus it could easily carry a bundle of corner reflectors that are much more attractive targets than a stealthy flying wing.

Even if shot down the drone has detect the ships and it will likely get a few shots off before it can be destroyed...

Later models could have more potent missiles... a scramjet powered Kh-31 variant would be interesting...