General Questions Thread:

I am new to this forum, hence sorry if this question has already been answered, but is it not confusing how Russia is building stealth aircraft and drones whilst claiming it is developing radars that can defeat stealth? Russian efforts at developing stealth-defeating photonic radar have long been in the news, see here:

Western countries have body armour vests yet they still make bullets too.

The fact that Russia has a massive IADS with a range of OTH radars that are optimised to deal with stealth and low flying and high flying and slow and fast targets does not mean they should not have stealthy weapons and aircraft of their own.

Just because western air defence systems are terrible at dealing with drones and low flying cruise missiles... it is also very likely they will also struggle with stealth targets too, so it makes sense for Russia to make stealth platforms.

The difference is that Russia is not claiming their stealth aircraft are invisible and invincible like the west essentially did till an F-117 was shot down.

The Su-57 is perhaps not totally convincing as an effort at building a stealth aircraft, the Okhotnik drone, on the other hand, certainly looks like the real deal.

Well it is good to have a stealth engineer on the forum, can you explain how the Su-57 is not stealthy while the F-35 and F-22 are?

I mean I have seen photos of all three types and they are easy to see to be honest.

Does one hand not know what the other does in Russia, may the photonic radar be overhyped, are the Russians putting up a show of 'maskirovka' one way or the other, trying to deceive all the others into over-investing in stealth?

Stealth is a type of camouflage... it works against a very specific type of radar that is often used for tracking and terminal guidance... which makes it rather useful most of the time... especially against western forces which as we see in combat testing against F-35s and F-22s they are clearly not equipped to engage such targets.

Russia forces on the other hand have L band wing mounted radar arrays and IRST and BVR IR guided missiles which suggests they are much better equipped and prepared to deal with stealth aircraft.

Even when Photonic radar starts to enter service which might be 5 or 10 years away, odds are it most likely will start off in AWACS and heavy recon aircraft and migrate to smaller fighter and missile sized roles.

Until photon radar has replaced all existing radar types then stealth will have a use... but it wont be the primary focus of the design like it is in the west.

The Russians designed a stealthy plane that can manouver and fight... the west was trying to make a sniper in a ghillie suit... rather more expensive and not so multirole.

You surely cannot build a stealth-defeating radar without assuming that your enemy will eventually be able copy the technology, whereupon everybody goes back to square one.

Yeah, perhaps you don't understand how things work but when one side deploys something the other side works hard to deploy a counter... for instance super carriers and Zircon hypersonic anti ship missiles. Technology never stands still... both sides are working on new aircraft carriers and defending current ones also and new ways of destroying them with new better anti ship missiles.

You know when your system is good when the other side claims they can defeat it by overwhelming it with numbers... it means you have done your job.

Russia recognises the usefulness of stealth and are applying it where it makes sense.

There is no value in stealth for the MiG-31 because during operational use it will be scanning for targets with its massive radar... any stealth coating and stealth shaping would be a total waste of time and money.

For PAK DA on the other hand, the stealth is not like the B-2 to allow it to fly over targets and drop bombs on them even though the air defence over western targets will be much much weaker, the PAK DA will be a theatre bomber and a strategic cruise missile carrier... its stealth does not need to let it penetrate enemy air defences... it just needs to get it within perhaps 1,000km of enemy airspace with 5,000km range missiles that will fly low and slow or high and very very fast to penetrate the enemy air defences. The fundamental shape of a flying wing will give it a very low RCS and at the same time very low drag for very long range cruise flight potential.

Surprisingly the most important thing pilots and crew learn from proper simulators is where all the buttons are and how to perform procedures like prering for launch or preparing to enter airspace with hostile enemy forces.

They know how to fly, but need refresher courses on what all the buttons do and where to locate them during flight.

It is all usually recorded so not only do they get practise but they also get blow by blow accounts of any mistake or problem they might have like forgetting where the navigation screen is on the MFD.

It is also a chance to practise rare things like failures of things that might never fail in real life but the air crew needs to know how to deal with... which they can also be rated on too.

Hahahaha... what a load of shit....

Dem stoopid Ruskies can't hit anything and don't know what they are doing.... right...

The Mi-35s in Russian service have modern stabilised optics that include laser range finders and can hit targets out to max range just fine.

T-90 tanks can hit actual tank targets at 5km range with APFSDS rounds and HEAT rounds and Missiles...

Soviet weapons were designed to be simple to use because a rocket or missile launcher does not need to be complex to get the job done.

Current Russian weapons are mostly used by professional soldiers and they are not down to conscripting women and prisoners just yet the way the Orcs are.

And their long range precision guided weapons seem to be very very accurate... it is the orcs hitting civilian targets... not the Russians.

They are hitting targets at 1km with AS and VSS weapons using subsonic 9x39mm ammo... I keep hearing western experts say the 7.62x39mm round is terribly inaccurate because of its bullet drop.... the 9x39mm has a heavier bullet moving at much slower speeds... BTW those same experts will swear the 7.62x51mm round is excellent at 1km range... but it has a bullet drop of 10m at that distance but it seems bullet drop is only a problem for Russian products.

Bullet drop has never been a problem as long as you know the distance to the target and COMPENSATE for the drop by setting your sights properly for the shot.

Which is another problem... in the west you want precision for you assault rifle... you want to hit in the heart of the enemy so 1MOA or better is critical or the rifle is junk... except in real combat situations who is going to take the time to accurately estimate range to the target and adjust their sights before taking the shot?

No one.

So you know what range setting your iron sights or telescopic sight is set for and you estimate based on what you guess the range is where to aim to hit the target... if you aim for the heart you will miss most of the time.

The sighting set up for the AK has a battle setting which equates to 300m... to hit targets out to 400m you loft the bullet into the air so that at 400m the bullet drops down to the point of aim.

Soviet soldiers were never trained for heart shots, in combat you have a target area equating to a human torso and that is what they used for shooting... get hits inside the rectangle and you are good to go.

Ironically body armour has hard plates that cover the upper chest... heart and lungs area, so a shot to the gut would actually be more effective most of the time.

The point is that the trajectory and bullet drop of the 7.62 x 39mm round means you can zero it at 300m and use that setting on any target from the muzzle to 400m for a hit if you aim centre mass without needing to adjust or guess or aim off... which means you can instead just focus on lead...

During the cold war Soviet weapons were designed to be simple and effective... the components were designed and built and instead of expensive testing and checks they worked out how long the components lasted and then decided on a conservative lifespan and gave a comfortable safety margin and that was when those parts were replaced.

This actually made them expensive to maintain in the sense that perfectly good components were thrown out with the worn out stuff, but it was simple and not complex and did not require super high definition portable xray machines to look for micro cracks and such like... it also led to a black market in parts that had been replaced but looked OK and were sold cheap to people pretending they were new when they weren't.

The point is that it was expensive when the components became expensive and high tech, but it was simple... men with high school level education could do it... how many hours have these bits been in this aircraft... change them or keep using them x more hours and then change them.

No university engineering degree or expensive portable xray equipment.

It means any third world country can operate it but as components got more expensive you were replacing the good components with the bad without inspection or testing.

It also meant that during war time you put in oil and fuel and lubricants and you armed it and took off and flew... during war time it was excellent because less time wasted testing and checking stuff for microcracks and hairline fractures with high tech expensive gear... during peace time however... as I said you go through more parts... some of which were getting expensive.

The MiG-29SMT reduced support costs and operational costs by 40% just by introducing self testing equipment and diagnostic modes for the electronics and hardware... and the MiG-29M/K/35 went even further with fully modular stuff that could be easily replaced, with modules that could be repaired later and used again when the fault was found and corrected.

Suggesting they were crude is ridiculous... they were simple and effective... and as we have seen... German artillery pieces that can't fire 100 rounds a day without breaking tells you what sort of thing they were designed for... Parades and Exercises...

Soviet air defence force exercises often started with a 2,000km route march to a location far from where they were based... they were expected to drive to the new location and set up and defend the airspace from enemy air threats... they would not know what location till they had to move out, so they needed full logistics ready at all times.

Practise for real war.

BTW anyone who reads such articles and still believes them after Syria and Ukraine... well that is good news for Russia and any other country willing to resist assimilation from the Borg (US et al).

The F-35 engine is very specifically designed to do what it does... which is why despite having a very powerful engine the F-35 cannot supercruise like the Su-57 can.

Engines are rated for specific jobs... the engine for the F-35 is designed for a VSTOL fighter... BTW the Soviet equivalent is the R-79M which was the main engine on the Yak-141 at about 18 tons thrust. By about the late 1990s and early 2000s they had a version of that engine developing 22 tons of thrust, but just like the US engine it is designed for bypass air so it would never reach mach 2 in the aircraft it was designed for.

In comparison the engines for the Su-57 will make it supercruise very very fast...

Performance is not directly related to engine thrust... the MiG-31 has 15 ton thrust engines and it is limited t the same top speed as the MiG-25 which had 11 ton thrust engines... mach 2.83.

It is more complex than it appears... if it was just about power output they could simply use the NK-25 or NK-31 engines of the Backfire and Blackjack respectively... both being 25 ton thrust engines.

Raw power isn't as much important as fuel consumption, reliability or super cuising

Engine power is an important factor, because even an engine with the same fuel burn rate will burn more fuel if it is more powerful.

Fuel consumption is normally calculated as kilogrammes of fuel burned per kilogrammes of force thrust per hour... so a fuel consumption rating of 1.87 at max takeoff thrust rating means that 1.87kgs of fuel is burned for every kilogramme of force generated by the engine per hour, so an 18 ton thrust engine operating at max power with that fuel consumption rating burns 1.87 x 18,000 = kgs per hour fuel consumption (note it is a burn rate... most aircraft don't carry enough fuel for max thrust setting for an entire hour... a MiG-31 for instance at full thrust runs out of fuel in about 29 minutes for a flight radius of 750kms).

Obviously with two engines you double the fuel burn rate but that also means the Su-57 has 36 tons of thrust compared with the F-35s 20 tons or thereabouts.

The engine of the Yak-141 is the R179V-300 and is what the American engine is probably derived from... they had to pay the Russians for the engine nozzle technology because no western engine maker can make engine nozzles that can deflect thrust 95 degrees in full AB. And no, the Harrier in all its versions never had AB.

The R179V-300 has a thrust rating of 19,800kg thrust, but they also used the engine for power stations use and also pumping stations.

The R179MV-300 has a thrust rating of 21,000kgs... like the American engines these are big... 1.4m diameter air flow and 2.2 tons dry weight.

The proposed Yak-143 which had a much stealthier shape and a rather larger design with a main engine geared lift fan as used on the F-35 was to use the NK-321 engine that was being tested on the Tu-144 with the Americans... at 25,000kgs thrust... she was a biggie.

Like Garry said top speed are controled and almost never achieved because it burns all the fuel in 10 minutes.

Drag is related to airspeed, so at altitude and in level flight it takes quite a few minutes for an aircraft to accelerate to supersonic speed during which it flys straight and level in full AB burning lots and lots of fuel... unless you are actually chasing something down most of the time it is not worth it because it dramatically reduces your flight range and flight time.

The MiG-31 being an interceptor is one of the few supersonic aircraft types that actually spends a lot of time at supersonic speeds simply because the faster it flys the further away from the enemy missile or aircraft is from its targets when you get into firing range... shooting down six B-52s or six B-1Bs is much much easier than trying to chase down all the missiles those platforms can carry... so the further from their targets you can hit them the better.

Su-57 has a lot more lift surfaces than the pig-35 which needs a powerful engine to stay in the air at mach 1.8 max and no supercruise.

If you look at the Su-57 in the air it is very flat and wide... it is almost a flying wing shape with low drag despite internal weapon bays. In comparison the F-35 is chunky which is needed for all that internal fuel, those internal weapons and that large volume in the front for a lift fan for the VSTOL model.

Look at the Chinese rip off of the design and with two smaller engine the rear of the aircraft is vastly more aerodynamic and probably leaves a lot more internal volume for fuel and weapon spaces... it is evidence that single engined fighters are not always better... I suspect that Chinese copy probably handles as well as an F-16 or better simply because of the better shape and the fact that it will operate most of the time with internal weapons and fuel most of the time its handling will be even better with no external drag.

What is the rate of Su-30 and Su-35 production atm? I hope they can cover the losses at novofedorovka.

I doubt their current production schedule has massively changed, but if they lost more than a few aircraft a few extra aircraft orders on the end of existing orders wont be too difficult.

Why are russians so obsessed with side by side seating?

Well tell me... when you have one friend in your car... do you find it is easier to communicate with them when they are sitting beside you or when they are sitting in the back seat?

Sitting next to you you can use your hands to direct the person sitting next to you to look at something simply by pointing.

Having side by side seating there is less risk of both of you fixating on staring at one thing.

Most civilian airliners in service use side by side seating... what a bunch of idiots...  

Other than the pilots jerking each other off, theres no practical benefit for missions lasting less than 10 hours.

Even a 1 hour flight being able to go to the toilet or stretch your legs is a comfort thing... you can ignore the effect but I rather suspect most pilots would kill to have a stretch or cup of tea half way through a mission... and BTW with inflight refuelling probes an Su-30/35 could be in the air quite a few hours too.

Side by side seating massively increases weight, design difficulty and drag.

It also massively increases internal volume for electronics and fuel... top speed is reduced but it is also a much better strike bomber than the Su-30.

The F-111 was arguably a much better strike aircraft than the F-15E... with newer engines it was even better.

Su-24 is still pretty good too.

The Tu-22M3 has four crew so two side by side crew...

Su-30 is better than su-34 overall specially for air to air. For air to ground they can do the same job.

Not even close... Su-34 is a far better interdictor... the canards actively counter turbulence and give a much smoother ride at low levels at very high speed... the Su-24 and F-111 achieved the same with their wings swept back making them small so less effected by turbulence... the Strike Eagle and Su-30 and Su-35 just get a real bastard of a ride when flying low and fast.(their large wing area makes the ride jaw breaking at low altitude at very high speed... especially through mountains or areas of turbulence).

Manual tracking is used normally because it is less likely to fail... during Desert Storm Apache pilots got a visit from a guy from the company that makes Hellfires who told them just use automatic mode and you will be fine. Well with terrain and smoke and fires all round the place distracting the system most of the pilots said they launched missiles in automatic mode only to watch as half way to the target the tracking skipped to another feature which might or might not be a genuine target.

Obviously this was more critical for the Hellfires because the auto tracking pointed the laser at the target for the Hellfire to fly towards so when it skipped targets it either hit something else or lost sight of the laser beam... most SALH (Semi active laser homing) start with a wide field of view to gather the laser spot, but then zoom in on that spot and narrow their field of view to avoid being distracted by other laser spots on the battlefield.

One Apache pilot said if he saw that fat bastard again he would punch him in the face... (he mentioned the name of the company he worked for but I don't remember).

When you are sitting 8-10km away from the target then manual guidance makes sense... when not fighting in a desert, a target vehicle driving along a road might disappear for a few seconds behind trees or buildings and then reappear... humans are rather better at compensating for such things that software is.

Most Russian helicopter launched ATGMs are command guided or laser beam riding, so it doesn't matter if the target goes behind trees or buildings the missile will continue its flight path as normal... with laser homing missiles like Hellfire, the trees and buildings might not reflect laser light very well so the missile might have trouble continuing to follow the laser spot. With laser beam riding or command guidance you can raise the aim point and the missile will climb up and continue to fly towards the target clear of things near the ground it might run in to.

Regarding the footage, well it is hard to say... many drones they use don't seem to use very good stabilisation, and for all we know they might be manouvering while launching missiles at targets.