VVS Russian Air Force: News #1

BTW It was my understanding that the fin tip dielectric panels on the Flankers along with the nose were painted white for VVS aircraft and dark green for PVO birds.

These day you tend to see a mix of colours so it is not an indicator now but I suspect if you do see a fully armed Russian fighter these days will will be a PVO bird waiting for a VKO launch command, or responding to one.

Both the Russian helos have decent armour protection.

Regarding the Tiger... electronics alone make the helo lighter and cheaper to buy and operate, but much more dangerous to use as electronics wont stop small arms fire and RPGs.

Even a hovering helo is vulnerable to an ATGM... and new ATGMs like Kornet EM are optimised to deal with aircraft as well as vehicles...

So they are adapting the Su-25 design to make it more stealthy, but not actually stealthy.

In other words think of Mig-35 to the Mig-29 rather than F-117.

They will nip and tuck all the major radar reflection surfaces and redesign a few bits and pieces, but I rather suspect spending a lot of money to make it "stealthy" to radar is a waste of money.

I suspect they might change propulsion to something that does not attract IR guided missiles so much, and Austin mentioned two seat design might be used... and I think perhaps for better communication between the crew that a side by side seating arrangement might be used as with the Ka-52 and Su-34. The extra width would allow a decent sized radar to be fitted... perhaps based on the Ka-52 mounted system in addition to optics. I suspect a podded navigation targeting system would be useful too because CAS can be called out day or night so money could be saved by using an external targeting pod because for a fleet of 100 aircraft you could probably buy 30-40 pods and just fit them when needed. When the pods are upgraded you can buy 30-40 new pods and still keep the older ones. External pods are cheaper and easier to upgrade than built in systems... you don't lose an aircraft while the upgrade is being made.

Side by side seating would increase the internal volume of the fuselage which might allow more fuel or internal weapons carriage, but the primary weapon carriage will likely be on the wings. Of course with the Il-102 it could use much thicker wings and have bomb bays for 50 and 100kg bombs inside the wings... stealthy and with guidance accurate enough to enable the lighter warheads to still be effective. A subsonic only aircraft very thick wings will not be a handicap. It will need much more powerful engines however for the extra volume and weight and drag.

-Article says aircraft will use better radar, but the implication is strange since Su-25 does not have any radar.

After perfecting air to ground radar and air to air radar for their main two attack helos, I would suspect fitting them to their new CAS would make sense even just so that the CAS pilots can see what the Helos that they will be operating with can see.

The Su-25TM was fitted to carry a belly mounted radar pod to give it all weather day and night performance, but it was not accepted into service.

There were plans to fit the Su-25SM with a fixed nose mounted radar (which would give it a better forward view compared with a belly mounting position), but those plans didn't seem to progress either.

-What engines will power it, surely not R-195?

Depends how much weight the new aircraft gains... the turbojet engine is supposed to offer better throttle response (ie winds up faster... which can be critical when flying low in the mountains), but they could easily go for something radical like a contra rotating pusher propeller which would be efficient at low level.

-What is the extent of LO features, since presumable the payload will still be external?

Being a subsonic aircraft I would expect modified fixed air intakes would be a cheap and effective change, and likely redesigned structure to hide important components, and allow DIRCM turrets a nice wide field of regard.

For me is strange that they look to replace Su-25 and not MiG-29 whose service life has already expired

The replacement program for the Mig-29 was called LFI to match the MFI program that eventually became the PAK FA program. I rather suspect that the replacement for the Mig-29 was delayed because Sukhoi wants to reduce the success of the new fighter... whose goals of low operating cost and relatively low purchase costs with a light 5th gen fighter bomber should sell like the Flanker sells now.

AFAIK they have quite a few Mig-29s in storage and with minor upgrades they could be put into service fairly cheaply, so I think there is no real urgency in spending money on a replacement. The Mig-29 is a perfectly adequate numbers aircraft right now, and with a proper upgrade its operational costs are fairly low... reportedly in the 5-6,000 per flight hour range.

Su-25's are just as old as MiG-29s, even more in fact.
Also completely different roles.
VVS is getting several A2A assets: PAK-FA, Su-35, Su-30, etc.
But only one A2G asset, the Su-34. So this makes sense.

Also a key consideration is that Frontal Aviation lost all those single engine fighters/bombers like the Mig-27, the Su-17 and the Mig-21s and Mig-15s etc etc that had a swing role of basic ground attack.

Currently with greatly reduced aircraft numbers the Su-25 and Su-24/34 are becoming critical, though their upgrades make them orders of magnitude more powerful and effective than the older model jets...

Actually the VVS has some very much new MiG-29s. The ones they got back from the cancelled Algeria order.

Would like to see them give more aircraft upgrades however...

MTA and An-70 are in different classes.

The MTA is a direct replacement for An-12 and does not really exceed the payload capacity at all, so it will likely just be more sophisticated and cheaper to operate replacement for an older platform.

The An-70 is a bit like the Su-34 in that it might have been designed to replace the Su-24 (AN-12) but its improved performance and capabilities means it can actually replace the next model up.. which in strike terms is the Tu-22M3 and in transport terms is the Il-76.

The An-70 should be easily better than the early models of the Il-76, though it might lack speed performance... though when dropping things by parachute that is a good thing.

I think both aircraft will be very useful and internationally the An-70 will offer air forces an aircraft significantly more capable than any model Herc (C-130) but without the peak performance and also without the enormous cost of a C-17. To take a 30 ton payload from A to B it would be much cheaper to use an AN-70.

For countries not operating 70 ton tanks the An-70 would be fine.

Nice, Andy, thanks for posting.

Are both spreadsheets the same? I assumed so and only downloaded one.

Also... might be a dumb question, but why make a spreadsheet in Word instead of Excel?

Thanks again for posting.

Edit: I just read you posting the same spreadsheet on MP.net, and after reading a complaint about problems downloading on a mobile phone from Artjohm a joke reply popped into my head... "Take a tablet".... of course because a tablet computer would be easier to use than a phone... OK I didn't say it was a good joke.

So can we say tablets didn't help?

Maybe you need prescribed tablets...

I would add I think I read somewhere that Klimov were working on the new 2,700hp engines for the new Russian helos in the 10 ton class... ie Mi-28N/M, Ka-52, Ka-32 etc and they would be ready for production in 2014/15 with the new engine so that they don't need to buy the engines from the Ukraine...