MiG-29/ΜiG-35 Fulcrum: News #2

The first casualty of war is the truth...

Back on topic please.

Really the crux was understanding the capabilities of the MiG-35 and the differences in the export versions and the actual difference between the current MiG-29M/M2 and the supposed & eventual form of the MiG-35 which is really a super difficult subject to understand, given the almost limitless options including missile variants & their capabilities.

Well basically what has happened is that they developed a basically aerodynamically very good design but it was made in the late 1970s early 1980s. They had two designs... the single seat and a two seat that had different front ends. With experience they found the twin seat with a tiny ranging only radar was too limiting, and compared with the Flanker equivalent where the two seat models had full radars and were fully operational and combat capability which eventually expanded into the Su-30 family of tandem two seat combat models, and also the strike models with side by side seating for better communication and a galley and toilet and just space to stand up for long range missions.

The first MiG-29M upgrade modified the design... on the older aircraft the aircraft had a structure or frame and the skin of the aircraft was attached to that frame and then for example fuel, if you wanted fuel in the wings or any cavity you put basically a shaped fuel tank there with pipes to deliver it to the engine and to other tanks so you could balance the aircraft by moving fuel around like ballast.
The tolerances were not super high... you could often get a finger between the plates that made up the skin of the aircraft... but that didn't actually matter... surface airflow means such bumps and gaps actually improves airflow rather than creating drag... like the dimples on a golf ball.

With the MiG-29M the internal compartments were wielded and sealed so you could use a section of wing to carry fuel without any extra lining or fuel bladder... it greatly reduced weight and also increased volume available for fuel...

The Mig-29M was still a single seater with a small canopy area for one pilot.

The current plane design uses the same wielded design that is both lighter and provides a lot more internal volume for fuel. You can immediately tell it is a MiG-29M2 or MiG-35 because it has a two seat canopy and the leading edge root extension has a sharp rather than a rounded edge. It also has a full sized radar radome. If you see a two seater MiG-29 with a tiny radar it is an old model MiG-29UB of some sort. If it has a two seater canopy but a full sized radar then it is a new MiG-29M2 or MiG-35, because there is no single seat canopy version in the new design... the MiG-29M2 in single and twin seat and MiG-29KR in the single and two seat and the MiG-35 in the single and two seat designs all have a two seat canopy, though they might have one or two seats fitted.

Anything with a single seat canopy is an old model.

While the three new types share the same airframe the contents are different. The MiG-29M2 has new avionics and systems but they are not as capable or expensive as the systems fitted to the 35. Essentially it is a cheaper but still capable modern aircraft fully networked and datalinked, but not as expensive or as capable as the 35 but using the same airframe.

I have mentioned a couple of times that I think it is rather clever... it means any Air Force on a budget can be far more sensible and end up being much better equipped. An example would be the current state of the Indian military... if I was in charge and I admit I am biased... I would buy 50 MiG-35s and 250 MiG-29M2s... that would mean they have 300 new modern fighters, and full commonality with the Navy MiG-29KR... which over time I would also supplement and replace with MiG-35s as MiG have stated that the MiG-35 with the bigger MiG-29KRs wings is going to be their new carrier aircraft.

That would mean the Indian Navy and Air Force sharing a fighter type, which makes domestic production of parts much more sensible and useful.

After a set period... perhaps 5 years it could be reviewed... the MiG-35 has lots of brand new and expensive components so after 5 years with using both the MiG-35 and MiG-29M2 they will know what works and what sounds good but really does not get used much. They will then be in a good position to apply all the improved stuff from the MiG-35 that is useful to the 250 MiG-29M2s... which can then be called MiG-35Cs or something, and after 5 years all that stuff will likely be cheaper than having to buy it all now. In 5 years time there will be new stuff and you can upgrade your MiG-35s with that stuff and call them MiG-35M or something so you have growth paths for all your aircraft without spending 8 billion dollars on 36 planes...

300 MiGs will be a much more useful force than 36 or 72 Rafales... and being fully multirole the 300 MiGs means you can withdraw the single role aircraft like the MiG-21 and MiG-27 and Jaguar aircraft.

After five years experience India will be in a much better position to know what it wants so it can start asking for features or capabilities and funding them... if you want long range AAMs then Meteor uses a ramjet... the Russians are working on Scramjets.... a ramjet is limited in speed to about that of a similar sized rocket powered missile... it can have better range and energy because it can manage its fuel consumption... but a scramjet can also manage its fuel supply and glide and coast and also fly more than twice as fast and therefore twice as far on a similar fuel load...

Sorry for making this about India again, but I think it offers an insight in to what MiG are doing with unification of three options down to two, with the cheap but capable and modern MiG-29M2, the kitted out with the best they can manage and are allowed to export MiG-35, and the carrier based MiG-29KR, where the latter is eliminated and a naval 35 is created. When it comes to carrier aircraft you are limited as to how many you can carry and you wont be buying hundreds of them so they need to be as good as you can make them... hense the 35 got the nod.

It means that as long as the MiG-35 is in production then if they need more carrier aircraft they don't need to pay to set up production... having to set up production and small production runs can make a MiG-29KR as expensive or even more so than a MiG-35, so basing the naval model on the MiG-35 makes sense.

The folding wings of larger area and bigger control surface area means lower speed landing and take offs, while the corrosion resistance is always useful and the increased strength is ideal for takeoffs from short strips like on motorways etc.

BTW I will just remove the rest of the stuff from this thread that is off topic... to the talking bollocks thread.

They had that problem with the MiG-31M and the R-37M missile which was new.

When they first tested the R-37M the new radar upgrade was not ready so when testing the R-37M missile against a target with a missile flight range of 300km the target is obviously going to be further away when the missile is launched.

The MiG-31M they were testing couldn't detect targets at that range, so they had an Su-30 that was flying closer to the target (ie the Su-30 couldn't detect targets at such ranges either but was much closer to the target... it was a test of the missile not of the aircraft....)

So the Su-30 found the target and got its flight details... ie coordinates and speed and altitude and flight direction etc and passed those back to the MiG-31M which used the target information to basically tell the missile where to fly to to intercept... the missile has an ARH seeker with a range of about 25km so you set the destination for the missile to be perhaps 15-20km short of the target so when it reaches the interception point and turns on its radar the target should be directly in front of it perhaps 15-20km away so there is no hard turn needed to get on target.

Normally with its full power radar, after launch the MiG-31M would continue to track the target and if it changed direction or speed or altitude then a new interception point is calculated and sent to the missile which will change course to get to the new interception point.

The launch aircraft does not need a hard continuous lock... it is not Semi Active Radar Homing... when the missile is half way there you could do a quick scan to check the position of the target and if the target changes speed only slightly but will still be in view of the missile there might not be a need to change the missiles course. For very long range shots the missile will be lofted up high in the air and will glide for a bit.

The R-77M has a two stage rocket motor, but it can control when the second stage starts so it can glide at high altitude with its motor off and as its speed drops away it can then start the motor again to accelerate and extend its flight range.

As Lsos mentions the bigger longer ranged R-77M will have more energy and therefore also a much longer no escape zone... which is the range at which the missile has full energy and is very hard to evade.

People rag on the R-77 because those grid fins look high drag and inefficient, but actually they have a much larger surface area than a tiny triangular wing of your average missile, and they have a much higher stall angle... which means the R-77 can turn much much harder and further than other missiles to chase targets.

What you see in Hollywood movies where the missile chases the target like an aircraft to aircraft dogfight is rubbish... your average missile is moving at 600m/s plus so it will blow past like a bullet... your chances of dodging it come down to what you see. If you see a huge SA-2 climbing up from the ground with its huge smoke trail and it looking like a lamp post you can see the path it is taking to get to you... if it is pulling up to reach you then you can turn your aircraft in the direction it is already turning because there is a limit to how hard it can turn and if you exceed that it will miss you and you will fly inside its turning circle... once it has missed you that is it... it wont come back around again.

Missiles like the R-73 were considered so deadly and were very effective in their category, was because they have a thrust vectored rocket motor which means on launch and while its motor is burning it can turn at extremely high turn rates... once it has you in the centre of its view its flight speed means you probably wont be able to turn hard enough to get away from it... you had better be able to jam it or you are in trouble...

MiGs main problem is that the Russian AF is not interested in multirole aircraft, and not hugely bothered by cheap.

Compared with western fighters all Russian fighter types are cheap, but if the Russian AF was interested in cheap an SMT upgrade for their MiG-29s would have reduced operating costs by about 40% which is enormous.

They weren't interested in multirole aircraft so they didn't upgrade any. And many of their customers that could afford it didn't... Germany retired their MiG-29s and kept their F-4s flying because an upgraded MiG-29 was too much of a threat to their Typhoon programme...

It is the same for other eastern european customers who were looking at replacing their MIGs with inferior models of F-16.

Mig-35 is a failure.

It is a recent programme, it is not a failure by a long shot yet.

They are late and they should take any help to catch up. No time for them to inovate.

They are behind in AESA radars only... in four years time when the MiG-35 gets photonic radar that blows AESA and stealth away you will be singing its praises...

Egypt and India bought mig29 and su-30/35 so very unlikely they buy mig-35 in the next decade.

Egypt bought MiG-35s, when the AESA radars are ready they will be fine... and vastly better dollar for dollar than any western equivalents.

Russia isn't really interested in it because it costs as muchif not more as a more capable su-35.

Who said it costs as much as an Su-35?

It has been described as offering 90% of the performance of the Su-35 at half the operational costs... which is ironic because that is what Saab promised for Gripen...

I don't really see any other country buying it. Maybe Iran could save it with a local production of 100-200 jets to modernize its fleet but unlikely since su-30/35 is a better choice for their big country.

The irony is that if they go for Su-30 it will be 100 aircraft and MiG-29M2 and MiG-35 it would be more like 250, but I suspect most of the west underestimates the MiG so the Israelis and Americans would get less upset about MiGs than about Flankers, but I think the MiGs would be more useful at protecting Iranian airspace... instead of planes for strikes I would focus more on ballistic missiles...

IMO it's a failure because it came too late in the game and is not cheap.

It is brand new technology... most of which is state of the art... why on earth do you expect it to be cheap?

The rest: that would be less than 30 for all of them.

Result: mig-35 is a failure.

And Russia 300.

They should stop the program and put all the money in a new stealthy single engine design and keep the interior of the mig-35 for it. That would be a good jet for export.

Yeah because single engined aircraft are so cheap... F-35... Gripen... I hear you can get F-16s for less than 100 million too...

So you want to throw away a mature design because propaganda tells you a single engined fighter is cheaper... yet there has never been a modern example of that ever...

Even so, it could be navalized for their VMF- in time, an enlarged variant with CFTs may appear, similar to F-18 C/D vs. F-18E/F in the USN.

MiG say their 35 model is already carrier ready...

They already have mig-29k that can could be upgraded with AESA to reach mig-35 level.

And there is another myth... putting an AESA into a MiG does not make it a MiG-35... the contents of the MiG-29M2, MiG-29KR, and MiG-35 are different.... hence the difference in price.

They have enough of them for the K. Why would they buy more mig-35 ? Next carrier won't be ready before 20 years when mig-35 would be outdated.

The advantage is that they wont need to start production if they need more aircraft because the MiG-35 will likely be in low rate production for the Air Force anyway... the Navy could just tack a few extra planes on the back of air force orders without having to pay to set up production. They built carrier simulation facilities on Russian territory when the Ukraine denied them access to facilities in the Crimea... now they have access to both and a carrier as well so extra planes will be useful... and as they are now unified with the land based MiG-35s they can buy extra and use them on land and at sea.

The only way to make it a successful program is that russia orders 100 and manage to either win indian contract or Iranian contract at the end of the year when embargo is over. But for that they need to reduce its price.

If they wanted a cheap fighter the MiG-29M2 is every bit as good as the foreign competition except the AESA radar... but they are clearly not interested in a cheap fighter...

Selling few to small countries is useless for such program. They either find a bug buyer or stop it.

MiG is part of OAK and is not going out of business because not everyone is buying MiG-35s. Work developing and upgrading the MiG-35 and work on the MiG-41 and the new light 5th gen fighter are all interrelated and have value... it is not the end of the world if they don't sell thousands of MiG-35s... the full spec aircraft isn't even ready right now, which means you are being premature... I could say the Typhoon is a failure too... it didn't get a lot of the features it was supposed to have until its third upgrade... Microsoft wouldn't even try that...

The jet is wonderfull but su-35 is just better for cheaper...

The Su-35 is NOT cheaper.

RuAF won't spend billions just to support Mig. Either they make an aircraft that matches with their need or they sell nothing. The economical situation of Mig is not their problem.

I agree, but the geographical nature of Russia meant most Flankers during the cold war spent most of their time with 1/3rd fuel in their internal tanks most of the time. A smaller lighter cheaper aircraft with half full tanks and cheaper to operate makes rather more sense in the more densely populated western regions.

I think the Su-57 and Su-35 combination is going to be a real success, but I also think a MiG equivalent with medium fighters also makes sense and can be successful.

Pretending that the MiG-35 is just as expensive as the Su-35 is just as dishonest as demanding that a "cheaper" MiG give the same performance as the heavier fighters it will be operating with.

I meant mig is late compare to sukhoi in 5th generation fighters.

Hardly their fault though... it was a government decision to complete work on the PAK FA before work on the lighter model got funding...

Personally I think it is rather sensible and experience of teh US with the F-35 and the Swedish experience with the Gripen on the international market should be taken into account in terms of the new aircraft.

Radar isn't produced by mig or sukhoi.

Again... so not their fault either... we can bitch and moan about them getting PESA radars in service in the late 1970s on the MiG-31... why haven't they got AESAs in widespread service now... but really we don't have all the information we need to properly judge... for all we know the radars they are currently might be much cheaper and almost as efficient and effective as any bench set AESA... and of course their ships are getting radars and their SAMs have enormous radars too... maybe they have something better up their sleeve... more promising technologies might be close to ready and if they can get through the next 2-3 years with the current radars they might make a leap in technology that makes even you think it was worth the wait.

Spending big on getting AESA radars in service only to replace them in 3 years time because the new stuff is better is a bit like deciding to make all your fighters stealthy before the stealthy fighters are built and ready so you are working on promises of costs instead of actual costs... which never match up.

They are mig29M2. Production line of mig-35 isn't ready. And no one really knows what are the difference btw the two apart the aesa.

Amazing.... they haven't built any serial MiG-35s and you are slagging it off as being obsolete and a failure...

Accordig to miketheterrible Russian su35 are around 25 million $ when mig35 is closer to 40.

Su-35 has 12 hardpoint (and even getting dual missile launcher per hardpoint for r77) wheb mig-35 has 9. In terms of range 3500km fir su-35 if not more, 2000km for mig-35. Radar range 400km for su-35, 250km for mig-35.

Not really 90%. For less money you have a better su-35.

Well it is not from a source as reputable as MikeTT, but Russian Air Force officials described the MiG-35 as being half the price to operate and having 90% of the performance of the Su-35. Considering one is a heavy fighter and one is a medium fighter and in normal operations would both have their radars turned off anyway, while receiving target data from the IADS network... both have similar speed and operate at similar altitudes and can operate all the same missiles.. in practical terms how often do you think Su-35s will be operating out to 3,500km range?

Well export price of su-30 is somewhere near 70 millions. And mig-35 will be near 50. Not realistic your expectations. Egypt paid its mig-29M2 around 45 each.

So export Su-30s for 70 million and export MiG-35s for 50 million and MiG-29M2 for 45 million... and Su-35 for 25 million?

I realise they make a lot more money on exported aircraft, but the Su-30 will be a lot less than an Su-35 domestically and if they sell the MiG-29M2 for almost half that price don't you think it would also be cheaper as well?

I suspect the cost for the MiG-35s probably is including setting up the production line, so exports might be 50-60 million but the domestic model will be less than half that...

Even then iranian will ask for a su-30 with Irbis because the f-35's stealth isn't a joke and mig-29M with zhuk-M will be blind against them.

Iran has F-4s they could replace as well as F-14s... if they are worried about stealthy enemy aircraft then buying MiG-31s and a joint venture to give it upgraded radar and missiles might be a valuable exercise for them... especially if they can pay in oil...

1) Russia like I said has the su35 that is better for almost same price. Mig-35 offers nothing more. Why buy it then ?

The BRDM-2 ATGM vehicle.... which is essentially a four wheeled car like armoured vehicle with an arm launcher that holds 5 missile tubes.

It can carry and launch two different types of missile... a small one called Fagot and a bigger one called Konkurs. For the space each Konkurs missile takes up they can fit two Fagots. The normal max armament is 15 Konkurs missiles which have a range of 4.5km and armour penetration of 800mm. The Fagot is smaller and lighter and has a range of 2.5km and an armour penetration in the old models of 500mm but in newer ones the penetration is improved a little.

In real combat quite often you can't even see targets that are 4km away and many targets on the battlefield are not very well armoured at all but still need to be fired upon. On paper the best load out is 15 Konkurs but in practise it actually makes more sense to drop 5 of the Konkurs and carry ten Fagots as well as the ten Konkurs.

In the european theatre fighters can't fly more than 2,000km from their airfield because they will be entering a neighbouring airfields air space so the neighbouring airspace will have double the number of planes and your own airspace will have nothing to protect it.

Besides it takes ages to fly 3.500km and they simply would not have time to do that... at supersonic speeds they will not fly more than 1,500km radius anyway.

If you can't sort out the problem with 9 missiles then another 5 wont make a lot of difference... besides fighters don't operate on their own so with a flight of four fighters there are plenty of missiles if needed... and they will be able to communicate with ground based air defences too.

2) their market is not really composed of very rich countries and the su-30/35 are always a competitor. Algeria bought su-30 when they found out that the mig they received were of shitty quality.

Algeria bought Su-30s when they were offered at the same price they paid for their MiG-29SMTs. There were not issues with quality, they used the excuse that the airframes were from unflown stocks to reject the agreement and buy the Flankers.

No they won't.

Now that they have the go ahead to make the new light 5th gen fighter they can use the MiG-35 like Sukhoi have used their Su-35s... as both an in operating testing platform but also a cheap alternative/backup to the more expensive but more stealthy 5th gen fighter they are building.

Once they have a new medium 5th gen fighter to put in to service why would't they put the lighter cheaper less stealthy equivalent that shares parts and avionics and systems into full production too... it is likely that the stealthy equivalent will be the standard fighter for their next CVN anyway...

If sweeds make a two engine Grippen it will costs much more.

Do you really think a single engined F-22 or Typhoon or Rafale would cost less?

The twin engine f-35 is the f-22 and its price back in 2003 was bigger than f-35's price of today.

If they only made 200 F-35s its price would be much worse... and the F-22 at least does most of what it promises to do.

Single engines are cheaper.

That is the mantra that makers of single engined fighters follow... but if that logic is correct... why is the twin engined Apache considered a hangar queen, yet there is never a problem with the B-52 with 8 engines...

Cruise missiles are putting them in danger.

Why.... short ranged fighters would be ideal for shooting down cruise missiles... the biggest threat from cruise missiles is that most ground based radar wont see them at much more than 12-16km range.... even the smallest fighter with a modern radar can detect and track dozens of incoming cruise missiles from extended ranges... they don't need to shoot them all down... just spotting for ground based missile batteries would be enough... and against such targets even air launched MANPADS like Igla-S and Verba in quad packs per pylon could be used to engage Tomahawk cruise missile type targets...

Having them further away of the front is better.

Having them further away might result in the enemy setting up a fake attack to draw away all your long range fighters and then mount a sneak attack from another direction... short range fighters wont piss off answering some call for help and leaving your own airfield vulnerable to attack.

So need more range so su-35 is better choice.

It is simply not affordable for all airfields and all units to get Su-35 or Su-57... not just to buy them but to operate them 24/7 means they will cost a lot more than having a mix of heavy and medium fighters.

That's the error that Mig made. For its price they should have made a stealthy design to bring its rcs down to 0.1 and get lot of export contracts. The mig-29 design was good until today but with every country buying stealth jet it's no more good.

Bullshit.... Rafales are still being sold as are Typhoons and likely pretty soon F-15s will be sold too... if Saudi Arabia were smart they would want the F-15 over any model F-35... vastly more practical and capable aircraft you can actually use.

Nothing with external weapons has a RCS of 0.1... Su-57 probably has a RCS of 0.5. ...Su-35 is probably 2.5m with weapons attached.

I'm not against a lighter and cheaper fighter to complete the heavy sukhoi. But mig-35 doesn't fit that role. It's more an advanced medium multirole fighter that cost too much.

Cheap simple light = dead against HATO.

Russia can use MiG-35s for the cheaper and simpler for its own light fighter range and when genuine cheap simple light is needed... like in Syria they can use drones developed to work with MiG-35s with their Su-35s... so they have cheap and simple together with big and sophisticated.

If Turkey and Israel weren't neighbours to Syria... say it was in Afghanistan so the problem would be Pakistan they could save money using MiG-35s and their drones instead of Su-35s.

That's true but that also means they are taking all the potential buyers of mig-35.

The end of the cold war resulted in most second world buyers of Soviet stuff... Eastern Europe... change sides... it wouldn't matter what sort of plane the MiG-29/35 was. They could make it super cheap and super simple to appeal to third world countries, but they are making these planes for themselves... if they sell on the export market then fine, but primarily they need to solve Russian problems.

In the late 1970s Sukhoi recognised a gap in aircraft which they ended up filling with their Su-25... a cheap, simple, reliable and very effective light strike CAS aircraft... perhaps one of the companies... Sukhoi, Yakovlev, or MiG might spot a gap in the market for a simple light cheap fighter... that can use the best new missiles the Russians are making today...

Sounds like an enormous risk to me...

IMO if neither Iran nor India buys it they should stop it and put all their money in LMFS.

It is not supposed to be for export, it is supposed to fill a space in the Russian Air Force and also the Navy.

The big fighter covers a way bigger area, the smaller allows to fill the gaps in a cheaper way, so they complement each other.

Smaller shorter ranged fighters offer better coverage.

While generally I agree with Isos on not being a fan of MiG-35 for very much the same reasons he mentions, I still see India as a increasingly possible customer for their big 110+ fighter tender.

What is not to like... it crams 90% of the performance of an Su-35 into a smaller cheaper lighter aircraft that is cheaper to run...

Pretty much the same now with MiG, only they come 20 years late, even when it is not completely their fault.

Just because there has been no government funding for light 5th gen fighter bits and pieces they have been busy working on equivalent stuff to fit in to their MiG-35s... Now they are free to start funded work on a new gen fighter they can put it into MiG-35s to test and work out the kinks... and it also means any new stuff the new plane gets can be produced for both types and therefore made in larger numbers which should allow them to reduce the price and get mature components into service on the new plane because they will have already cut their teeth in the 35 in real service.

Yeah, that makes much sense...

And they can take that further with the MiG-29M2s being able to test parts too so new engines or new radars that are capable and not that expensive could replace all the MiGs instead of just the high end ones. Improvements in making things or developing things can be used across all the types in service to reduce costs increase commonality and improve performance...