Sukhoi LTS "Checkmate" #2

I wonder if the king of the sky is S-500/400/350/BUK/TOR/Pantsir/Pine/Verba...

Small trim... removed bits moved to talking bollocks thread in the general discussion section.

Broski wrote:

LMFS wrote:Checkmate's Deputy chief Designer compared the fighter jet to a knight in a chess game

So there we have the confirmation of what was discussed about the role of the plane as a work horse of the air force, in relation to "queen" Su-57 and "pawn" drones. A good example if you ask me

Makes sense since the Su-25 are Rooks, wonder what the Bishops are...

MiG-41 PAK DP.  Able to cross the entire battleground (board) in a single move   Yet to make an appearance, but when it does...  

Big_Gazza wrote:

Broski wrote:

LMFS wrote:Checkmate's Deputy chief Designer compared the fighter jet to a knight in a chess game

So there we have the confirmation of what was discussed about the role of the plane as a work horse of the air force, in relation to "queen" Su-57 and "pawn" drones. A good example if you ask me

Makes sense since the Su-25 are Rooks, wonder what the Bishops are...

MiG-41 PAK DP.  Able to cross the entire battleground (board) in a single move   Yet to make an appearance, but when it does...  

Mig-31 with r-37 is already making all 4th generation fighters useless IMO. Mig-41 can be just a mig-31 but with a radar that sees stealthy aircraft at 300km away and it will be perfect.

Flying twice as fast and with new missiles with multi mini missile payloads will be gravy...

They have their hand full with su-57 and S-70.

They need a fusion of mig within sukhoi to take their teams and make them work on real project. Right now they have they hands in their ass doing nothing but papercrafts.

Sukhoi can't work on three state of art jets at once.

I already said the schedule is impossible to follow when they presented the jet.

TMA1 wrote:Yeah I gotta agree. Either they fight to keep the grueling schedule or not make such optimistic claims. It just fuels the usual idiot remarks by those who attack Russian military kit.

Who cares about remarks on the web ?

The real problem is giving all the projects to sukhoi while the other do nothing eventhough they have engineers. Su-35, su-57, s-70, su-75, even civilian ssj-100 and now 100% russian ssj-100. Rest nothing. Mig-35 is just a mig-29M from the 80s with some upfates. Illiouchine is busy with updated il-96. Yak nothing much. Tupolev ? Tu-204 is a good aircraft but a total program failure and old. None of them created new state of art planes. MS 21 too dependant on western companies. A 100% russian version will take more time.

Sukhoi need to eat the rest of the compnies.

Even the US and France/EU have two main aircraft companies and produce a far greater amount of aircraft than Russia.

The King is not a strong figure in chess. The combined air defence system is more like the Tower, can strike across the whole board and keeps an eye on the King.

Very true but in that sense the king of the air does not refer to the game of chess and refers more to a monarch which is a law into himself and has 100% control.

1.5 years? Yeah sure, that thing wont see service until after 2030.

Yeah, because rushing fighters into service always works out well... Eurofighters are being replaced by F-35s aren't they... and 700+ F-35s built and they will have their problems sorted out in a couple of decades time too...

And F-16s and F-15s going back into production in the US...

A small delay of a couple of years is no problem... perhaps they identified a potential problem or issue and wanted to fix it early rather than leave it and hope it doesn't matter... you know.... like an oxygen system that suffocates crew... on the list to be fixed I believe...

The core point is that the real reason for Checkmate is a numbers plane that can counter the enormous numbers of F-35s that the west has... the US AF was supposed to have about 3 thousand of the damn things and Europe was going to buy thousands as well but that hasn't happened.

The enormous cost of the F-35 means the more they buy the less they can afford because operational costs are ridiculous and the amazing logistics system that was supposed to take advantage of the commonality of design and widespread use of the aircraft in its various forms has been cancelled.

Russia can take its time and get things right and really rub Americas nose in it...

They need a fusion of mig within sukhoi to take their teams and make them work on real project. Right now they have they hands in their ass doing nothing but papercrafts.

Sukhoi can't work on three state of art jets at once.

I already said the schedule is impossible to follow when they presented the jet.

A grave they dug for themselves I believe.

MiG is already working on next gen fighters and MiG-35s and MiG-31s and carrier based aircraft too...

Making the statement about first flight in 2023 was extremely stupid and i never understood what was the point of it, in the first place.

I bet Boeing was pissing its pants... and when this plane is flying lots of US congressmen and women will be demanding to know who a third world gas station can make an F-35 better than the US plane... which at its core was supposed to be affordable and produced in large numbers...

When they first talked about the F-22 they were talking about 1,500 to replace the bulk of the F-15Cs they had in service one for one, but when it became clear how expensive and fussy they were they claimed they would only need half that... 750 to do the job of 1,500 F-15Cs because the F-22 was so wonderful... when push came to shove less than 200 were made and there are no plans to restart production... yet plans are afoot to restart not only F-15 production but also F-16 production too...

Yeah I gotta agree. Either they fight to keep the grueling schedule or not make such optimistic claims. It just fuels the usual idiot remarks by those who attack Russian military kit.

They were being optimistic... that is quite nice, and the 2023 prediction was never set in concrete... it was always a prediction... if you don't understand that look up the definition.

Changing a schedule based on reality and new facts that weren't available when the first prediction was made is common sense good practise... there is no critical reason for the plane to be flying in 2023... 2025 is just as good and might be necessary because of disruptions to supply chains or new sanctions from the west.

Either way who cares... it is just a little more time...

The real problem is giving all the projects to sukhoi while the other do nothing eventhough they have engineers

They want all the work then they can expand... if the people making the decisions don't understand how things should work then who should tell them?

Sukhoi need to eat the rest of the compnies.

Which counters the whole purpose of OAK... If Sukhoi fails to deliver then that is their problem and they will be held accountable for that.

MiG should be looking at experience with the MiG-29K and MiG-29M in Indian and Russian and Egyptian service and working on solving any problems that have come up, and also they will be working on the MiG-35 and getting that into service, and also upgrades for the MiG-31BM and MiG-31K and also the MiG-41 project and of course their own competition for the Checkmate and carrier based fighter designs.

Most of Sukhois projects are related, so merging equipment and systems and engines etc should simplify their issues regarding Su-35, Su-30, Su-34, S-70, Su-57, and now Su-75... but if they have to have delays and have other problems then they will lose contracts... that is part of reality.

I doubt MiG will help them get Checkmate into the air faster as they will be making the competition for that platform and therefore have no interest in helping it succeed.

Irkut is mor or less Yak -> MS-21
Mig -> Mig-41 or PAK-DP
Tu -> busy with supersonic business jet and PAK-DA
Il -> busy with more than one new cargo plane

MS 21 will need to be redesigned 100% russian just like the ssj-100.

Mig-41 will be bought in not huge quantity without a huge potentiel for export.

Who will buy Tu supersonic jets. All the civil russian aircraft won't get authorization to fly above western countries so billionaires won't buy it and that's not a project that can make the company survive since there is just a handfull of potential clients.

Il is loosing all its export clients. China is producing its own stuff and India is switching to US planes pretty quickly. Il96 is a failure. Il76 is a beast from the past.


None of these projects are enough to make their companies survivable. They can sell few to the russian army and some on the export market. They would ve babkrupt long time ago if russia wasn't helping them. They produce nothing anymore.

Sukhoi has a large export client list and make the last technologies for its airplanes.

Their civilian aviation industry is catastrophic and tgeir military aircraft industry is getting very low nimmber of orders. Thry can't sustain to have all of those companies running and pumping state money for nothing.

For the most part the Su-75 Checkmate is a single engine version of the Su-57. It should be able to get into production sooner than later.

Which is an important selling point to those already interested in the Su-57, and even those that are not... because it is related to the Su-57 most of the technology has already been developed and paid for, so it should be cheaper than developing something new from scratch.

Obviously MiG will be trying to emphasise developing it from the Su-57 limits its design and size and shape...

Of course there are many failures! Mig failed with new jet concepts and a new drone (Mig-Skat is more or less dead). Yak failed with replacement for Su-25...it was a epic failure! And so on... Yes Sukhoi is very busy and has many good concepts Wink but other bureaus are still important too! And the biggest advantage over western aerospace manufacturers is...it's a lot of bureaus but it's one company. The factories don't stand still!

The idea of switching resources and funding to the branches or areas that succeed is stupid... anyone who owns a farm knows if all your money comes from wool then bad wool prices a few years in a row and you lose the farm... diversifying... put in some fruit trees and plant some pine trees... in 25 years time those trees can be cut for wood, and fruit trees you can sell on roadside stalls for regular income... have sheep, but also other things too so when one is doing well it can help keep the other areas going while you work out other ways to make them pay their way. Rent out your land to bee keepers... if you have hilly blocks put in a shooting range and rent it to local hunters to sight in rifles and check their accuracy... set up an obstacle course for horse riders or motorbike riders... dig some ponds for duck shooting season and rent out places for people to shoot... shoot pests and sell the meat or use the meat for dog feed to reduce your operational costs... get local young shooters in to shoot and give them a round for each rabbit they shoot and half the rabbits you keep for dog feed... Plant out trees for firewood, grow feed crops for your animals to save on the feed you have to buy to cut costs.... build an airstrip.

Mig-41 will be bought in not huge quantity without a huge potentiel for export.

So what... it is still needed and will still be developed and built.

Who will buy Tu supersonic jets. All the civil russian aircraft won't get authorization to fly above western countries so billionaires won't buy it and that's not a project that can make the company survive since there is just a handful of potential clients.

Supersonic jets make the most sense over great distances... Asia to central and south america, central and south america to africa... crossing the pacific and crossing the atlantic... but also just crossing Russia...

If they can make them operate with Slush Hydrogen they might be the most green form of transport for a while...

Il is loosing all its export clients. China is producing its own stuff and India is switching to US planes pretty quickly. Il96 is a failure. Il76 is a beast from the past.

Their problem has been engines and it is in the process of being sorted... Russian airlines not being allowed western designs will mean Ilyusion will get sales... Il-96 lacked a reason to be bought... again solved by western sanctions, and Il-76s only have competition from one place... the US and their massively over priced C-17... which would be crushed on a fair and free open international market... not that that is going to happen... but even the requirements of Russia they should be fine.

Their civilian aviation industry is catastrophic and tgeir military aircraft industry is getting very low nimmber of orders.

And their food production capacity and prospects were in the same situation just before Putin banned EU food imports to Russia.

Now the west is banning Russia from using their planes and the same shot of adrenaline should revive the patient and give them a fighting chance to recover and flourish because the next few decades Russia is going to have to focus on the rest of the world and make them realise turning away from the evil west is possible and not a death sentence to your economy and culture like it used to be (ask Iran or Cuba or Venezuela or North Korea etc etc).

Countries that did not conform to western demands were crushed and humiliated... millions suffering and dying because of western ego and hubris... all the while pretending to be the good guys...

Thry can't sustain to have all of those companies running and pumping state money for nothing.

The whole point of OAK was to unify the design bureaus to utilise their diverse design skills and the various factories to produce everything they need, and it seems to be working well except Russian civil airlines were infiltrated with 5th columnists determined to suppress Russian civil aviation potential because of the real risk to western dominance in the field... well guess what... those Aholes are gone or going... so now the future is looking busy which is good.

It seems to me that MiG as a design bureau has a problem overcoming a slump it is in for the last decade.

The lack of money and the loss of Eastern Europe as a customer base has had a traumatic effect on many areas of Russias MIC, and the creation of OAK has prevented a lot of skills and technology and capabilities disappearing completely.

The split with the west however will force them to look to new markets they never gave a second glance at before, and they might need to expand on their success of joint ventures in India with joint ventures with other countries... Brazil, South Africa, Iran, Egypt, Algeria, Serbia, North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Syria, Iraq... even ones not contemplated before like Turkey and Saudi Arabia... an Independent Scotland...

As for MiG-35, future doesn't look bright, as initial order was scaled down twice from 37 to 24 and then to only 6 and no new orders followed since.

It has had growing pains, but what has not? There were serious structural issues with the Su-57 that had to be fixed before the programme continued... the purpose of the light fighter makes sense... part of the problem is political... MiG was popular in the 1980s and Sukhoi not so much but when budgets are slashed and you have big capable planes and smaller planes and the difference is the amount of fuel they burn for a given job then often bigger seems better in a bigger country... till you realise fewer larger planes don't offer the same coverage as more smaller planes do.

The whole point of Checkmate is a numbers plane that is affordable to operate and deploy in large numbers.

If there's no new orders in next 2 years, we can with great degree of certainty claim that plane is DoA. Other "projects" you mentioned are nothing more than toy models at this point. Last year presentation on ARMY forum was embarrassing, considering their reputation.

The logic might be that the MiG-35 is too late... in which case the focus might be on their Su-75 equivalent plane to try to catch up.

There is also the light plane for the next gen carriers they will be building... does the navy want the light plane to be single engined like Su-75 or will they want a light twin jet as depicted by MiG.

The reality is what it is... most of their customers were eastern european countries so their products are getting shot down over Ukraine and will not be replaced with a new MiG... they need to find new markets... Egypt is one... if the Russian AF doesn't want MiG-35s then Egypt will certainly buy them I would think, and possibly Iran might consider licence production given the right sort of chat about it...

I would also add that the S-70 looks a lot like a MiG Skat, so even when they fail their focus is not far off what is wanted, but they can't use commonality with existing aircraft as a sales pitch... their single engined model looked like a LIFT to be honest which suggests they are going for super small and super cheap to buy and to operate which might appeal to some export customers anyway.

MS 21 will need to be redesigned 100% russian just like the ssj-100.

The western components were to appeal to existing users of said western components that preferred such parts and systems... there was always going to be an all Russian version for customers not wanting or not allowed western components... which would also make them cheaper because such western components were expensive...

Western companies were happy to integrate their stuff on Russian planes because they made excellent profit margins for very little work... western politicians will cost them those little bonus sales and create very real competition in the market with its own market share to generate funds for upgrades and improvements moving forward.

I don't agree...

The LTS programme is just as old as the MFS programme, so they may have been working on scaled solutions using shared technology and components (ie engines and sensors etc) from the start.

If you look at the MiG-29 and the Su-27, anyone who didn't know any better might say they were the same plane if they weren't shown side by side, certainly amateurs not interested in Russian planes would confuse the two because their basic layouts are the same with only minor differences like the tail stinger for the Flanker.

Some members here have argued about the lack of difference between the MiG and the Su-27 being the MiG-29s biggest problem and it would have been better if it was a single engined design using the engine of the Su-27 for commonality, making buying both more affordable and sensible.

In a sense that is pretty much what the Su-57 and Su-75 would be really, though revisions with the air intake and internal weapon bay layouts... the Su-75 is not just a scaled down Su-57 which is a good thing because scaling and changing engine numbers probably would not work efficiently.

The manufacturing technology going in to Su-57 being applied to the Su-75 would greatly reduce the level of work needed for the new design even if they are not mirror designs using scale to differentiate them.

Whether it is replacing foreign components or rectifying supply chain issues or they found a problem they want to correct before making the first flying model... that is just normal and would make more sense than pushing ahead with the existing design and hoping the problem does not cause a crash and that no one will notice the flaw.

This is not the F-35... there is no schedule set in stone with critical dates that must be met at all costs.

Upset internet warriors will just have to deal with their feelings of betrayal over being blatantly lied to... 2023 was a pinky promise afterall...

Unification of stuff in the S-70 and Su-75 and Su-57 makes sense and the volume production will reduce the costs without reducing quality or performance and should be encouraged.

The aerodynamics would have been checked in wind tunnel models and supercomputer models so there should not be any big surprises...