Su-57 Stealth Fighter: News #8

Gary wouldnt su57 perform this mission via stealth and drone?

How long and how reliable will stealth be effective for?

When it comes to air defence speed is always important... if the US sends B-2 bombers over the north pole to attack targets in Russia, the range of their missiles and stand off weapons means that to reach targets in Moscow and the south of the country they need to launch their weapons well past the north pole... now if you have MiG-31s based in the far north and 5,000km range OTH radars that can spot them while they are still in Canadian airspace then you can launch your MiG-31s... operating at Mach 2.4 they can fly as long as they like at that speed and the aircraft has a flight radius of 750km at that speed when at altitude... that means the MiG-31 covers that distance in about 13 minutes and is then free to launch an attack 750km north of their northernmost airbase at targets that could be 300km further away with their R-37M missiles.

Being able to move so fast means the interception takes place further away from Russia... which means the target is less ready and less likely to have started launching its missiles... in the case of a B-1B that means being able to shoot down a single B-1B with a single missile instead of having to deal with over a dozen land attack cruise missiles and a B-1B.

Speed is important because it allows you to intercept targets further out and also means you can cover a much larger area with the same aircraft.

People say the Su-27 is better than the MiG-29 because it has twice the range, but they both normally fly at the same speed so effectively they both cover the same area... the Su-27 just has more fuel left over afterwards and can use AB more often... which means launching missiles at higher speeds... which is certainly an advantage... but it is not the advantage many claim where you can do the same job with half the number of aircraft.

Essentially you are lowering the fighter density of your airspace protection which is not good.

One Flanker can't cover the same airspace as two Fulcrums because two Fulcrums can split up and cover different areas at the same time.

Since the cold war Russia has rightly focussed on the PVO... air defence... which means Flankers are more use than Fulcrums... but now I suspect they are filling out their forces so Frontal Aviation is probably going to get more love which means cheaper lighter fighters makes more sense so you can have them in useful numbers. They will also utilise their swing role capability much more... making ground forces even more capable... there is no artillery that has the mobility and range of a medium fighter with the weight of fire of 500kg bombs...

For example against AWACS or Fuelling tankers SU57 could perform the same job of mig 31 in intercepting these targets in stealth and directing drones as well to launch missiles at those targets ?

Well it certainly could do and its armament includes the R-37M and new Article 815 for that purpose, but that is not so much interception... in many ways it is an aircraft based SEAD mission.

In time we could see very long range hypersonic missiles being carried by the Su-57 and indeed MiG-31/41 for that purpose... the useful thing about a jet engine is its endurance because of the amount of fuel you can carry that does not need to include an oxidiser, and the best jet so far is the scramjet that gives rocket speeds with jet level endurance, which translates to rather excellent range potential... Imagine a Zircon which is launched from a MiG-31 at mach 2.5 at 18km altitude with a 60kg HE warhead instead of the warhead it has for use against ships which is likely much much bigger... it does not need a standing start so no need for a solid rocket motor to get it moving and climb to altitude so all that space and weight can be extra fuel for the scramjet to accelerate it from 18km altitude to perhaps 50km and 3,000km plus in range or more... launched in forward motion at supersonic speeds and above most of the atmosphere its performance would be much much better with very few serious modifications needed... just convert a surface launched missile to an air launched one.

It could look exactly the same but the rear mounted solid rocket booster to get it moving could just be all fuel tank... when it is empty... drop it.. and go even faster...

I assumed it would do that role, because mig 41 seems it's going to be a plane for a completely different role with greater speed and altitude performance than mig 31.

I suspect the Russians see stealth in more practical terms... it shortens the effective range of tracking radars, but search radars of longer waves will still detect you... with their anti ship missiles they realised early on that with Hawkeyes and F-14s and AEGIS class cruisers with massive AESA radar arrays that the USN was going to spot Soviet missile carriers and missiles at extended ranges.... instead of making them stealthy, they made them fast and used numbers to overwhelm the defences.

Sometimes speed is better than stealth... of course sometimes it isn't...

You would want an SR-71 to be moving at Mach 7 or Mach 8 before being prepared to overfly Soviet territory in the 1980s, and it would need to be moving much faster these days to expect to survive. The introduction of S-350 and S-400 and S-500 and soon S-550 has closed that option off completely these days.

And su57 stealth seems very useful to do this

For how long?

How long before they start building OTH radars etc etc...

I would say a drone would be interesting because it could punch through an air front line and launch an air to air attack while other drones and aircraft monitor its progress and launch weapons at anything that opens fire to attack it...

- Without the need to engage AB
- With substantial RCS advantage
- With incomparably better supersonic manoeuvrability

Those are serious advantages over the MiG-31, which is vulnerable because of them.

Most US fighters and bombers don't have FLIR and the range of the R-37M means it wouldn't matter anyway... what US plane can detect a target over 300km away using IR only?

The outgoing MiG will be scanning for targets because it is not just intercepting aircraft, it also has the job of cleaning up any standoff weapons they might have already launched before it shoots the aircraft down... which means any RCS advantage is nullified with that big radar scanning.

The only important manouver for an interceptor is to climb and accelerate which is something the MiG-31 is very good at.

Faster and higher means further with any particular AAM, so it has benefits... it also means the interception takes place further from friendly airspace and being able to fly out at mach 2.4 and back at mach 2.4 means potentially more than one sortie against an incoming force...

I agree with most of the rest of what you say, but the MiG-31 is going to be replaced with an aircraft with engines likely optimised not only for high speed but probably also high speed supercruise too... with the engine operating more as ramjets than turbofans.

It's missiles are said to be capable of intercepting hypersonic weapons and it will likely have an ASAT mission as well.

Its missiles might be S-500 or S-550 based without their solid rocket boosters... air launched above 20km altitude and at speeds over mach 3 and these missiles will likely be getting more boost from the MiG-41 than they would be getting from their solid rocket boosters... plus the mobility of an aircraft means they would be more flexible and more mobile too.

As an interceptor it will be far more capable than the Su-57.

But being optimised for speed and range it will compliment the Su-57 beautifully...

It will be an enormous challenge for Mikoyan but I am pretty confident they can deliver.

I suspect the biggest challenge will be the new types of engines it will be needing to make it work...

welp,
I guess those 4 Su-57s are being delayed. This is like a boutique supercar production line rather than serial aircraft production.

If only they could make planes as good as america... what is it... 700 F-35s now.... and pretty soon they will start making some with less than 800 faults and design problems... so in a couple of years the customers might start getting what they are paying for...

optimistic that we might just see a prototype quite soon. Even a very blurry one! Laughing

That would be cool but we know it is coming and that they plan to put it in to service by the end of the 2020s, so they will need some serious progress...

But then they have been planning a replacement for the MiG-31 for quite some time... most are bigger and longer ranged with more missiles and similar speed... the talk of mach 4 plus suggests they have a new engine in design that could make that happen...

The MiG-31 could certainly fly quite a bit faster with optimised new engines... but to operate at higher speeds a new design makes sense too.

Flying at Mach4+ would require some new thinking but some speculate that it will be based on the Mig-31 but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

I would think the real problem is the turbofan engines of the MiG-31... it is the rotational speed of the fan blades that limits the amount of thrust at high speeds.

Remember when flying at mach 2.4 the air going into the engine is restricted and limited so the airflow can be slowed down to subsonic speed going through the hot section where the incoming thin high altitude air is compressed and heated and fuel is added and burned to then blast out the back of the engine at supersonic speeds needed to keep the aircraft flying.

Even a simple ramjet has no moving blades, the air goes in to a narrowing tube and is compressed and fuel is added and it then blasts out the back creating thrust... the airflow still needs to be subsonic but no stress on spinning blades super fast to push the airflow through the engine.

With turbofan/ramjet engines the MiG-31 should be able to fly rather faster... mach 3 to mach 3.5, but I suspect a new shape and new design and new materials would be needed to crack mach 4.

The SR-71 shows long and narrow is a more likely shape for mach 3.2, though I don't think it will be that big it will certainly be bigger and use blended wing shapes to get body lift and reduce drag...

A very thin aspect wing means it will need leading edge surfaces that can be bent down and trailing edge surfaces that can be angled down to create a curved high lift wing for takeoff and landing, but when flat be very low drag for high speed flight...

We have an endless chicken little reflex when it comes to Russia. The sky is always falling.

In the left part of the picture you can see air-to-air missiles that will be part of the arsenal of the Su-57: the long-range R-37 and the medium-range R-77.

The medium range missile in that image does not have grid fins so it is an R-77M, while the large AAM in that drawing does not have the fins and control surfaces of the R-37, it is a product 815, which is to replace the R-37M eventually.

Sukhoi...

They are certainly developing a new hypersonic missile for the Su-57 and modern fighters to carry, but I suspect until they are ready to reveal it the Brahmos NG will be shown to represent it.

The shape is critical to flying at hypersonic speeds so I am pretty sure they want to keep the actual shape of their new hypersonic missiles secret until they know the US has worked it out for themselves... no point handing solutions to the US... let them work it out for themselves...