Su-57 Stealth Fighter: News #8

too good to be true？Anyway，congrats...

It would be easier and far cheaper to have an entire machining department at that airfield than to provide it with such a printer.

They are probably expensive and complex now, but over time they will improve and get cheaper, while CNC machines do not have such growth potential...

The very idea of printing things makes sense to have it forward deployed to where it is needed rather than centralised.

In terms of the new stealth material... that is transformational because at the core of the F-35s horrible cost figures is the time it takes to remove and replace stealth coatings during even routine maintenance on the aircraft. Old stealth coatings wear off but have to be sanded off to get to access panels to check electronics and equipment and then need to have its joints taped up and several layers of stealth material recoated over the top with hours needed for each layer to cure within a specific temperature range that makes them less rugged... and soldier proof.

It is probably not how you calculate RCS.

95% reduction means 1, log reduction. Also, I am sure the original planned coating served a similar purpose.
Additional issues with the current Su-57 version
Engines (will be upgraded in Su-57M)
Engine intakes (will not change in Su 57M although not sure why they didn't improve this bit of the design)
Protruding probes (will change in Su 57M but not the level of F22)
Overall shaping (Will not Change in Su-57M)

Su-57 will not reach the RCS level of F22 with only a new RAM coating.
It doesn't need to either because Su-57 is a defensive weapon intended to fly over friendly airspace with the support of ground radars and contest an attack by a superior stealthy foe.

Engine intakes might change with the new engines assuming the improved performance potential is achieved, it might allow it to operate at rather higher speeds both in full AB and also in supercruise modes.

Even in the last decade since the Su-57 got airborne their design and stealth tech has probably improved with the use of super computers allowing them to test lots of different designs very quickly... we also know they use scale models with real radar antenna to test actual results so the most promising computer model based designs could be made into physical models and tested to check the computer model with radar and IIR sensors to create a useful data base of such information which could be used to ID targets using IIR and radar signatures only.

You get the level of stealth you pay for... the cost of the US stealth is what makes it useless... it is drawing funds out of HATO budgets, yet is not effective against a range of devices and systems the Russians use now let alone what they will be operating in 10 years time.

Spending trillions of dollars on a stealth technology that is going to be useless is short sighted but the US MIC sees that as a bonus... in 10 years time after they have made enormous profits selling stealth that doesn't work, they will next solution, which will likely be even more expensive no doubt.

The difference between how stealthy an F-22 and an Su-57 is wont make any practical difference on the battlefield as each is likely to be able to defeat their enemies air to air missiles so it will come down to manouvering combat and guns and numbers... the west currently has numbers, but no IADS to support those numbers and make them useful.

F-22s will likely be soon retired and the F-35 is a terrible aircraft that will damage HATO for some time to come economically.

The US edge in stealth is largely meaningless because their air defence forces are not optimised to hunt and deal with stealth targets while Russian air defence is so effectively Russian air defence can detect more stealthy US aircraft and western air defence would struggle to deal with conventional cruise missile and drone and hypersonic weapon threats let alone stealth.

The fact that the stealth is built in to the materials instead of needing to be painted on (and then left to cure for a day) means operational tempo rates can be much higher and operational costs will be rather more comparable to conventional aircraft.

Cheaper to buy and cheaper to operate... and also stealthy... I believe if it was America they would be talking about game changing and new levels and other such bollocks.

william.boutrous wrote:It is probably not how you calculate RCS.

95% reduction means 1, log reduction. Also, I am sure the original planned coating served a similar purpose.
Additional issues with the current Su-57 version
Engines (will be upgraded in Su-57M)
Engine intakes (will not change in Su 57M although not sure why they didn't improve this bit of the design)
Protruding probes (will change in Su 57M but not the level of F22)
Overall shaping (Will not Change in Su-57M)

Su-57 will not reach the RCS level of F22 with only a new RAM coating.
It doesn't need to either because Su-57 is a defensive weapon intended to fly over friendly airspace with the support of ground radars and contest an attack by a superior stealthy foe.

Actually, an armed confrontation of a Su-57 with a F-22 is more than improbable, last update of the Raptor would be applied just on 120 planes of 187 serial ones produced.
The rest would be used just for training.
No one of F-22 is based abroad or anywhere near to the frontier of another state (except Cuba) and they are tasked with role than in the RUASF are performed by Mig-31 instead.
So the adversary that the Felon would directly face instead would be the F-35A and also the actual production version is more than enough for deal with it.
And also actually there are more J-20 than F-22 in service so leave it to them

All the tiny sub metre measures of stealth are for high frequency Ku and Ka band radar that can actually see the shape of the target, and therefore the shape of the target effects the return.

Think of a person standing in a field in complete darkness. Shine a torch on them and you can see them. Paint them totally black and you can still see them but it is much harder to see them easily compared to if they are white or brightly coloured.

Imagine they pick up a full length mirror and hold it up in front of themselves... your light is reflected directly back at you and you could see them from much much greater distances than if they didn't have a mirror. But now think about what happens if they turn that mirror 45 degrees so instead of reflecting the light from your torch back at you it reflects that light off in another direction... angled up so you can't see the light reflected along the ground either.

But now change the frequency.... instead of using visible light use a thermal imager that does not use visible light at all and you will see a black spot where the mirror is in the field.

L band radar are long enough that they can't see features and shapes, the entire aircraft reflects a signal... more like sonar than radar really... it gives you an indication of presence, how big the object is, how far away it is, and the shift in signal if it is moving and how fast.

If your main radar does not detect anything then your L band wing mounted radar can scan and find a significantly sized object your other radar could not easily detect.

NEBO is a ground based anti stealth system that connects long and short wave radar and computers to process their information to maximise the effectiveness of both radar types and to minimise the problems with each type to get the best possible anti stealth performance and I would think the radar on the Su-35 and Su-57s would be treated the same in terms of optimisation to find and kill stealth targets... aircraft, missiles, and drones.

The difference is that the aircraft have thermal and IRST sensors that can be included in the computations to further improve performance.

And also that Su-57s and Su-35s wont operate alone so multiple aircraft could scan together while other aircraft can just listen for results and the results combined to get a better picture of what is operating in the airspace in front of them.

Rostec has developed a communication complex with AI for the Su-57 fighter, 04.21.2023.

Rostec has developed a communication system with artificial intelligence for the Su-57 fighter.

MOSCOW, April 21 - RIA Novosti. Rostec has developed an artificial intelligence communication system for 5th generation aircraft, the state corporation told reporters.

"Ruselectronics holding of the Rostec State Corporation has developed a set of on-board digital communication tools using artificial intelligence technologies. The equipment is designed for fifth-generation aircraft. Its use will improve the quality of information transfer between aircraft and ground complexes," the corporation said.

Currently, the Russian Aerospace Forces operate 5th generation Su-57 fighters. In particular, as RIA Novosti sources previously reported, they are used during the NWO.

The complex, developed by the specialists of NPP Polet (part of Roselectronics ), operates in the high and very high frequency ranges. The use of cognitive radio technology makes it possible to significantly increase the interference and reconnaissance immunity of the on-board complex communications.

The equipment ensures the reliability of information transmission due to noise-immune coding, interleaving of symbols in the message, common time synchronization in signal processing, the possibility of simultaneous transmission of messages over parallel channels, increasing the range of stable communication, as well as the use of artificial intelligence technologies.

Alexei Komyakov, General Director of NPP Polet, noted that many functional tasks that increase the efficiency of aviation operations are solved with the help of on-board digital communication systems. At present, these complexes are widely used for the exchange of messages between aircraft avionics and ground services.

"Our new complex is an initiative development and is planned to be introduced as part of the S-111 communications complex," he said.

The complex includes computing devices, interleavers and deinterleavers, RF antenna matching devices, digital signal processing units, error-correcting coding and decoding devices, as well as a global navigation satellite system signal receiver with an antenna and a digital signal processing and synchronization bus. The patent for the invention was presented at the Moscow International Salon of Inventions and Innovative Technologies "Archimedes-2023" and received a gold medal.

https://ria.ru/20230421/kompleks-1866808807.html

I will leave this here: