Su-57 Stealth Fighter: News #8

I also saw similar pictures.

The thing is MCST Elbrus-4S (quad-core Elbrus) and NTC Module 1879VM8Ya (sixteen-core NeuroMatrix DSPs with five-core ARM controllers) were made in 65 nm and 28 nm at TSMC in Taiwan respectively.

The Elbrus-2SM (dual-core Elbrus) made at Mikron only was available starting in 2014. And from what I heard the Elbrus-4SM which was supposed to be made in 65nm at Mikron was stillborn.

The Elbrus-4S board looks legit. But notice how the NTC Module DSP isn't shown on an actual board. I remember seeing pictures with the actual boards with the DSPs. I think each board had two chips. But I don't remember the link anymore. If the page is even still up.

You don't need that many of these chips to make Su-57s. So they could have just stockpiled them. TSMC only accepts volume orders, so they could have tens of thousands of these things in stock or more. I would be surprised if this thing uses more than four Elbrus processors and four NeuroMatrix DSP chips for a whole flight computer.

They probably have enough chips stockpiled to continue doing things this way. And that gives them time to design a new solution.

This isn't like chips for missiles, loitering munitions, and the like which are produced in vastly higher numbers. But those chips for missiles are also way simpler. The ones in some of the loitering munitions though seem kind of complicated.

Interesting the way the vertical tails turn and the horizontal tails turn on landing to help the aircraft slow down... acting as a speed brake without actually turning 90 degrees.

A bit the the siren on the German Stuka, to terrify the target.

Wonder when the scramjet powered Kh-31s will be ready...

Triple the flight speed should triple their flight range so we are talking about is 800km-1,000km range a mach 8-10... and small enough to fit on tactical fighters.

An air to air model would be rather interesting too.

Why do you assume triple speed = triple flight range given the same amount of fuel? And compared to what?

Because the current Kh-31 operates at mach 3, and the anti ship equivalent of Onyx operates at mach 2.5, while the Onyx replacement with a scramjet motor operates at mach 9 which is roughly triple the speed.

The difference between a ramjet and a scramjet is that the air going into a ramjet has to be slowed down to subsonic speeds for the fuel to burn... think about that... you are using airflow to propel your vehicle but to burn the fuel in the engine the airflow has to be slowed down to subsonic speeds.

This means that the engine design has to accelerate the airflow from subsonic speeds to a velocity where it will actually create thrust in a vehicle travelling at up to mach 5 or so... that is why mach 5 or 6 is the top speed of ramjet powered missiles and vehicles.

With a scramjet you don't slow the air coming into the engine, you add fuel and burn it so air coming in at mach 5 has fuel added and burned and might leave at mach 7 or 8 or 9, which means lots of thrust.

More importantly the normal way to reduce the speed of the air going into the engine of a supersonic plane was to make the air intake smaller allowing less air to flow in and slowing it down... with a scramjet you don't need to slow it down and compress it... you can compress it a little bit and add fuel and burn that and have it come out much faster and rather denser volumes which means more thrust.

Turbofans of the low bypass designs used in supersonic aircraft became popular because the front fan blew air outside the inner turbojet tube so the air bypassing the turbojet is not compressed or slowed down and mixes with the engine exhaust at the rear of the engine so if you add more fuel there in an After Burner you can get a lot more thrust because the cold oxygen rich bypass air allows more fuel to be burned and adds mass to the exhaust meaning more thrust.

Most long range missiles use their initial thrust to climb and accelerate to speed but once they get to altitude and high speed they just throttle back and coast... if you think of it in car terms if you turn your car on and let it idle and roll forward you wont get to very high speeds so although you could run the engine for hours you are not going to get very far. Conversely if you burn fuel and accelerate and get to a motorway and accelerate up to 100km/h and top gear and then take your foot off the pedal and idle along at 2,000 rpm at top gear at 100km/h your fuel is going to last rather longer than if you put your foot down and did 3,000 rpm and was driving at 140km/h.

It is why fighter aircraft use after burner to take off... AB uses fuel rapidly but if you didn't use it it would take 10-20 minutes to climb to the altitude and speed you want to fly at and at 100% dry thrust you are not exactly flying fuel efficiently. By engaging AB and rapidly accelerating to say 800km/h and 10km altitude you can then throttle back and idle for the next hour and travel much further and much faster than if you had used minimum power all the way.

A faster missile encounters more drag which as you know varies a lot by altitude.

Missiles flying over mach 5 derive body lift so they can fly much much higher where the drag is significantly reduced, and a scramjet powered missile can keep its motor running to overcome drag like a base bleed artillery shell. This helps it maintain its flight speed at much higher altitudes... they will likely both be using fuel at a similar rate, because they are both essentially the same engine, the difference is that the scramjet does not need to slow airflow into its intake and a much greater volume of air can flow through it at a much higher speed making it rather more efficient and useful.

The Kalibr was originally designed to be fired from submarine torpedo tubes. If you use the full length of surface ship VLS it could have like double the range it currently has. I doubt that Zircon has similar constraints. It was likely designed to use the full length from the start. It also uses higher density fuel than the Kalibr.

Zircon is claimed to have 1000 km range from a surface ship launch. If it was air launched the range could easily double or more.

There is a cruise missile of the Kalibr family which flies a long way subsonically. Are you saying the Tsircon* will have a much longer range than the Kalibr?

Well first of all Kalibr is an evolution of the SS-N-21 Granat (which is a 6m long subsonic turbojet powered missile of 533mm calibre to fit through torpedo tubes, not the SS-N-19 Granit supersonic 7 ton anti ship ramjet powered missile).

Its dimensions were set to allow it to be fired through standard torpedo tubes but new versions are being developed because putting a 6m long 533mm calibre missile into a tube designed to carry Onyx which is a 750mm calibre 8.9m long missile is a waste of available space. The Kh-101/102 are 7.4m long and 750mm calibre and would more efficiently fill a UKSK launch tube and its extra weight is mostly added fuel to extend range from 3,000km to 5,000km.

You are crossing what I said... the Onyx and Zircon use ramjet and scramjet motors respectively, while Kalibr is a subsonic turbojet powered missile.

BTW Onyx has a range of about 400-500km or so at mach 2.5 with a ramjet engine, while the Zircon has a range of over 1,200km at mach 9 with a scramjet motor.

They are likely a similar size and weight though the latter will be made of heat resistant materials, but the much greater thrust the scramjet puts out allows it to fly higher and much faster, so while as a jet motor it might operate at similar throttle settings for a similar period of time the fact that the Onyx missile is covering about 600m/s, the Zircon will be covering closer to 3km per second.

To fly 500km at 600m/s, so it is flying at 36km per minute, so to fly 500km is just under 14 minutes... so the Onyx would be flying for just under 14 minutes... actually probably 15 or 16 minutes because it needs to climb and accelerate to that speed... it does not leave the tube at that speed.

For the Zircon flying at 3km per second, that means it is covering 180 km per minute means it would cover 1200km in just over 7 minutes so the scramjet powered missiles motor is running for a much shorter period, but it covers more ground because it is flying much faster.

The size of the scramjet powered missile and the turbojet powered missile is not related but to get an indication the Granit SS-N-19 was 7.5 tons in weight to carry a 1 ton payload to a target 500km away at mach 2.5. The Onyx reduces the weight of fuel by an enormous amount and is about 2.5 tons in the air launched version.

So here we have a test case of similarly sized missiles but with different propulsion systems. Which has the longer range?

When it comes to range performance the turbojet or turbofan wins hands down, because a ramjet or scramjet operates in an afterburner mode all the way, but equally range is no advantage if you get shot down, and the west can't shoot down ground or air launched Iskanders and Zircon is marginally faster.

The turbofan powered cruise missile uses a tiny solid rocket booster to get airborne and then flys to its target on small wings like a small plane. To achieve its max range it has to fly at medium altitudes.... 5-10km altitude and then drop down for the last legs of the flight to penetrate enemy air defences. Its flight range and flight speed are dramatically reduced if it has to fly low all the way.

Scramjet powered missiles would always fly high where the air is thinner, so Zircon probably flys at above 30km altitude.... the rocket powered Kh-32 flys at 40km altitude.

Flying at such altitudes is not possible with conventional turbofan engines, and the Zircon is safe from most air defence systems at that altitude let alone the speed it will be moving at.

Zircon is claimed to have 1000 km range from a surface ship launch. If it was air launched the range could easily double or more. wrote:

ot true. It will only reduce the booster of the solid rocket engine, which is supposed to accelerate Tsirkon to about 5M. It will reach 5M speed faster with a smaller booster.
Tsirkon is a cruise missile with a Scramjet engine that operates most of the missile's flight time. Launching from an aircraft will not increase its range, perhaps very little.
Unless Tsirkon is rocket-propelled and works similarly to Iskander, it flies on a flat ballistic plane but flies powerless for most of the flight.