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Sukhoi T-50/PAK FA takes flight

Nerroth

Nerroth

Commodore
Commodore
Hi.


Sukhoi's would-be answer to the F-22 took its maiden flight recently.

Russia has unveiled its new stealth fighter jet, meant to boost the country's ageing arsenal of weaponry and be a rival to the US F-22 Raptor.

The Sukhoi T-50, also called the PAK FA, made its maiden flight in Russia's far east. Test pilot Sergei Bogdan said it was "easy and comfortable to pilot".
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said much work needed to be done before mass production began in 2015.
Stealth technology is meant to nearly eliminate a plane's radar signature.
The plane is being developed by the Sukhoi company at its Komsomolsk-on-Amur production plant.
The new jet has been developed in partnership with India. It is seen as a significant milestone in Russia's efforts to modernise its Soviet-era military hardware.
Sukhoi's director Mikhail Pogosyan said he was convinced that the project would "excel its Western rivals in cost-effectiveness and will not only allow strengthening of the defence power of the Russian and Indian air forces, but also gain a significant share of the world market".
The company says the jet's stealth features considerably enhance its combat effectiveness in all weathers.
Its features include: all-weather capability, ability to use a take-off strip of just 300-400 metres, capacity for sustained supersonic flight including repeated in-flight refuelling, advanced avionics, simultaneous attacks on air and ground targets.
But analysts have denied the jet is a leap forward.
"It's just a prototype lacking new engines and a new radar," military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer told the Associated Press news agency.
Originally scheduled for 2007, the T-50's maiden flight was repeatedly postponed because of technical problems.
Observers of Russia's recent military modernisation drive say it has been plagued by delays and quality problems.
Click to expand...
I wonder how long it'll be before they make model kits of it...


EDIT: Oh, and there's a pic taken from the video feed, with a comparison to its escorting Flanker.
 
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Nerroth said:
Hi.


Sukhoi's would-be answer to the F-22 took its maiden flight recently.

Russia has unveiled its new stealth fighter jet, meant to boost the country's ageing arsenal of weaponry and be a rival to the US F-22 Raptor.

The Sukhoi T-50, also called the PAK FA, made its maiden flight in Russia's far east. Test pilot Sergei Bogdan said it was "easy and comfortable to pilot".
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said much work needed to be done before mass production began in 2015.
Stealth technology is meant to nearly eliminate a plane's radar signature.
The plane is being developed by the Sukhoi company at its Komsomolsk-on-Amur production plant.
The new jet has been developed in partnership with India. It is seen as a significant milestone in Russia's efforts to modernise its Soviet-era military hardware.
Sukhoi's director Mikhail Pogosyan said he was convinced that the project would "excel its Western rivals in cost-effectiveness and will not only allow strengthening of the defence power of the Russian and Indian air forces, but also gain a significant share of the world market".
The company says the jet's stealth features considerably enhance its combat effectiveness in all weathers.
Its features include: all-weather capability, ability to use a take-off strip of just 300-400 metres, capacity for sustained supersonic flight including repeated in-flight refuelling, advanced avionics, simultaneous attacks on air and ground targets.
But analysts have denied the jet is a leap forward.
"It's just a prototype lacking new engines and a new radar," military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer told the Associated Press news agency.
Originally scheduled for 2007, the T-50's maiden flight was repeatedly postponed because of technical problems.
Observers of Russia's recent military modernisation drive say it has been plagued by delays and quality problems.
Click to expand...
I wonder how long it'll be before they make model kits of it...


EDIT: Oh, and there's a pic taken from the video feed, with a comparison to its escorting Flanker.
Click to expand...

So let me get this straight, Russia is coming out with a new fighter that could rival the F-22 which they also plan to sell worldwide, and your concerns are when a model kit is coming out?


This is why I think it was a stupid idea to cease production on the F-22. Because you never know when your potential enemies might just have a better weapon than you.

Rumsfeld was criticized for saying that "you go to war with the military you have, not the military you need". Well, with this announcement, we might find ourselves someday going to war with the military we had (F-18s), and be in the same predicament we had on Dec. 1941. (ie. WWI-era ships over 2 years into the WWII-era.)

Let's just hope the F-35 is a suitable multi-purpose roll aircraft that can fill the needs of both the F-22 and the aging F-18.

EDIT: while the T-50 looks very similar to the F-22 from the top side, it's bottom side doesn't look that much different than the Su-27 or even Su-37. So I'm wondering just how stealthy that bottom side is. The trick here is what kind of engine system does it have? Are they multi-directional? or what?
 
Johnny Rico said:
So let me get this straight, Russia is coming out with a new fighter that could rival the F-22 which they also plan to sell worldwide, and your concerns are when a model kit is coming out?
Click to expand...

Even if the plane ends up as a bust (which I doubt, but still) it would, like the Su-47 before it, make for a nice kit someday...


...but the kind of things I'd be curious about would be what kind of variants there'll be (beyond the ones announced already) and just who would be likely to buy some.

For one, would a navalised version be a good fit for the Russian and Indian Navies, as potential replacements for their current-gen fighters? (The Russians will already be replacing their Flanker-Ds with Fulcrum-Ds for the Admiral Kuznetsov, but that's more of a side-step than an upgrade.)

For another, the price tag this thing may be likely to have could keep the number of would-be markets relatively low, but there are still a few interesting questions.

Take Japan, for example. The US refused to sell them F-22s (even cut-down export versions) and there's no guarantee the Mitsubishi ATD-X will work out. If the T-50 becomes a viable production model, and the Russians and Indians are willing to sell, would the JASDF be willing to fly them?
 
Strange that they're using a "T" designation instead of "SU".

"T" was always used for their main battle tanks.


Edit: I should amend, "TU" was used on Tupolev made aircraft, similar to "SU" on Sukhois.
 
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Not sure what to make it's looks though.

From some angles it's a looks good, others not so crash hot (no pun intended).

I know it's for stealth reasons but I can't say I'm keen on the angled vertical stabilizers (same of the Raptors though they don't seem as jarring though).

Guess it's the fuselage design for the engine intakes but from the top it looks like they've almost gone for a double delta wing design as used the on the Saab Draaken (the concept not the actual design).
 
Ar-Pharazon said:
Strange that they're using a "T" designation instead of "SU".

"T" was always used for their main battle tanks.


Edit: I should amend, "TU" was used on Tupolev made aircraft, similar to "SU" on Sukhois.
Click to expand...


The "T" series is Sukhoi's internal coding for models, particularly prototypes and development models. For example, the Su-27 arrangement was tested by the T-10 and T-10S "Flanker-A" designs.

As for the paranoid, this thing is flying in 2010. The YF-22 flew 20 years ago. You can rest easy that between 1990 and today Lockheed Martin learned one or two things to help keep this thing ahead.

On a side note, I find it interesting that the T-50 has a high resemblance to the YF-23. Complete with the dual-purpose stabilizers/tailplanes. The similarity is most likely coincidental, though there might have been inspiration.

yf2305.jpg
 
Many past Soviet designs were either general copies of American designs, or reverse engineered from captured US aircraft (B29 to Tu4/Tu70).

Of course the copied ones were mostly inferior. After all, they made a space shuttle lookalike that only ever made 1 test flight.

Lack of resources (aka money) may be part of their problem. Easy to make something that looks like a Raptor, another thing to make it operate like one.
 
The Buran (may it rest in peace) was not an inferior design to the Space Shuttle - it fell foul of budgetary concerns, rather than engineering ones.


Time will tell how the production version of the PAK FA will turn out, but I think it's premature to be overly dismissive just yet.

(Or overly expectant, for that matter.)
 
Ar-Pharazon said:
Many past Soviet designs were either general copies of American designs, or reverse engineered from captured US aircraft (B29 to Tu4/Tu70).

Of course the copied ones were mostly inferior. After all, they made a space shuttle lookalike that only ever made 1 test flight.

Lack of resources (aka money) may be part of their problem. Easy to make something that looks like a Raptor, another thing to make it operate like one.
Click to expand...

Don't knock the soviet shuttle, it may have looked similar to the US shuttle visually, but in reality the whole buran program was really superior in concept and execution.
 
Ar-Pharazon said:
^ Then what happened? :)
Click to expand...

The USSR fell and Russia had no money to fund it. There was a group of NASA scientists who proposed using the Buran system as a replacement for the Shuttle, but that idea was passed over in favor of the Constellation Program and it's Ares rockets because it was felt that the Surviving Burans wouldn't be cost effective to finish, and some at NASA preferred the idea of using a more "american centric" rocket.

Buran could carry more cargo on the way up, more back down, and could be configured to take cargo to the moon.

The Energia rocket was great, but it was the never flown heavy-lift variant which was real interesting. It would have had a 175 tonne max payload. The shuttle's was around 24 tonnes, the Saturn V topped out at roughly 118 tonnes. Just think about the orbital facilities that could be constructed with that thing shipping stuff up.
 
Ar-Pharazon said:
Many past Soviet designs were either general copies of American designs, or reverse engineered from captured US aircraft (B29 to Tu4/Tu70).

Of course the copied ones were mostly inferior. After all, they made a space shuttle lookalike that only ever made 1 test flight.

Lack of resources (aka money) may be part of their problem. Easy to make something that looks like a Raptor, another thing to make it operate like one.
Click to expand...

Don't brush aside Soviet\Russian engineering so lightly. It's true that many of their early Cold War designs, especially, were essentially knock-offs of American designs, but they do have quite the ability to design solid and dependable technology. There's a reason why Russia is still able to fly Soyuz capsules into space, after all.
 
The top view of the T-50 reminde me of the F-16XL variant with it's "cranked arrow" wing.

Can this puppy do the cobra? I recall the west freaking out when the SU-27 did that at Paris.
 
Thrust vectoring is a given due to the small size of the vertical stabs, supercruise also a given..Inertial coupling may be a problem, (probably taken care of by thrust vectoring nozzles and appropriate software) See the F-100 for issues with small tails..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertia_coupling

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-100_Super_Sabre

Just remember, the F-22's jigs have not been destroyed, Lockheed can easily dust em off and crank em out if required..And the F-35 can take on this aircraft as well...

No worries..

But the aircraft DOES look schweet...
 
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