The PAK-FA Saga Episode 11.0

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17 years 7 months

Posts: 4,951

It's time to close the "The PAK-FA Saga Episode X" because it is much too many pages. The forum server cannot handle the strain of too many 20+ page threads. The previous PAK-FA thread appears to be tackling the premise of the design and how its shape reflects on existing aircraft and prototypes.

Previous threads:

The PAK-FA Saga Episode X
The PAK-FA Saga Episode IX
The PAK-FA Saga Episode VIII
The PAK-FA Saga Episode VII
The PAK-FA Saga Episode VI
The PAK-FA Saga Episode V
The PAK-FA Saga Episode IV
The PAK-FA Saga Episode III
the PAK-FA saga, continued2......
the PAK-FA saga, continued......
PAK-FA updated info, anyone?
PAK-FA - what is it?
SPECS of PAK-FA?
Russian PAK-FA contender .... a JSF-sky !!!

Original post

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24 years 2 months

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But Pavel Felgenhauer says!

Guys, guys, before we lose our heads, we need to listen to that noted luminary on the Russian military, who always has something deep, meaningful, nuanced, unbiased, and knowledgeable to say, Pavel Felgenhauer, right?

"It's a humbug," said independent military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer. "It's just a prototype lacking new engines and a new radar. It takes new materials to build a fifth-generation fighter, and Russia lacks them."

Idiot. When this clown ever says something remotely different from "everything the Russian military does is ****", let me know.

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17 years 10 months

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Might pay to ask the mods to shut the other thread, as most people will go there directly!

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24 years 2 months

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Guys, guys, before we lose our heads, we need to listen to that noted luminary on the Russian military, who always has something deep, meaningful, nuanced, unbiased, and knowledgeable to say, Pavel Felgenhauer, right?

"It's a humbug," said independent military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer. "It's just a prototype lacking new engines and a new radar. It takes new materials to build a fifth-generation fighter, and Russia lacks them."

Idiot. When this clown ever says something remotely different from "everything the Russian military does is ****", let me know.


Is Pavel one of Obama's cousins? :D

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15 years 2 months

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hehe.. the Militaryphotos.net T-50 forum is pushing 195+ pages already.

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18 years 4 months

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Both the sukhoi.org and pilot.strizhi site have been dead for much of the day. The poor sukhoi site usually gets almost zero traffic so its been a brutal day for them especially.

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16 years 9 months

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Would be nice if you used roman numerals.. XI :)

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24 years 2 months

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Lots of rivets.

http://pilot.strizhi.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Snapshot2.jpg

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17 years 7 months

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Has anyone done a quality 3-view of the prototype yet?

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17 years 7 months

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Something bothers me about the video. It just doesn't match the flight photos. The engines are smaller in the video, not a lot, but they seem to be slightly different. The tails don't match. The video machine looks rougher than the one in the photos. Could the video be some kind of full scale mockup prior to the actual flying machine?

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15 years 3 months

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Something bothers me about the video. It just doesn't match the flight photos. The engines are smaller in the video, not a lot, but they seem to be slightly different. The tails don't match. The video machine looks rougher than the one in the photos. Could the video be some kind of full scale mockup prior to the actual flying machine?

I believe it was mentioned in the last thread that one prototype would be static, one for taxiing and then a third for flight.

I think it's two videos cut together - one of the December taxi trials, and then of course yesterdays flight.

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16 years 9 months

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Something bothers me about the video. It just doesn't match the flight photos. The engines are smaller in the video, not a lot, but they seem to be slightly different. The tails don't match. The video machine looks rougher than the one in the photos. Could the video be some kind of full scale mockup prior to the actual flying machine?

I think its different aircraft as well. In some videos the aircraft appears to stop and then release its braking chute. In others, the aircraft is still moving forward when it releases its braking chute.

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15 years 11 months

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HOLY ****KIN SMOKES! I have been a pessimistic sceptic for so long about this friggin thing. And now it comes out like this! Even better than anything I secretly hoped for. ;) Freakin sweet bird. And -dont get me wrong here Paralay- im sooo happy/relieved it doesnt resemble Paralay rather short and fat design sketch seen in that russian aviation magazine some weeks ago.
This badass looks way better. Rather F-23/Flankerish, but with a little F-16XX, F-35 and -yes I know you'll hate me for this- F-104 Starfighter looks over it. Elegant and slick, but yet so brutally sexy and ultmate. The Audree James of aircraft sort of. If you ask me, at least. :)

BTW has Jason Simmonds posted anything in this thread since yesterday? Well, I guess not. And alas I guess he wont do it either. Too bad. Would have been greate fun to se him beeing ript to peaces by Flex!

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17 years 10 months

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Something bothers me about the video. It just doesn't match the flight photos. The engines are smaller in the video, not a lot, but they seem to be slightly different. The tails don't match. The video machine looks rougher than the one in the photos. Could the video be some kind of full scale mockup prior to the actual flying machine?

This is why this thread shouldnt have been started until the Mods closed the other one off.....

Some of the news footage shows both aircraft mixed together in the clips.
One clip shows the aircraft during high speed taxi tests and rotating the aircrafts nose off the ground. This aircraft has a slightly different tail fairing to the aircraft which actually flew.

Mods if your out there, please close one of these threads!!!

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Bill Sweetman's preliminary analysis done for Aviation Week - answers some questions about outboard bays and LERX's :

BY : Bill Sweetman For Aviation Week

Well, this brings back the old days when Flug Revue would pop out some over-the-fence shots obtained from the Military Missions in East Germany, and the assembled reptiles at Flight would adjourn to our secret analysis facility to figure out what it all meant.

First of all, for anyone contemplating the use of the word “Raptorski”: don’t. While this is an airplane that could have been the answer to the Advanced Tactical Fighter requirement, way back when, it’s not an F-22 in many important ways.

In a lot of ways, the T-50 reflects the heritage of the T-10 Flanker series – it’s much more like them than Sukhoi’s last fighter prototype, the forward-swept-wing Su-47 Berkut, ever was. From the Flanker family, the T-50 gets the massive “centroplane” – a wide central body that blends the fuselage and inner wing – three-surface aerodynamic control and true three-dimensional thrust vectoring. The main weapons bay has been seen on a Flanker model, too.

Look at some of these in detail. The centroplane is huge, extending well outside the engines and terminating at the rear in a broad beaver-tail between the exhaust nozzles.

It accommodates a boatload of fuel on the Flanker and will do the same here. After the canard hokey-pokey in the T-10 family (in on the Su-30MK, out on the Su-35) the T-50 has something different: the forward part of the leading edge extension is movable. According to the usually well informed Flateric over at Secret Projects, it is called the Povorotnaya Chast Naplyva (PChN) or movable LEX section.

3-D thrust vectoring is also used on the Su-35. The T-50 and the T-10 family are distinguished by widely separated engines, which is important because that’s the only way to use vectored thrust in roll. What’s new on the T-50 is that the designers have cashed in on TVC by shrinking the tail surfaces, saving on drag, weight and signature.

With separated engines and a wide body, the T-50 designers have been able to install dual front and rear weapon bays. Added to this are side bays outboard of the engines. Flateric reports that each bay is designed to hold “at least two” missiles and that the outer bays are designed for short-range AAMs. The centerline bays could each hold two large weapons (like R-33s) or three-to-four of the newly announced RVV-MD. The latter has folding wings, as does the RVV-SD development of the R-73 (AA-11 Archer) family – the latter explaining why the underwing bays are small.

The big new feature of the T-50 is stealth. The aircraft that flew today is a prototype – and it does not show visible features like a frameless canopy and panel alignment that you’d expect on a production aircraft. Other not-very-stealthy-looking features include the gaps around the inlet (compare the YF-23) and a spherical infrared search and track housing in front of the windshield. And, of course, the nozzles are round. But it has a chined forebody, edge alignment and (probably) inlet line-of-sight blockage and internal weapons.

Apparently the designers and systems analysts have looked at the thorny question of “how much stealth do we want to pay for?” and have come up with a different answer than the F-22 designers. The fact that the armed forces of potential adversaries don’t have S-300 and S-400 missiles may have something to do with that answer.

Supercruise? Definitely. The aircraft has a lot of power, and you would not go with that sharply swept delta wing if that wasn’t the goal.

The big question is how long the aircraft will take to enter service, which is a product of three factors – how much money is available, how many resources industry can muster to get the job done, and where the design, technically, stands at this point.

The first question depends largely on the Russian economy, and on the priority which the military gives to the fighter. At the moment, the strategic rocket forces are the priority and are elbowing all others away from the trough; also, the military could decide that the Su-35 is a good upgrade route for now. The X-factor: whether and when India will join the program, and how much cash it will involve.

The second – industry’s ability to execute the program – is hard to estimate. On the downside, Russia has not inducted a brand-new aircraft into service since the 1980s. However, there are signs of a new development strategy at work here: the T-50’s engines are outgrowths of the Su-35’s and are being test-flown on a T-10 airframe, and the flight control system and (very likely) cockpit and avionics may be similar.

How far along is the program? Russian practice historically has been to start development with a series of prototypes that successively conform more to the production design. That’s followed by an early series of aircraft that are “pre-operational” – flown by service units. Today’s T-50 is, in US terms, something between a technology demonstrator and a systems development and demonstration aircraft.

Upshot – I would expect to see quite a few Su-35S regiments operational before we see a combat-ready T-50 – but with the caveat that a lot of Indian money could change things.

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A good sumary of the situation: thanks

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COCKPİT PİCTURES PLEASE SUKHOİ PLEASE...

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14 years 2 months

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COCKPİT PİCTURES PLEASE SUKHOİ PLEASE...

Oh, this is the easiest part. :p ;)

http://www.ausairpower.net/Su-35-1-Cockpit-1S.jpg

It's not PAK-FA, but right now it's not much different either.

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16 years 4 months

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Oh, this is the easiest part. :p ;)

http://www.ausairpower.net/Su-35-1-Cockpit-1S.jpg

It's not PAK-FA, but right now it's not much different either.

Since I don't see the picture of PAK-FA cockpit, I can't compare it with the su-35's cockpit. Because Im waiting some suprises at its cockpit.

Thats also I know that these aircrafts cockpits will be too much similar but Im sure there are some differences such they did at HUD and I wonder the position of the stick!

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"It's a humbug," said independent military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer. "It's just a prototype lacking new engines and a new radar. It takes new materials to build a fifth-generation fighter, and Russia lacks them."

As I never heard of this Pavel Felgenhauer, I quickly googled him to find the typical neocon influence agent, serving mainly USA and US allies interests.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Felgenhauer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jamestown_Foundation

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The PAK FA looks to be sporting a Wide-Angle Frameless Holographic HUD.