RSK-MiG 'working on lightweight fighter'

Russian aircraft manufacturer RSK-MiG seems to be quietly at work developing a new, lightweight fighter concept that could be a single-engine, lower-tier complement to the Sukhoi T-50/PAK-FA fighter currently in developmental flight testing.

Discussions about this MiG project have been around for some time, but speculation about the programme's status was raised by an announcement at the end of December that the single, flying prototype of the MiG 1.44 fifth-generation Multirole Fighter (MFI) project will be put in "conservation storage at a hangar located at the Gromov Flight Research Institute [LII]", according to an official statement by MiG. Up to this point the aircraft had made only two flights, both of which were in 2000, and has been utilised since as a working model to support the development of the T-50 programme.

The decision is considered to be of some significance since the order was to keep the aircraft in long-term storage rather than to have it cannibalised for parts and its valuable components recycled. The latter course was ordered by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to be carried out on the first Tupolev Tu-160 prototype, which was the Soviet Union's very first supersonic strategic bomber capable of carrying nuclear weapons.

"This is a curious choice," according some Russian aerospace analysts, "to spare the MFI prototype and junk the Tu-160 since the Russian programme for a next-generation bomber, the PAK-DA, is further along in concept development and has more support behind it from the MoD and the Russian Air Force [VVS] than a new, single-engine fighter."

Keeping the MFI intact for now may be an indicator that there is a desire within some corners of the MoD and VVS to keep MiG designers working on some

The sole flying prototype of the MiG 1.44 MFI has been spared cannibalisation, leading some to believe it is being using to inform a future lightweight fighter design. Source: Y Gordon

2 posted on 01/15/2014 9:25:14 AM PST by hattend (Firearms and ammunition...the only growing industries under the Obama regime.)

Firefox?

Invisible to radar? Yeah, that they can do.
Cruises at Mach 3+? Ehhhh....not so likely.
Thought-controlled weapons systems? Uh, no.

I don't think a 'Firefox'-type aircraft is possible anytime soon.

3 posted on 01/15/2014 9:38:42 AM PST by hoagy62 ("Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered..."-Thomas Paine. 1776)

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