Posted on 01/20/2016 3:21:16 AM PST by sukhoi-30mki
Sukhoi T-50 fighter climbing after takeoff, 2011. Creative Commons
After confronting serious technical and economic difficulties, Russia has dramatically cut back its air force program to field its first radar-evading “stealth†fighter jet. By delaying large-scale acquisition of the Sukhoi T-50 fighter, the Kremlin is tacitly acknowledging a truth that the U.S. military learned decades ago — and that China might also learn in coming years: developing stealth fighters is hard.
But fortunately for the Russian air force, and unfortunately for Washington and its allied air arms that are Russia’s chief rivals, Moscow has a backup plan. Instead of counting on a new stealth jet to outfit its fighter squadrons, the Russian government is buying heavily upgraded versions of older planes — an approach the Pentagon has dismissed as wasteful. It could, however, help Russia maintain its aerial edge.
The T-50, like practically all stealth aircraft before it, has proved expensive to develop, although exactly how expensive remains a closely guarded secret. Radar-evading warplanes require careful design work, extensive testing and exotic materials for their construction — all features that can double or triple their cost compared to conventional, non-stealthy planes.
Even with their high cost, air forces all over the world are scrambling to acquire stealth aircraft because their ability to avoid detection can, in theory, offer a big advantage in air-to-air combat and during bombing runs.
But a competing theory of aerial warfare argues that stealth is overrated — and it’s better to buy greater numbers of cheaper, non-stealthy planes. Moscow’s troubles in developing the T-50 have compelled it to adhere to the competing philosophy.
Russia arrived late to the stealth-warplane party. The U.S. Air Force fielded its first radar-evad
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.reuters.com ...
There are cheaper alternatives to expensive stealthy manned designs. But they are not traditional and do not have strong well funded advocates. Bombers no longer have to come even close to their targets in order to drop a precision bomb. Drones have proven effective as fighters as much as thirty years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrT2KtSzMd0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockwell_HiMAT
“Drones have proven effective as fighters as much as thirty years ago.”
Drones will not fill the fighter role for quite some time. Autonomy (Artificial Intelligence) is not there yet. Datalinks are not sufficiently trustworthy, etc.
I think what you’re going to see is that Stealth Fighters will be combined with some sort of “missile truck”. The fighter will ‘mark the target’ and the shooter will take them out. A semi-stealthy drone might reasonably be expected to fill that role.
In addition, newer weaponry, specifically smaller rail gun and directed energy weapons, will have an incredible and dramatic effect on air borne platforms. It is damned hard to outrun or outmaneuver a railgun projectile.
There is a maxim popular with the Soviets during the Cold War:
“Quantity has a quality all of its own.”
Um... no.
As a UAS design engineer, this is a factually incorrect statement: One that I spend far too much time trying to stamp out.
All UAS are sitting ducks in the crosshairs of manned aircraft.
While there are some low observable UAS fielded, once a manned aircraft detects it or it's identified from ground resources, it's toast; they fly via way-points due to communications and instruction lag, not via joystick.
As a note, if you see an operator of a UAS using a joystick, he is either the mission package operator or the UAS is taking off/landing and the operator/pilot is local to the UAS.
In all the high tech hubbub, an old military axiom has been forgotten: there is a balance between quality and quantity; if you ignore one of the two, you become vulnerable to it.
This being said, what if you could make an *expendable* drone aircraft for under $100,000 a copy? What would you need?
A “tin can” body. An engine. A fuel tank. Electrical linear actuators to pull the guidance cables. An off the shelf computer brain, and a hardened memory chip for if and when the brain is fried. And a 1000 pound bomb or other weapons system.
The flyaway cost for a single Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor is about $150 million dollars.
For the cost of a single aircraft, you could manufacture one thousand, five hundred (1,500) of these expendable drones, using technology any country that can manufacture cars has.
How could you fight such an armada? Even if you fried their computer brains with AESA radars, they would just use their last corrected program map. They might lose some accuracy, but if you’re 50 feet off with a 1,000 pound bomb, it probably won’t matter.
If you mothballed such armadas, even over the course of a few years a small country could devastate a large country, so much that while they might counterattack for a while, they would soon lose the ability to do so.
“There is a maxim popular with the Soviets during the Cold War:
‘Quantity has a quality all of its own.’â€
Following that maxim didn’t work out very well for them.
“The flyaway cost for a single Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor is about $150 million dollars.”
A bargain compared to that flying turd, the F-35.
“they fly via way-points due to communications and instruction lag, not via joystick.”
Seems like if it’s software it can be modified to get around that. I could do that.
What I am thinking about is swarm theory. These drones would be nothing like the planes of today. The link to HIMAT was just a toss-off to show that there were fighter drones. I was associated with the project and our field engineers said it regularly won in one-on-one encounters with manned planes. But it had all sorts of potential issues for the real world environment. I still think a limited number should have been deployed so we could learn how to beat those problems.
A huge factor in the cost of fighters and bombers is crew maintenance and life support, survivability and redundancy. Manned planes cost anywhere from fifty to a hundred million, so there will be few of them in a conflict and even fewer if the conflict is a long one. I am thinking of a large number of small, single purpose drones with limited capabilities. They would be networked with some autonomous capabilities when jammed. The plane itself can be the weapon as they will be relatively cheap. Being small they will be difficult to spot and hit. I think it was Stalin who said, -quantity has its own quality.-
The Navy is experimenting with autonomous small boats and swarm theory. Granted the technology is not here yet but when it is, any place it is used will be an operations zone denied to the opposing force.
I respect your views and expertise. I too am an engineer with thirty years in the military industrial complex. (Admittedly, I am now rusty, dusty and old.) As a program manager I often sat with the designers and questioned them on why we had taken a particular path only to discover that it was dictated and they had a much better solution. (Sometimes they really did and possibly sometimes not.) My thinking is that the whole complex; the military, Congress, the producers and the supply chain, are mired in their boxes of antiquated thoughts and concepts. If we don’t think about the possible options and the enemy does, we will needlessly lose irreplaceable men. (Yes, you can train new pilots and crew but the nation and the media will not stand for losses, as seen every night on the news when GWB was president. I do not want to see a single man lost unnecessarily to some nasty actor like ISIS.)
I thought “Quantity has a quality all of its own.†came from World War II. The Soviets said it about the T34, although it seemed to apply better to the Sherman/Ronson Lighter.
Actually they (the Russians) were referring to the tidal wave of “inferior” ( from a NATO perspective) Soviet and Warsaw Pact mechanized and motorized rifle divisions the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany (GSFG) intended to pour through the Fulda Gap to overwhelm the Allies. The sentiment being that, despite significant losses, having enough of those “inferior” units (quantity) would allow them to destroy the “superior” forces of the West (quality) and still have enough left over to dictate the peace terms and enforce an occupation. And remember, the Soviets were well ahead of NATO in doctrine and preparedness to fight in a CBRN environment if things went South, which it probably would have at some point.
Personally, I ‘m glad both sides had the good sense to not try to find out.
(Twenty five years (!!) after that threat passed, I ‘m amazed how easily all the terms of reference come to mind. Must have considered them important for some reason or another.)
See post 13 in the thread for my understanding of how the Soviets meant the maxim to apply during the Cold War.
There is no denying that the Germans considered the T-34 crude (inferior) to their tanks. And while the PzKfw V “Panther” was the German reply to it, the tank suffered from too much superior German engineering quality and could never be afforded in the quantities needed to begin matching T-34 production. Ditto for the Tiger and King Tiger.
As for the Sherman, I heard that same sentiment expressed in a post-class conversation I had with a substitute physics teacher while I was in high school. He was a retired US Army brigadier general who had decided to teach to have something to occupy his time. He had been a Sherman tank platoon commander in Europe during WWII. He conceded the inferiority of the Sherman to the PzKfw IV and Panther but said their success came from ganging up on them and sniping at them until one tank could maneuver to the rear or flanks and get in range to deliver a kill shot. A winning strategy born out of desperate necessity.
Yes.
Preceding the use of the INF was the NATO doctrine of attacks in depth on enemy formations with conventional force (bombing, non-nuclear missiles, etc.) which was intended to prevent/significantly delay the arrival of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th,...nth echelons of his forces at the front. This destruction of lines of communication, depots, marshaling yards, etc in the enemy hinterlands would be in addition to a very stubborn, layered defense at the front. The hope was that the attrition would be so severe that the Soviets would stop short of the “line in the sand/tripwire” for NATO to begin employing nuclear weapons.
Given the natural stubbornness and willingness to suffer of your average Russian, that may have been a futile hope.
Anyway, as I wrote earlier, I’m glad both sides had the good sense not to put their warfighting theories and doctrine to the test.
Let us hope it stays that way.
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