Russian Raptor Killer is a "Game Changer"

The Weekly Standard ^ | 2/17/2010 | Michael Goldfarb

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

In an open-source assessment of Russia's Sukhoi PAK-FA, aka the Raptor Killer, Air Power Australia concludes, "once the PAK-FA is deployed within a theatre of operations, especially if it is supported robustly by counter-VLO capable ISR systems, the United States will no longer have the capability to rapidly impose air superiority, or possibly even achieve air superiority." Moreover, the Obama administration's decision to kill the F-22 air superiority fighter in favor of the multi-role F-35 Joint Strike Fighter may prove disastrous, as "the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter struggles to survive against the conventional Su-35BM Flanker… Against [a basic-model] PAK-FA, the F-35 falls within the survivability black hole, into which US legacy fighters such as the F-16C/E, F-15C/E and F/A-18A-F have already fallen.”

When the Obama administration killed the F-22, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made the administration's case in a speech before the Economic Club of Chicago. Gates explained that F-22 was unnecessary because nobody else was anywhere close to fielding an aircraft comprable to F-35, let alone F-22:

Consider that by 2020, the United States is projected to have nearly 2,500 manned combat aircraft of all kinds. Of those, nearly 1,100 will be the most advanced fifth generation F-35s and F-22s. China, by contrast, is projected to have no fifth generation aircraft by 2020. And by 2025, the gap only widens. The U.S. will have approximately 1,700 of the most advanced fifth generation fighters versus a handful of comparable aircraft for the Chinese. Nonetheless, some portray this scenario as a dire threat to America's national security.

[roostercogburn]

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60S0UW20100129

Lieutenant Colonel Marcel de Haas, Russian security researcher at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael, was not convinced of the plane’s bright future.

“My impression is that this new fighter plane is also more propaganda than a real expectancy,” he told Reuters by e-mail.

[brooklin]

>>>> Lieutenant Colonel Marcel de Haas, Russian security researcher at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael, was not convinced of the plane’s bright future.

“My impression is that this new fighter plane is also more propaganda than a real expectancy,” he told Reuters by e-mail.

That would be nice...

[Ronin]

I thought the Foxbat used vacuum tubes to improve avionics endurance, and boost its radar output.

It did. And it was an impressive adaptation of old tech to new uses, but it also had the virtue of necessity. The old CCCP simply didn't have the tech base to make the modern avionics used in virtually every western aircraft, in sufficient reliable quantities to equip even their most sophisticated front-line aircraft. Nor could they buy or steal sufficient quantities. Western built aircraft got the same level of performance (or better) using modern avionics. Think about it. If vacuum tubes had been the way to go, we would have been using them as well.

And this is where the comparison between the MiG-25 and the PAK-FA break down.

It is far much easier for the Russians to buy the tech needed on the open market than it used to be, so I do not expect the PAK-FA to be the paper tiger the Foxbat was. But, and as Lando says, this is a big but, when moving from prototype to production aircraft, the devil is in the details.

This is going to be massively expensive. Factories are going to have to be built, raw materials are going to have to be secured, etc., etc., etc. Just gathering the trained workers necessary is at least a two or three year evolution because many will have to be educated from scratch.

It's a bluff. A typical Russian growl, make faces, thump chest, bluff.

[James C. Bennett]

Cool, thanks for the detailed reply!