Oopski.
Posted on 08/16/2011 8:51:32 PM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
The new Russian fighter: shown today, here tomorrow
Manu Pubby Posted online: Wed Aug 17 2011, 03:08 hrs
Zhukovsky, Russia : For the past two weeks, Sergey L Bogdan has been missing out on his favorite hobby, playing ice hockey with friends in Moscow, a 45-minute drive from this testing facility. It has been difficult to keep away from, he says with a smile, but that is the precaution required to be able to pilot Russia’s new fifth-generation fighter and India’s future mainstay warplane on its first ever public appearance before the world. Bogdan, who is the lead test pilot for the Russian T 50 fighter, will fly the new-generation aircraft at the Moscow Air Show on Wednesday. Till now, it has been a highly secretive project to create a futuristic aircraft to match the capabilities of the American F 22 “Raptor” and F 35 fifth generation fighters.
The public appearance marks a milestone also for India, which is partially funding the fifth-generation fighter programme and will co-develop a custom made version for the Air Force with induction planned by 2018. India, which signed a contract with Russia in December last year, has described it as the “biggest defence programme ever in the history of India”. The total deal is estimated at over the $30 billion mark.
Now, Bogdan, who has flown 70 of the 80 test sorties that have been undertaken by the T 50, has for the first time come on record to say that Indian pilots will not find it difficult to fly the new-generation fighter.
“It will not be hard to master the aircraft. Each new generation of fighters are easier to fly. While the tasks and missions handled by the aircraft will be more (than previous fighters flown by IAF), we are working to make the man machine interface better,” Bogdan said, in his first ever interaction with the Indian media.
While work on the Indian version of the Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA) has just about started, Bogdan says that the first public appearance of the fighter is significant for the Indian programme as the platform is common. India has placed additional requirements that include having two pilots for the fighter that is currently flown solo by Russia. An HAL team, led by MD Ashok Nayak, is also at the air show to check on the progress of the Indian program. The FGFA will be a leap ahead of the current generation of fighters flown by the IAF and incorporates stealth technologies that will make it invisible to radars.
Bogdan, who has 4,500 flying hours to his credit and has flown most types of Russian fighters, says that two prototypes of the fighter have been developed and currently test flights are being carried out to expand the flight envelope of the fighter.
“We are currently not taking it to a stress beyond 5 g but that will start once static tests are completed. The aircraft has flown at an altitude of 15,000 metres,” says Bogdan, who underwent 400 hours of training before he undertook the first flight of the fighter in January 2010.
Russia is planning to start serial production of the fighter by 2015 and is initially expected to get 70 of the modern fighters. India has come on record to say that it is expecting induction to begin by 2018 and is planning to induct 250-300 of the fighters, making them the mainstay of IAF’s strike fleet. There is a sense of urgency within the IAF to expedite the program, given that China too has flown the first prototype of its own fifth generation fighter, the J 20, in January this year.
(The correspondent is attending the Moscow Air Show on the invitation of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation)
Nice picture of CSS Virginia.
What makes you think it was ever ditched? Gas operation is the most common semi-automatic and automatic high powered rifle action type. The M-16/AR-15 uses gas operation, in a novel direct impingement system rather than a piston, but it is still gas operated. Most semi-automatic shotguns are gas operated.
It's far from being 'ditched.'
So why is AK credited as such a breakthrough in design?
The AK wasn't a breakthrough in design. The German Sturmgewehr 44, adopted by Germany in the closing months of the war in 1944, was the first true "assault rifle" using select fire (semi or full auto,) and a medium power cartridge that was more powerful than the pistol cartridge based submachine guns of the day, yet more controllable than the full sized rifle cartridges of the day, such as the .30-06 chambered Browning Automatic Rifle.
Where the AK shone was in construction using many stamped steel parts that could be built very inexpensively, and very loose tolerances among the moving parts which let the rifle operate for an extremely long time without cleaning. The tradeoff was less accuracy.
Plus, so many of them were built by the Soviets and handed out worldwide in what was called "AK Diplomacy" that its sheer numbers ensured it would be a significant rifle in history.
Well...we'll see.
Oopski.
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