[lbryce]

The Russian stealth fighter has VTOL capability as demonstrated in the video.

[hosepipe]

Have the democrats sold or given the russians and chinese the plans for F-22 YET!....

Nevermind... I just read the article.. amazing the similarities..

[paul51]

don’t know enough about the capabilities of this plane and you may be right however the photo looks like it could also be a climb out.

[TalonDJ]

Highly doubtful.

[steve86]

No VTOL that I could see. But the video was alternately buffering and jerky.

[Tallguy]

Looks like a technology testbed aircraft. Those air intakes are very large, and very square. Side-aspect looks pretty good until you get underneath and there looks to be a pylon there for external stores???

Looks like the Russians — in typical Russian fashion — are going to do incremental improvements until they eventually get something approaching the F-22.

[org.whodat]

http://m.yahoo.com/w/news_america/pentagon-successfully-tests-hypersonic-flying-bomb-175200001.html?orig_host_hdr=news.yahoo.com&.intl=us&.lang=en-us

[Tallguy]

Didn’t see any demonstration of VTOL in that video. I highly doubt that has that capability. If you notice, the only 2 western combat jets that have VSTOL (Harrier & F-35) are both single-engine jets. I think that greatly simplifies the problem of vectoring thrust. 2 engines would never deliver EXACTLY the same thrust, making VSTOL much more difficult.

I believe the Russian YAK, that used to be carried on Russian aviation cruisers, was also a single engine VSTOL strike jet.

[GonzoGOP]

It’s going to be interesting to see how fast Sukhoi can get the stealth jet to the international market — and if it does, how much of a competitor to the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will it prove to be?

Considering that the F-35 now costs more than the F-22, and is yet to go into series production the chances are fairly good. If the Russians can actually get something that is producible, flyable and affordable they win. It isn't very hard to win air superiority from a $183 million dollar PowerPoint presentation.