Three-time world champion in practical shooting, Roman Khalitov, developed a camouflage raincoat with thermal imager protection for snipers. Russian winter camouflage works on the principle of a thermal barrier, it contains an air layer with thermo-reflective elements closed on both sides. Protective camouflage has already begun to be produced in small batches. The video shows a camouflage being checked with a thermal imager.
Russian Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
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For reference on the whole subject of commercial passenger aircraft operating at supersonic velocity and why nobody makes them even though they are definitely within human reach see this:
A shorter summary of it is that it's just not maximally profitable.
Commercial/passenger aircraft are for business first. In other words, it's all about the money.
Problem is, that there was no viable way to make a profit on this plane in the long run.
Initially, the plane did make a profit, but that was because it was the new cool thing that everybody wanted to try. So the demand was high enough that they could stuff people inside of it like sardines packed to the very rim.
Stuffing this many people inside each and every plane ride was the only way to make a profit, and even then the profit margin as well as gross revenue per flight was just not as good as many other aircraft and flight routes who have had long established history of success.
Therefore, even if profit, revenue, demand, and the novelty "ohhhhh wowowowo cooooool" factor of this type of supersonic flight had stayed forever (not possible at all BTW) it would've simply made more sense to still get rid of the this kind of plane since your company would be making more money going with other planes.
Of course, the novelty wore off so demand died down. Each flight eventually became ledss and less filled with passengars, a.ka. paying customers, until it actually was a loss to operate. A loss per every flight.
Biggest reasons why this type of aircraft has such difficulty being profitable is:
1) Initial upfront cost is already overly-excessively high due to the challenges of supersonic cruise.
2) Supersonic velocity also means tremendous maintenance, repair, and upkeep cost due to the strain, stress, and wear/tear on the plane because of this inconvenient thing called physics.
3) Obviously, this is going to use a lot of fuel to do supersonic cruise.
4) Physical limitations mean that the plane cannot 'stuff' as man;y people since it has to fly supersonic, fuel tanks need to be big to fly supersonic once again, not a lot of room for baggage/luxury stuff that makes the flight enjoyable because of need for big fuel tanks and 'slim' design to lower air frction drag/slowdown.
5) Stuffing passengers this densely means that people end up not enjoying the flight and just overall don't like the whole experience because people are awkwardly packed too closely to strangers sitting in small seats with uncofortable posture...even under 'normal' flights nobody actually likes flying but now it's even worse.
6) Lower number of both business and first-class seats means that you are losing the very best profit-per-booty (I had to, LOL)....seriously though, commercial passenger flgihts basically don't care about coach class. In fact, they don't even care aobut first class as much as you would think. It's business class that they care about. Because Business class section is where they make the biggest profit. First class is so spacious that the first class cabin cannot stuff enough customers to make as much money as business class. But business class is the perfect balance between taking up square footage vs revenue per customer. Additionally, business class customers are disproportionately composed of people who are getting their flights paid for by their employers or at least not themselves. Therefore, they end up spending a ton of money on luxuries/random stuff while flying. And unlike first-class customers whom are more easily upset or dissatisfied and thus take their business elsewhere, business class cusotmers typically have little to no choice but to accept whatever their employer offers. Additionally, since it's usually employers buying the flights this means that they typically have a long establishd business relationship with the flight company...meaning a stable and long term source of income/revenue for the company.
All in all, I don't doubt that the Russians are capable of making this succeed in purely technical terms, but the problem is, as always, the fucking customer...they're just too damn hard to please, too easy to upset, and too much power in the business relationship if they start working in numbers.
But who knows. It's been decades since the original Concorde, and that's equivalent to an eternity in technology. Maybe things have changed enough to lower the costs of operation of this platform or have improved the overall experience enough to change consumer's minds.
Imo the demand for a type of flight that goes faster than the 15 hours or so it takes to do a real long haul flight is just not there.
By going supersonic, one could cut 15 hours flight down to 8 hours perhaps. But what kind of customer needs to travel such a distance and also strongly needs to do it in 8 rather than 15 hours?
It can only be good if it costs almost the same as a normal airline. I don't see that as remotely likely though.
By going supersonic, one could cut 15 hours flight down to 8 hours perhaps. But what kind of customer needs to travel such a distance and also strongly needs to do it in 8 rather than 15 hours?
It can only be good if it costs almost the same as a normal airline. I don't see that as remotely likely though.
Multiple project pushed for a supersonic business jet and nothing crossed the finish line... cannot see how a commercial flight supersonic jet would achieve anything else..
is this posted before? as this will be related to confidence in building more high speed planes efficiently. 4 Tu-160M in a year new level of capability in delivery.
so far in aviation this has set direction
Su-34M with pods that made Tu-214R redundant. and this will have impact on enhancing effectiveness of drones and other aviation.
This Tu-160 project is the answer to every thing from autonomous drones drop may as well be sea drones to airborne AWACS with significant loitering time like that Israeli high altitude AWACS. I have read current A-50U only 50 to 100km against plastic drones.
Su-57 with drones.
Putin used most modern version of IL-96 (RA-96024 entered service 2021) but he still need Su-35 protection. fighters are much easily upgraded than larger planes.
most modern version of aircraft was used to the test long range missile on Su-34.
so far in aviation this has set direction
Su-34M with pods that made Tu-214R redundant. and this will have impact on enhancing effectiveness of drones and other aviation.
This Tu-160 project is the answer to every thing from autonomous drones drop may as well be sea drones to airborne AWACS with significant loitering time like that Israeli high altitude AWACS. I have read current A-50U only 50 to 100km against plastic drones.
Su-57 with drones.
Putin used most modern version of IL-96 (RA-96024 entered service 2021) but he still need Su-35 protection. fighters are much easily upgraded than larger planes.
most modern version of aircraft was used to the test long range missile on Su-34.
There is also the issue of the sonic boom, which is what limited the Concorde to overwater flights as regulations forbade it for going supersonic over populated land. This limits a lot of the economic potential for it.
I forgot to mention but you actually touched upon another reason why the Concorde and supersonic commercial flights are not as profitable as just normal 747s.
By cutting down the flight time it actually makes the customer more uncomfortable for his vacation/business trip.
With 'long' flights like 10 hours, 12 hours, 15 hours etc. the customer has already planned for basically 2 days worth of traveling before settling into the destination.
So basically I will fly on Saturday, arrive on Sunday, and then begin my business trip as usual on Monday where I had a full night's of good rest so that my head is sharp for this trip.
Same thing with vacations.
But if you make the guy fly on Sunday or just give one day of warning then you are rushing the guy very quickly from waking up in the morning to getting his travel iterniery very tight and no room for error. He will arrive at his destination less than 100% and the trip or vacation is going to start off on the wrong foot right on the very first day.
All the major airlines found that they made MUCH more higher, had more customer loyalty, and higher satisfaction when they simply gave more space to passengers and made longer but comfortable flights as opposed to stuffing people like sardines and speed running through the atmosphere.
Your arguments were also used at one point to justify sea travel over air travel, or rail travel over air travel. In the end of the faster mode of transportation won out. Basically no one uses the slow modes of transport if they can avoid it.
The main issue Russia has is that their market might not be large enough to justify the expense of designing an aircraft like this. But if they reuse the engines of some existing aircraft that will make the project substantially more affordable. If they can crack the noise issue and the aircraft can overfly land, it will find a client base.
The main issue Russia has is that their market might not be large enough to justify the expense of designing an aircraft like this. But if they reuse the engines of some existing aircraft that will make the project substantially more affordable. If they can crack the noise issue and the aircraft can overfly land, it will find a client base.
These are not my arguments.
These are the discoveries of all the major commercial airliners along with the airline industry as a whole after the post-concorde experiment, and after extensive data analysis of the empirical facts.
Nobody is arguing against faster travel, and things have certainly changed in the 40 or so years that the Concorde was retired.
But the problem remains that there is more profit to be made using already established and longstanding profitable business models of simply 747s and the other 'popular' commercial airframes.
and that is the key point here.
that the reason why supersonic commercial flights don't replace existing airframes is not because they aren't profitable or that they can't be made to be profitable, but it's that there is an alternative that is even more profitable and it's a very familiar business model. Existing airframes.
that's what's truly killing th is project. Business decision.
If you run a business and your business has been successfully profitable doing the same old thing over and over again forever now to the point where you can basically just leave the whole company alone and collect an easy goldmine of money than you are highly unlikely to decide to change all of this to accommodate a new business model where you are actually making less money than before and you must dedicate all of your energy and waking moments to babysit this new business venture.
Same principle.
Supersonic commercial airframes even when they make money don't make as good money as currently existing airframes.
Which is why the challenge right now is not a matter of engineering or technology (sort of), it's a challenge of cost reduction and revenue maximization.
In order to secure the future of supersonic commercial flights we basically have to make these planes a higher profit than 'normal' airplanes.
It's certainly possible since nobody has actually tried it in 40 years or so with any serious effort, but the problem is certainly not as easily solved as comparing air travel to sea travel. That's an analogy not even close to the current one.
British Airways found the aircraft profitable to operate for them. Virgin Airways wanted to buy the Concorde as well at one point but were not allowed to. The aircraft ceased to operate because Airbus stopped giving support to it. And that is despite it being a several decades old design by the time it was retired and the sonic boom issues which prevented it from operating over continental flights. Imagine if it had enough range to do Pacific flights and didn't have the sonic boom issues and could fly overland as well. Add express boarding to whoever used the flights and I suspect it would have been quite successful. Who cares if you have little space in the aircraft if the flight takes half as long.