Russian Su-57 Aircraft Thread (PAK-FA and IAF FGFA)

[Air Force Brat]

Well in 2025 Or 2030 sure. But given it's now 2019 and Russian orders are still nebulous they seem to have all the time in the world. I am starting to suspect F22 will get it's mid life overhaul before SU57 goes to production.

Brat I disagree. SU57 is a fifth gen in that it was designed from day zero to have a very small RCS. However I don't think anything we have seen is the "real" Su57. With maybe a bakers dozen and counting these birds are Russia still early in there Stealth learning cycle. By the time we had YF22 we had already flown YF117, F117, B2, Senior Trend, Senior Prom, Tacit Blue and many more LO experimental Types. The Russians don't have that history. The Chinese J20 started out looking totally different from those we see today and was a constant evolution as each early prototype evolved until they nailed the current block.
The Russians seem to be in that early stage working through prototype to prototype to learn LO through trial and Error as well as constant remodels. One issue we see is clearly the type using "bolt on" features.
Again I disagree on this one but because we have some other Fifth gens in the works that trade off more LO for cost and payload. Even F35 trades some LO when B and C pack there gun pods.
Clearly The Su57 That exists today are far more LO than any previous Russian machine.



"The Russians have openly said they focused on maneuver and post thrust maneuver over RCS reduction."

So Bub, you disagreed with me at the beginning of your post, but towards the end, you did agree with me by stating what I stated above, the Russians did not make L/O the priority

I think you convinced yourself, quite convincingly!

including the OVT was always the plan to achieve "post stall" maneuverability, the F-35 does that without OVT......this summers Demo Team will demonstrate a 9G break-out, its very difficult to quantify how the Su-57 will beat that,, when it too is designed as a 9G airplane....

 

[TerraN_EmpirE]

including the OVT was always the plan to achieve "post stall" maneuverability, the F-35 does that without OVT......this summers Demo Team will demonstrate a 9G break-out, its very difficult to quantify how the Su-57 will beat that,, when it too is designed as a 9G airplane....

They actually have a thrust Vectoring Nozzle in the F35 the multi-axis thrust vectoring (MATV) system which is still in the F35B as part of the lift system 3 barring swivel nozzle (which is not a licensed nore copy of the Yak141) it's used in that to control vertical hover although it might be used in maneuver. Always felt that should be on A at least.

In any case most of my pessimism of Su57 is that it seems like it's no where near ready to compete. From bolt on systems to the

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it seems like 4+++ systems in a 5 gen airframe.
few years maybe.

 

[Air Force Brat]

They actually have a thrust Vectoring Nozzle in the F35 the multi-axis thrust vectoring (MATV) system which is still in the F35B as part of the lift system 3 barring swivel nozzle (which is not a licensed nore copy of the Yak141) it's used in that to control vertical hover although it might be used in maneuver. Always felt that should be on A at least.

In any case most of my pessimism of Su57 is that it seems like it's no where near ready to compete. From bolt on systems to the

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it seems like 4+++ systems in a 5 gen airframe.
few years maybe.

and here again we agree completely on the Su-57 being a 4+++ airplane....

On the F-35B the Aft lift nozzle will never be used in ACM, it only deflects downward, OVT is primarily used to increase positive "pitch rate" in ACM, with the "locks off" the FCS, AF-2 has been to 9.9 positive G's, on production aircraft the A model "locks out" at 9G's......

So OVT would be overkill on the F-35, watch the F-35 demo teaser's out now, the first show will be in about 2 weeks, there's a real 9G break-out, of course the "silly people" will continue to "parrot" their "F-35 can't turn Krap", but that keeps it fun, doesn't it....

I can assure you the F-35 has all the negative G "pitch rate" anybody can stand, my buddy "Klepto" suggested that more than 2 G's negative was hell, and he might have been to negative 3G's, but he didn't think so? he's an F-22 stick, flew the F-22 out for "static displays"...

I tried to pry some information out of the Su-57 out of him?? he just smiled..... you're right again, in its present state the Su-57 is unlikely to be a factor?

 

[Tirdent]

They actually have a thrust Vectoring Nozzle in the F35 the multi-axis thrust vectoring (MATV) system which is still in the F35B as part of the lift system 3 barring swivel nozzle (which is not a licensed nore copy of the Yak141) it's used in that to control vertical hover although it might be used in maneuver. Always felt that should be on A at least.

Actually the MATV 3D TVC nozzle isn't used on any F-35 variant - are you thinking of the non-TVC LOAN (Low-Observable Axisymmetric Nozzle) which was likewise first flown on a F-16 test bed? That indeed formed the basis for the production F135 nozzle. As for the 3BSN on the F-35B, it's useless in wing-borne flight because the arc through which the nozzle can move in the pitch axis only goes from straight aft to -95° (slightly forward of staight down) and no left/right movement is possible in the retracted position.

In any case most of my pessimism of Su57 is that it seems like it's no where near ready to compete. From bolt on systems to the

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it seems like 4+++ systems in a 5 gen airframe.

The two Su-57 15" main displays (i.e. not counting possible secondary & stand-by displays which we don't know about) have slightly more screen area than the F-22 primary, three secondary and two auxiliary displays put together. More than the 20"x8" F-35 panoramic screen, too.

Quite apart from that, the cockpit says nothing about the underlying data processing architecture.

 

[gelgoog]

Actually the MATV 3D TVC nozzle isn't used on any F-35 variant - are you thinking of the non-TVC LOAN (Low-Observable Axisymmetric Nozzle) which was likewise first flown on a F-16 test bed? That indeed formed the basis for the production F135 nozzle. As for the 3BSN on the F-35B, it's useless in wing-borne flight because the arc through which the nozzle can move in the pitch axis only goes from straight aft to -95° (slightly forward of staight down) and no left/right movement is possible in the retracted position.

The two Su-57 15" main displays (i.e. not counting possible secondary & stand-by displays which we don't know about) have slightly more screen area than the F-22 primary, three secondary and two auxiliary displays put together. More than the 20"x8" F-35 panoramic screen, too.

Quite apart from that, the cockpit says nothing about the underlying data processing architecture.

Your average smartphone would have more processing power than the compute elements in the F-22. That's how old it is.
It's always interesting to see people compare the Su-57 against US platforms when they don't even seem to understand how limited they are. Let alone a plane which hasn't even entered production.

 

[Brumby]

the cockpit says nothing about the underlying data processing architecture.

Bingo. The SU-57 is still considered work in progress by all accounts. For all we know, the Russians may still be working on the avionics and sensors for another ten years. There is no finished product to talk about unlike the F-22 which has been flying in active service for many years. Any attempts at comparison is frivolous at best.

In any case 5th gen has moved away from technological stuff like OVT and super cruise - they are periphery. The 5th gen battlespace is about information and therefore about avionics, sensors, and information fusion. Situation awareness dominates every encounter, as was in history and so is in the future.

In fact speed literally kills. An aircraft leading-edge temperature increases with aircraft speed The detection range from IR sensors increase by a factor of 3 between sub sonic speed at 0.8 mach vs speed at 1.8 mach. Having supercruise sounds great but its utility has diminished in the age of IR sensors.



Take another say with OVT and maneuverability. Looks great at air shows but then again tactics win a fight. A VLO plane with sensor fusion will kill you off anytime from BVR. It is beyond moronic going for ACM. You have to trap a F-22/F-35 to get into ACM but good luck with their god's eye view.

A recent story coming off 2019 Red Flag is a rookie pilot with 150 hours in a F-35 was alerting an experienced pilot (with 3000 flying hours) in a 4th gen aircraft that an aggressor aircraft was coming at it and it should vector out of danger. That is information power.

 

[gelgoog]

Even the Su-35 has some degree of sensor fusion. Prior Russian aircraft did not use such architectures because of lack of processing power. That isn't an issue anymore. While the Su-57 might not have the same degree of software sophistication as the F-35 it should have more than the F-22 has for one.

 

[Air Force Brat]

Your average smartphone would have more processing power than the compute elements in the F-22. That's how old it is.
It's always interesting to see people compare the Su-57 against US platforms when they don't even seem to understand how limited they are. Let alone a plane which hasn't even entered production.

Spoken by an average "internet expert" as reported to him by "Siri"! yep, thank you Siri!

 

[Brumby]

Even the Su-35 has some degree of sensor fusion. Prior Russian aircraft did not use such architectures because of lack of processing power. That isn't an issue anymore.

… so has Rafael and Typhoon. Just because they claim they have it doesn't mean their capabilities can be said in the same sentence. This is a thread on the SU-57 and I am mindful of not over extending a conversation about other planes as it will be off topic.

While the Su-57 might not have the same degree of software sophistication as the F-35 it should have more than the F-22 has for one.

That is a very bold claim to be making. Is the word "should" an aspirational word in meaning like this kid? LOL.

[/QUOTE]

 

[gelgoog]

No. It's just what one can get from reading about the Su-35 avionics capabilities and the discussed Su-57 avionics capabilities.
The F-22 does not have the same degree of sensor fusion and initially it did not even have a proper two-way data link capability. It did not have support for off-boresight IR missiles either. It does not have an IRST sensor. Need I go on? It does have the AESA radar but other than that it's not that sophisticated. Most of the processing power is used on the AESA radar rather than other higher level computations. The reason why I know the Su-57 will have better avionics software and computational units than the F-22 is because even the Su-35 is better at that. There are reports even in this forum about the pilot assists on the Su-35. Supposedly the Su-57 does that even better (the Russians call it an 'AI'). The pilot assists include both threat classification and weapons selection.

AFAIK that is something that only the F-35 is supposed to have. With regards to the Eurofighter and the Rafale, the Eurofighter has really ancient onboard computers which thus far the founder nations refuse to upgrade. So it's not even at the F-22 level. Your smartwatch probably has more computer power.

Compare the compute power of a leading edge processor of the F-22 era like the DEC Alpha 21264 CPU with the CPU you would have in a smartphone like, say, the Kirin 980 in a Huawei smartphone. The Kirin 980 has 6.9 billion transistors while the Alpha 21264 has 15.2 million transistors. That's over 450x more transistors. It even has more compute power than the original F-35 hardware architecture which was based on the PowerPC architecture.