Quote:
Originally Posted by Panther Al
At the risk of sounding jingo-istic, I can't really buy into drinking the koolaid that people drink when it comes to russian designs.
It is a fact I'll accept that there has been a massive improvement over the cold war designs in Russian Fighter development, but not that much. Reliability is still the killer in Russian Aircraft. Everyone that has bought russian have all said the maintenance expenditures have all climbed to levels of total insanity. Particularly the engines. China might still be buying russian engines, but thats more a case of how bad Chinese High Performance Jet Engine development is going than anything else: they are spending vast sums trying to get a engine that is reliable in production. P&W has made some effort to develop replacement engines for the russian ones, but so far Russia sells them so cheap that no one has bit on the idea. The only real reason for russian aircraft sales has been based on cost more than capability. They are good: In fact Aerodynamically, they are *very* excellent, but they can not compete with top end western designs with less than a 3 to 1 ratio in favour of the russian birds. Quality of electronics counts for far more in the air than anywhere else.
Of course, the opinions here are just mine, and is only worth what those sorts are worth, but...
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I won't deny that reliability has been an issue with Russian aircraft, although what they export may not be as well built as what they build for themselves as no Russian aerospace designer or engineer wants to end up in a Russian prison. However the factor of a quality lag in current Russian designs may be misplaced and is perhaps a lingering Western notion from when such assumptions were justified about 20 years ago. If you look at some of the engine, sensor and weapon technology that goes into current Russian fighters, the technology gap between the West and Russia is not that great outside of stealth technology.
In engines the supercruise AL-31F-117C of the Su-35 has performance figures which may indicate that Russia has closed much of the gap America opened up with the F119/F135 family of the engines. FADEC systems are also available for a range of recent Russian engines, including the AL-31F-117C, and any lead America and Europe hold over Russian engines is largely down to maturity of software. To date the only Western fighter with thrust vectoring nozzles is the F-22, while Russia has already exported them in a range of Flanker variants.
In avionics Russia introduced quadruply redundant digital flight control systems back in the 1990’s and offers them on all Flankers, including Su-27 rebuilds. Russian fighters have also long used digital data links. Intraflight data link technology to network flights of fighters to share sensor data between multiple fighters is now offered on all Russian fighters, while inertial and satellite navigation equipment is also widely availability in the global market. All Russian fighters also use glass cockpits, and the Su-35 uses two large area panels similar to the projector screen arrangement of the F-35. What advantage the US and Europe hold over Russian technology in avionics is largely based upon the maturity of software and this gap is not expected to last for long, but America does retain a lead in wide areas of GPS technology.
In sensors Russian technology matches or in some cases exceeds current Western technology. The radar of the Mig-35 is of similar technology to the F-22, and the Su-35 has radar comparable to the Rafale’s with the largest antenna of any fighter, and a range similar to the F-22's APG-77. The Russians have also developed up-to-date radar pseudo-noise waveform coding techniques. America retains a lead in active module technology and software, but only the radar of the F-22 is better than Russian radars in range performance. In radar warning receivers, homing and warning systems and ESM the Russian Khibiny M system intended for Su-35 uses the same channelized receiver technology as the F-22, and any lead America or Europe has is based solely on software and gallium arsenide chip packaging. Russia also offers for export advanced radio frequency jammers such as DRFM and towed decoy. Some Russian jamming equipment is better than Western equivalents. The KNIRTI Sorbstiya jam pod carried by numerous Flankers has a wideband phased array RF stage that is more effective against monopulse emitters, and is more sophisticated than the wideband horn or lens emitters in Western fighters.
Since the end of the Cold War the Russians have seriously improved the technology they use in smart bombs. The KAB-500/1500 is available with lock-on-before launch electro-optical guidance comparable to the EGBU-15 series, semi-active laser homing guidance comparable to Paveway series, and satellite and inertial guidance comparable to the JDAM. Russia has also closed much of the former gap in active radar guided missiles, with the R-77 Adder's Agat and R-27 missile using the same American designed digital processors as most Western equivalents.
The Su-35BM/S Flanker outclasses almost every Western fighter at the moment in all round ability except for the F-22. Late model AESA equipped F-15’s would match a Su-35BM/S in some areas, and the Typhoon is superior to it in close combat agility and dash speed, but only an F-22 is significantly better than it. However by looking at the stats for the new Sukhoi PAK-FA the lead enjoyed by the F-22 over Russian fighters may not last to much longer.