![]() How many Su-57’s will be built wasn’t revealed but a few years ago Russian officials boasted up to 200 single seat stealth fighters could boost the air force by 2020. According to Colonel General Victor Bondarev the PAK FA now has the “serial name” Su-57 and pilot training for it begins once it’s adopted by the air force. This week news agency Tass quoted an air force general who revealed the first planes will be delivered in 2018. Moreover, according to an infographic published by United Aircraft Corporation, the main weapons that are going to equip the Su-57 are capable of long ranges and some have even stealth features, meaning that the aircraft role may be to get as close as possible to air defenses and to perform stand-off attacks.Russia will soon join the very exclusive stealth club with the imminent arrival of its own fifth-generation fighter, the Su-57. The Air Force's (now part of the Aerospace Forces after the 2015 reform) main roles are to provide support for ground troops at tactical level and air defense.īecause of this and the low observability optimized mainly in the frontal sector, the Su-57 can be considered as a counter-stealth fighter, meant to get as close as possible to adversary stealth jets before engaging them. The latest Russian military doctrine, published in 2014, considers the Russian Armed Forces as defensive forces, meant to protect the country and its allies, while maintaining a strategic deterrence capability. The Russian jet seems to follow a different design philosophy. ![]() The F-22 and the F-35 are designed to project US air power both offensively and defensively in contested airspaces, penetrating Integrated Air Defence Systems (IADS) and engaging air and ground targets with minimum detection risk and maximum survivability. The aircraft is seen by many analysts as a sort of F-22/F-35 clone which presents many deficiencies and doesn't meet the design objectives. The L402 Himalayas is mounted in the tail between the engines and uses both its own arrays and the N036 arrays. The two L-band antennas are mounted in the wing's leading-edge extensions and used for the IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) and for Electronic Warfare. The side-looking radar could enable the Su-57 to employ extreme beaming tactics, where the fighter turns 90 degrees away from an enemy's pulse doppler radar exploiting the blind spot of this technology (the radar filters out low relative velocity objects and the beaming fighter, which appears stationary to the radar, disappears from the enemy radar screen) while still guiding its weapons on target. The X-band arrays are the main ones, mounted frontally in the nose and laterally in the cheeks of the forward fuselage, just below the cockpit, for a total estimated radar coverage of 270 degrees. The N036 Byelka radar features five AESA (Active Electronically Scanned Arrays) systems, three X-band and two L-band, and it's also the first AESA radar used on a Russian aircraft. The Sh121 MIRES consists of the N036 Byelka radar and the L402 Himalayas electronic counter-measures systems. The S-duct air inlet doesn't cover the entire engine face, as done for the F-22 and F-35 the problem is mitigated by the air intake screen (which then have a double function other than FOD prevention) and a radar blocker in front of the engine fan, similar to the one used by the F/A-18 Super Hornet. This means that serial production of the Su-57 may have to keep using the AL-51F-1 for the first examples and retrofit them when the new engine becomes available. The Izdeliye 30 begun flight testing in 2017 and is expected to be ready by 2025. ![]() ![]() The latter, known as Izdeliye 30 (literally Product 30) will be supposedly more efficient than previous designs, giving to the jet a top speed in excess of Mach 2 and a supercruise capability at Mach 1.3, and features 3D thrust vectoring. This engine, considered underpowered for the aircraft, is only an interim power plant until the final engine is ready. The engine that will be initially used for the Su-57 is the Saturn AL-41F-1, derived from the one used by the Su-35. The aircraft embeds some features already used on previous Russian aircraft, that give to the Su-57 the capability to operate from unprepared runways, like a rugged landing gear, mudguards, air intake screens and diverter slots to prevent FOD (Foreign Object Debris) injection. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
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