Video: Russia’s Third Stealth Jet Flies

DefenseTech ^ | November 22, 2011 | Staff

[lbryce]

For more Thanksgiving week entertainment, check out this video of Russia’s third stealth fighter making one of its very first flights. The video below shows the third Sukhoi T-50 PAK FA flying recently, nearly two years after the very first T-50 made its first flight. Remember, Russia is hoping to get the jet, designed to be a less stealthy but more maneuverable competitor to the F-22 Raptor, into service by the middle of the decade. India has already signed off to build about 200 of the jets under license. South Korea and even Venezuela are reportedly interested in the jet, too.

Remember that the second PAK FA suffered an engine flame-out at the Moscow air show earlier this year (that’s the second jet shown above). That came after the jet was grounded for months following its initial flights. 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?

A larger screen video is available by going directly to the Russian site.
http://www.vesti.ru/videos?vid=377869

[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.

[Sequoyah101]

No, sending plans is too hard, obastard shut down the line and shipped them all the tooling they need. Lockheed got their silver and we got the shaft.

[TalonDJ]

Highly doubtful.

[newnhdad]

Raptorski?

[ZX12R]

Raptorski?

Large radar and heat signature-orski.

[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]

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

The Yak-38 had one Tumansky R-28 V-300 vectored thrust main engine and two Rybinsk RD-38 lift engines mounted behind the pilot. It also had critically short range of only around 800 miles. On the up side it only cost $18 million a copy so you could get ten for the cost of an F-35.

[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.

[Tallguy]

Thanks! Hadn’t seen much of the YAK-38 and forgot a lot of the details. The write-up in Wikki suggested that initially the “Forger” was limited to VTOL (no rolling take-offs). But their shipboard vertical landing was “hands-off”! Looks like they’re mostly retired now, or at least that they’re none serving at sea.

[lbryce]

Incredible! Thanks very much for sharing.

[GonzoGOP]

Looks like they’re mostly retired now, or at least that they’re none serving at sea.

The retired the Kiev class so the Yak-38 no longer had a reason to exist. It never was a very good aircraft, it was just all they had that could operate from the Kiev class.

VTOL is hard to do. Only the Brits have done it right so far. The F-35 might be able to do it, if it actually flys. Of course the F-35B (STOVL) also suffers from dismal range and bomb load. It is a trait of any VTOL/STOVL aircraft. Those lift fans and extra engines take up space that otherwise could be fuel or bombs.

[cunning_fish]

BTW, F-35 is built around and old Soviet technology.
It is not if it is not seriously upgraded but still F-35 is looking more like a Yak-141 Freestyle than any other jet.