Forum: F-35 versus XYZ

When I saw the title, I thought "compete" means a potential future combat in Korea among F-35, T-50, F-15E ... and maybe J-20?

For acquisition, I don't think there will be a competition. F-15SE and Typhoon are nothing better except they are available now.
And will T-50 really sell to S. Korea? I don't think so.

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Um.. this is old news.
Sukhoi did not bother submitt any application to attend to the explanatory FX-III program sesion.

There might be several reasons, but one is the aggresive time line, Sukhoi wont finnish in time.
That may be the same deal with the F-15SE, they are way behind the squedule from this tender.

haavarla wrote:

Um.. this is old news.
Sukhoi did not bother submitt any application to attend to the explanatory FX-III program sesion.

There might be several reasons, but one is the aggresive time line, Sukhoi wont finnish in time.
That may be the same deal with the F-15SE, they are way behind the squedule from this tender.

Um.. most of this thread dates back to before August, 2011. It is old news that the PAK-FA isn't going to be South Korea's next new fighter.

munny's post from April, 2012 is the news:

mummy wrote:

There's talk that one of the 3 PAK FA prototypes has been removed from their test program due to terminal structural cracking issues. This is before it entered high AOA testing too. Not good considering their program has completed less than 200 flights in 2 1/2 years since the first flight ...

And if at least 1/3 (that we know of) of all PAK-FAs are cracking apart so badly it's not even seen as worth fixing it/them, after at most 200 flights (assuming this is #1 and it did all the actual flights) of fairly gentle preliminary testing, that is news. At least here. Unless you can point to a previous thread where you or someone else mentioned the retirement of one of the T-50s for unrepairable cracking before 4/4/2012.

To put it in perspective, though, I don't think this means anything close to, "PAK-FA is doomed." It means only, "the T-50 is really more equivalent to the X-35 than the F-35, technology demonstrator rather than near-production prototype, and like all putative 5th generation fighters, it will have a prolonged and expensive development period before the real PAK-FA product reaches IOC a decade or so after Sukhoi's current public timeline, with significant changes including weight gain and some slipped KPPs." Hmm...

...so maybe it's not actually news after all?

River Otter@
I was responding to Megasun post above.

The T-50-01 has been grounded due to cracks.
According to AI, it says nothing about the T-50-02 and 03.

We know the T-50-02 are flying due to reecent photos.
But we can expect that the T-50s on the floor will see some re-designing on internal structure to fix this problem.
The T-50-03 were hauled to Moscow, It would have the AESA and other system installed there. I do not have pointers that it has been hauled back to KnAAPO, for for any reason.

My point is we do not know the extent of how many difference/improvments the T-50-01, 02 and 03 sports. We can only see the obviously external ones..
For all that we know the 02 and 03 allready has addresed this issue.

haavarla wrote:

River Otter@
I was responding to Megasun post above.

The T-50-01 has been grounded due to cracks.
According to AI, it says nothing about the T-50-02 and 03.

True. It doesn't say the other two are days away from being retired too. But it doesn't say they're free of cracking issues and are guaranteed to fly 2000-3000 hours each, either. There is also the possibility it's just a flaw in 01, not a design failure but a manufacturing failure. Russia has relatively little experience with composite materials, maybe they just built a lemon before the workers got the hang of gluing the fiber layers together.

Quote:

...

My point is we do not know the extent of how many difference/improvments the T-50-01, 02 and 03 sports. We can only see the obviously external ones..
For all that we know the 02 and 03 allready has addresed this issue.

For all we know they haven't addressed it. Let's face it, the complete retirement of 01 wasn't going to be easy to conceal. They had to know that was going to be bad press. If they could say the structural issues have been addressed by 02 or even 03, that would completely mitigate the bad press. But they didn't say that. They didn't say it before the retirement of 01 (when it could've caused the bad press in the first place but also ensured it stayed small) and they didn't say it now, when they have nothing to lose. Unless, that is, they're hoping to conceal the impending failure of 02 and 03 until they actually can fix the design and roll out a modified 04. Or unless they were caught by surprise with how bad the structural problems with 01 were, and therefore couldn't have known they needed to re-design the plane before 02 or even 03. Or unless they simply don't know why 01 failed but suspect it's just a lemon and the other two were built correctly, and are banking on their non-failure to let 01's problems blow over.

So you're right, we don't know either way yet. My bet is they're going to fix it, but only before the next airframe. 02 and 03 will also have short but useful lives testing aerodynamics, avionics, and LO features, and doing gentle airshow performances in front of potential customers, before their structure gives out.

Maybe they can contract LMT to fix the cracks. They have a lot of experience in the field.

Last edited by haavarla on Apr 06, 2012 - 01:53 AM; edited 1 time in total

River_otter@

We're pretty much on the same page here.
But there is one more thing here. Namely the two ground based prototypes produced before the flying ones.
One of them are put on the stress test bench, i believe i've seen some photos as well.
This airframe must started stress testing pretty early prior to the T-50-01 started flying.
And by this, KnAAPO must by now started to see stuff or issues start to surface.
This is why i suggested that there could very well be internal defference on the three flying prototypes. The Date that seperate these flying T-50s are signifficant.

My point is, the Pak-Fa program is not all about the three flying prototype..

They must not have progressed very far with their static structural testing program if the problems manifested in a flying aircraft.. or maybe they just wanted to validate the data wring whatever useful,hours of flying time they could get out of 01. Either way, not an auspicious sign.

- double post-

popcorn wrote:

They must not have progressed very far with their static structural testing program if the problems manifested in a flying aircraft.. or maybe they just wanted to validate the data wring whatever useful,hours of flying time they could get out of 01. Either way, not an auspicious sign.

http://www.vayuaerospace.in/images1/Russia_T-50.pdf

According to this, there was only one structural test bird (T-50-0), and it can't have undergone all that much testing in the relatively short time frame the Russians seem to have.

southernphantom wrote:

popcorn wrote:

They must not have progressed very far with their static structural testing program if the problems manifested in a flying aircraft.. or maybe they just wanted to validate the data wring whatever useful,hours of flying time they could get out of 01. Either way, not an auspicious sign.

http://www.vayuaerospace.in/images1/Russia_T-50.pdf

According to this, there was only one structural test bird (T-50-0), and it can't have undergone all that much testing in the relatively short time frame the Russians seem to have.

I wouldn't have wanted to be the one to break the news to Uncle Vlad.

If I recall, the term "4th generation fighter" came from Lockheed, during their pitch to Congress for the F-22.
Does anyone know of any official sources, documents etc, defining a "generation" of combat aircraft.
Thanks.
paul Cheers

fox18fox wrote:

If I recall, the term "4th generation fighter" came from Lockheed, during their pitch to Congress for the F-22.
Does anyone know of any official sources, documents etc, defining a "generation" of combat aircraft.
Thanks.
paul Cheers

There's no official or standard definition of the term. It may have started out as a marketing term but it has been adopted in defense circles as a convenient means of classifying and differentiating aircraft.

popcorn wrote:

fox18fox wrote:

If I recall, the term "4th generation fighter" came from Lockheed, during their pitch to Congress for the F-22.
Does anyone know of any official sources, documents etc, defining a "generation" of combat aircraft.
Thanks.
paul Cheers

There's no official or standard definition of the term. It may have started out as a marketing term but it has been adopted in defense circles as a convenient means of classifying and differentiating aircraft.

Hi Thanks for answering.
Yes, I've even heard aircraft described as [Link pending approval] generation, I guess,based on the newest avionics added to legacy era designs. I would say an airframe designed in the late 80's or 90's would be "legacy" jets? Interesting that LM is throwing the "5th generation term" around and well deserved with the F-35. If I were a competitor, my next design would be a "7th [Link pending approval]; Why not take artistic license with that, kind of like building fancy new speakers that go all the way up to "11"
Beer

fox18fox wrote:

popcorn wrote:

fox18fox wrote:

If I recall, the term "4th generation fighter" came from Lockheed, during their pitch to Congress for the F-22.
Does anyone know of any official sources, documents etc, defining a "generation" of combat aircraft.
Thanks.
paul Cheers

There's no official or standard definition of the term. It may have started out as a marketing term but it has been adopted in defense circles as a convenient means of classifying and differentiating aircraft.

Hi Thanks for answering.
Yes, I've even heard aircraft described as 4.5 generation, I guess,based on the newest avionics added to legacy era designs. I would say an airframe designed in the late 80's or 90's would be "legacy" jets? Interesting that LM is throwing the "5th generation term" around and well deserved with the F-35. If I were a competitor, my next design would be a "7th Generation." Why not take artistic license with that, kind of like building fancy new speakers that go all the way up to "11"
Beer

About a decade ago Mark Lorell from the Rand Corporation wrote a great overview of the US combat aviation industry. Its worth a read for anybody interested in this area.

He identified several distinct technological periods of development:

1: Subsonic jet era: 1945-1953.
2: Early Supersonic Jet revolution: 1953-1962
3: Supersonic Technology Refinement 1962-1972
4: Agile Supersonic Era: 1973-1981
5: Stealth revolution: 1981- onwards.

These categories roughly reflect the generation identifiers discussed. The main difference is that 5th generation definition now also includes sensor integration, which tends to be limited in 4th generation aircraft.

The 4++ fighters tend to have some low observable features (Rafale and Super hornet) and networking capabilities (Hornet.)

As someone said above, while LM might have coined these terms, they are based on a strong analytical foundation, and not some marketing ploy.

Forum: F-35 versus XYZ

F-35 & T-50 PAK-FA Compete S. Korea + F-15E + Typhoon