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Hello all,

I have been reading posts in these forums for a couple weeks now and finally figured I would post a discussion. I read up on the experimental su-37 / 47 and was curious how it compares to the raptor's capabilities. It is funny how it really does look like a Klingon warship from star trek with the forward swept wings. If this wing style does improve agility at slow speeds, why is it not incorporated into more fighters? Especially Navy carrier fighter planes, ie. F-35C

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The Su-47 Berkut apparently was only an experimental aircraft. Ditto the Mig 1.44. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAK_FA
The PAF KA will apparently lead to the aircraft that will attempt Cool

to counter the Raptor. One of the reasons why forward swept wings are not incorporated often is that at high speeds rotational forces build up that try to twist the wings off. This is countered by building the wings with stronger - and sometimes heavier materials. This makes the a/c heavier, not good for carrier ops. Also it is quite unstable and that's not what a pilot want when approaching a moving and bobbing carrier.

F-16.net Editor Joined: Sep 23, 2003 Posts: 2862

Kind off off topic but I thought team Flanker was putting their efforts into a brand new revamp of the SU-35 to be announced in a few months?

Fwrd swept need stronger wings. yes but 'sometimes' heavier? So not always necessarilly and maybe not a significant weight.. With the advantage of lower flight speeds required for takeoff and approach which translates to easier quicker takeoffs and shorter landing distances, it just sounds like a workable idea. I believe it also allows more range which is great for carriers. Being unstable would cause quite a snag though.

fighterfan wrote:

Fwrd swept need stronger wings. yes but 'sometimes' heavier? So not always necessarilly and maybe not a significant weight.. With the advantage of lower flight speeds required for takeoff and approach which translates to easier quicker takeoffs and shorter landing distances, it just sounds like a workable idea. I believe it also allows more range which is great for carriers. Being unstable would cause quite a snag though.

It is a good idea, and the materials are almost there as far as feasability... there's also another thingy called money, and it's been responsible for the rise or downfall of many a plane. It comes down to whether the money is better spent this way or the other, and you'd have to look at research and development costs, the costs of the light but stronger materials (which is not going to be cheap). Right now for some reason the US does not believe a forward swept wing naval fighter is a good idea. We tested the X-29 in the 80's, so I think our engineers know what it would take to make it feasable and cost effective, and apparently, we're not there yet.

That said, the Su-47 is a very interesting plane. I actually collect pictures of it which I find in the internet.

BTW, I found an official artists impression Cool

of what the PAF KA looks like. Enjoy: http://www.npo-saturn.ru/!new/photoshow ... ng=0&id=29

Enthusiast Joined: Jul 16, 2007 Posts: 38 Status: Offline

There goes the Russians again copying the U.S. That Pak-Fa looks so much like the F-22 it's not even funny.

bdn12 wrote:

There goes the Russians again copying the U.S. That Pak-Fa looks so much like the F-22 it's not even funny.

It kinda looks alot like the YF-22. I hope these guys aren't getting intel - they have no right to be in the same league as us in stealth.

Enthusiast Joined: May 31, 2007 Posts: 29 Status: Offline

Looks like external weapons carriage and conventional round nozzles... it WON'T be in the same league of stealth as the 22.

Enthusiast Joined: Mar 13, 2007 Posts: 98 Status: Offline

Tinito_16 wrote:

fighterfan wrote:

Fwrd swept need stronger wings. yes but 'sometimes' heavier? So not always necessarilly and maybe not a significant weight.. With the advantage of lower flight speeds required for takeoff and approach which translates to easier quicker takeoffs and shorter landing distances, it just sounds like a workable idea. I believe it also allows more range which is great for carriers. Being unstable would cause quite a snag though.

It is a good idea, and the materials are almost there as far as feasability... there's also another thingy called money, and it's been responsible for the rise or downfall of many a plane. It comes down to whether the money is better spent this way or the other, and you'd have to look at research and development costs, the costs of the light but stronger materials (which is not going to be cheap). Right now for some reason the US does not believe a forward swept wing naval fighter is a good idea. We tested the X-29 in the 80's, so I think our engineers know what it would take to make it feasable and cost effective, and apparently, we're not there yet.

That said, the Su-47 is a very interesting plane. I actually collect pictures of it which I find in the internet.

BTW, I found an official artists impression Cool

of what the PAF KA looks like. Enjoy: http://www.npo-saturn.ru/!new/photoshow ... ng=0&id=29

That Pak-Fa picture is almost as old as I am.

The interesting thing, or what I find interesting, is that the Ruskies are in worse shape than the USA is (financially) and we only *get* 183 F-22 airframes... How many are the other guys going to get of their crate?

I've been to Russia somewhat recently, and I don't think we've got much to worry about from them in the immediate future. The general population hasn't got much against us Capitalist Pigs; but the old gaurd, the generals and the guys who have made a career out of the military... They're not so friendly ahd still have grudge against us because we "won" the Cold War. If there ever is a shoorting war between us two, I think that it'll be brief and not as intense as it would have been 20 or so years ago. The Warsaw pact is gone, and I've also traveled to some of those other Cold War enemies and I see no enemies there any longer.

There are other threats, but thats for a different forum/website...

Yeah, the Ruskies tend to copy us Capalist Pigs when it comes to military hardware... Imitation after all is the best form of flattery.

The big thing with ruskies and their aircraft is that their engines have always been garbage (yeah we had some junk in our early F-14's and even the early 15's), so looks aside for the Pak-Fa, it remains to be seen how good the *whole* package is. Are these engines going to need to be rebuilt every 100 hours? Are they going to be up to the task of supercruising day in an day out without needing to be rebuilt? The Russians have not been big on the idea of fielding single engined fighters for the simple fact of their engine reliability. The Mig-29, very very early in its concept phase, was proposed to be a single engined airplane, but they quickly squashed that idea because of the engine reliability. I can remember over 15 years ago when the walls fell, and it stated (I can't remember by who) by some Russian aeronautical engineer that of all the western planes, if he could pick one to fly and evaluate, it was the F-16C... Not the F-15, not the F-18, not the F-18... But the single engined F-16C. It seemed they held that single engined plane in very high regard to everything else we had in stock.

We have a big jump on the competition with our F-22, and..... yes..... even the F-35.... The other guys are years behind us, By the time they get enough of their next gen fighters on the flight lines, we'll have our new breed airplanes being tested or close to testing, and I don't think we've got much to worry about as far as being outclassed for the forseeable future.

I will go on record as saying that the true form of Pak-Fa may be very very far from that artists rendering. The Russians are not a dumb people, at least the ones that I have dealt with, so whether or not they copy the F-22 remains to be seen. Also they're missiles historically have not been as petite as our Aim-120C/D, so how many are they going to cram inside a tidy package about the size of the F-22?? With keep a comparable internal fuel load?? All question marks at this time. And certainly, the electronics suite in those planes aren't going to be up to par with us.

At this point, who cares what they do? What they engineer? The realistic threats are North Korea, Iran, and a multi-nation conflict against Israel. China may or may not be a threat... Of all the people I have met abroad that were Chinese, I never got the impression that they were our enemies. I worked with a Chinese college mathematics professor who's father was also a physicist, and this guys father was forced by the military to become a streat sweeper... Literally, because of something goofy like reading same kind of banned book or something that I can't remember (his son, my aquaintance somehow got out to make it here in the USoA). There are some guys in the Chinese ranks who'd like to take us on, but the people themselves.... Another big question mark. Its very very shameful that we let the Chinese crush their rebelion from the not too distant past.

The world is still a dangerous place, but even with the Pak-Fa coming soon to a "theater" near you, the USA is still top dog. We have something no other nation has as much as we: Force Projection. Bombers that can fly missions out of the midwest to any point on the globe, carriers all over the world, bases here and there (not as many anymore!!), submaries which no one knows where they are...

I'm off topic again...

Active Member Joined: Nov 22, 2004 Posts: 134

fighterfan wrote:

I read up on the experimental su-37 / 47

Its design was internally named S-37 (not Su-37, and previously S-32), and the flying prototype or demonstrator was later named the Su-47 "Berkut" for the public. Su-37 (unofficially the "Terminator") was actually the public name of the T-10M11 prototype that first demonstrated the Kulbit and other famous maneuvers, although the only existing airframe crashed, so there currently is no Su-37 (airframes with similar features are used for demonstrations now).

In general, Russian military aircraft have at least three naming systems: the internal name of the design itself, the name given to the public for the prototype or finished aircraft, and its official military designation in the Russian Air Force. For instance, the Flanker fighter-bomber variant with side-by-side seating (often called the "Platypus") is known as the T-10V, Su-34, and Su-27IB (later changed to Su-32), respectively. With export variants factored in, the naming gets even more convoluted--it seems that the whole point is to totally confuse foreign air forces. Wink

fighterfan wrote:

and was curious how it compares to the raptor's capabilities.

Even in some of the most intense combat exercises ever devised by the USAF, the Raptor has been very successful at determining how the battles were fought, obviously greatly to its favor, using its stealth and high speed capabilities. Most opponents have been shot down (simulated, of course) without ever having detected it. As far as I know, the Su-47 does not have such capabilities, particularly stealth.

Regarding within-visual-range dogfighting, I don't think it is known just how agile the Su-47 really might be; not a whole lot was demonstrated to the public (nothing the Raptor couldn't easily do). The Raptor is extremely agile for a fighter, comparable in many ways to the most advanced Flankers, and more capable in some ways (e.g. more powerful, quicker rolling). This is mostly academic, however, since the whole point of the Raptor is to avoid dogfights altogether if possible.

fighterfan wrote:

It is funny how it really does look like a Klingon warship from star trek with the forward swept wings. If this wing style does improve agility at slow speeds, why is it not incorporated into more fighters?

Simply and generally put, the tradeoffs of such a design outweigh the benefits that it provides, at least with regard to the requirements of most fighters.

Tinito_16 wrote:

The Su-47 Berkut apparently was only an experimental aircraft. Ditto the Mig 1.44.

That's right, and I don't think that either design bureau ever claimed otherwise. Statements that made comparisons to the Raptor implicitly referred to modified designs that never flew and were never made public--these two aircraft were both acknowledged to be experimental, much like the X-29 and X-31.

Tinito_16 wrote:

One of the reasons why forward swept wings are not incorporated often is that at high speeds rotational forces build up that try to twist the wings off. This is countered by building the wings with stronger - and sometimes heavier materials.

I believe that to get the full benefit, you'd also have to make the wings quite long (to satisfy lift requirements), which raises all kinds of issues. Most modern fighters require more lifting area in a compact design, and a wider wing chord also makes the fuselage and airframe as a whole more efficient structurally. Most slow-speed, high-alpha aerodynamic deficiencies can be addressed by other means that have fewer drawbacks, and if this is really important for some reason, then thrust vectoring can be incorporated with few, if any, tradeoffs.

By the way, the canards that were added to some Flanker variants is a somewhat analogous feature. They help improve its slow-speed, high-alpha flight characteristics, which is necessary for the naval variant (Su-33) or customers who desire the full "supermaneuverability" package, but the system weighs about 1200 kg. Not everyone needs or wants to make this tradeoff, which is why not all Flankers have the canards despite their benefits.

fighterfan wrote:

Fwrd swept need stronger wings. yes but 'sometimes' heavier? So not always necessarilly and maybe not a significant weight..

Well, with some composite materials, it should be possible to "tailor" the material to the expected loads, concentrating different types of strength (e.g. tensile, compression) in the right places and directions in order to save on material and weight. However, such tailoring would be rather complex and hard to get right for a fully functional fighter, which can lead to numerous development problems. The question for any feature is whether it is worth the trouble and potential cost, and the answer for forward-swept wings thus far has been "no."

Tinito_16 wrote:

BTW, I found an official artists impression Cool

of what the PAF KA looks like. Enjoy: http://www.npo-saturn.ru/!new/photoshow ... ng=0&id=29

This picture may be hosted on a subcontractor's website, but that doesn't mean that it's official or representative in any way. I'm pretty sure that this is just an example of speculative fan art.

bdn12 wrote:

There goes the Russians again copying the U.S. That Pak-Fa looks so much like the F-22 it's not even funny.

We don't know what the real PAK-FA design (T-50) looks like at this point, or whether there even is one that they're serious about yet, for that matter. There certainly isn't a whole lot of imagination in most of the artwork floating around the Internet.

By the way, although this probably has nothing to do with the PAK-FA directly, one of the most intriguing photos I've seen regarding Russian fighter research is the following wind tunnel model:

Active Member Joined: Nov 22, 2004 Posts: 134

fox100 wrote:

The interesting thing, or what I find interesting, is that the Ruskies are in worse shape than the USA is (financially) and we only *get* 183 F-22 airframes... How many are the other guys going to get of their crate?

Considering the effort and cost it took to get the F-22 to operational status and how well it has lived up to expectations, with all due respect to Russia's capabilities, I think it's going to be awfully tough for them to top it for a long, long time.

fox100 wrote:

The big thing with ruskies and their aircraft is that their engines have always been garbage (yeah we had some junk in our early F-14's and even the early 15's), so looks aside for the Pak-Fa, it remains to be seen how good the *whole* package is. Are these engines going to need to be rebuilt every 100 hours?

While the Flanker's Saturn AL-31F series has longevity issues and does need frequent overhauls, it seems to be quite robust and dependable when it's kept up. There have been improvements in this and other engine series, although it seems that the West has been improving much faster of late. The AL-41F that is intended to power the PAK-FA has been rather troubled for years and still is, the last I've heard, while the F119 has been phenomenally reliable, so you definitely have a point.

fox100 wrote:

I can remember over 15 years ago when the walls fell, and it stated (I can't remember by who) by some Russian aeronautical engineer that of all the western planes, if he could pick one to fly and evaluate, it was the F-16C... Not the F-15, not the F-18, not the F-18... But the single engined F-16C. It seemed they held that single engined plane in very high regard to everything else we had in stock.

This might have been because of its famous agility, which Russian engineers seem to be particularly keen about, though.

fox100 wrote:

We have a big jump on the competition with our F-22, and..... yes..... even the F-35.... The other guys are years behind us,

They'd better be--getting "leapfrogged" technologically right now would really suck! Embarassed

I don't think it's going to happen, though. You could sort of look at the F-22 and presumably the F-35 as SSC (Superconducting Super Collider)-level projects that were not cancelled (I hope!). Had we gone through and actually completed the SSC, it's unlikely that its capabilities would have been surpassed for many decades, such was its ambition, and I'd like to think that the same notion applies to our fifth-generation fighters.

fox100 wrote:

The realistic threats are North Korea, Iran, and a multi-nation conflict against Israel.

As far as countries go, sure, but having irreconcilable ideologies on a global scale has been the real threat over the past 70+ years, whether it's democracy versus fascism, capitalism versus communism, or freedom versus medieval-style radical Islamism. Just imagine a successful revolution taking place in Pakistan in the near future, and the nuclear ramifications thereof.... Shocked

fox100 wrote:

China may or may not be a threat... Of all the people I have met abroad that were Chinese, I never got the impression that they were our enemies. I worked with a Chinese college mathematics professor who's father was also a physicist, and this guys father was forced by the military to become a streat sweeper... Literally, because of something goofy like reading same kind of banned book or something that I can't remember (his son, my aquaintance somehow got out to make it here in the USoA).

It isn't the Chinese people or any aspect of the Chinese culture, and never has been--it's all about the commies in charge. We'll find out how long that lasts, hopefully without a single shot fired by us (or anyone).

The other problem with FSW is that even with strong materials, you can only go so fast because the materials aren't strong enough. As I recall, the Su-47's hard limit is mach 1.6, any faster and its wings would conceivably rip off from the twist-up caused by the design.

Plus, as the Su-47 is not as stealthy as the F-22 (if it is at all stealthy, which I doubt) it would be at a severe disadvantage going into a fight, even in WVR, as the F-22's also IR stealthy to a degree.

Active Member Joined: Nov 22, 2004 Posts: 134

LWF wrote:

Plus, as the Su-47 is not as stealthy as the F-22 (if it is at all stealthy, which I doubt)

The notion of stealth that most Su-47 proponents have in mind is a coating of RAM; either that or some pie-in-the-sky plasma stealth system. Rolling Eyes

While you generally cannot tell how stealthy an aircraft is just by the way it looks, it's easy enough to tell when it is totally not VLO or LO, as is the case here.

LWF wrote:

it would be at a severe disadvantage going into a fight, even in WVR, as the F-22's also IR stealthy to a degree.

The key is that by the time the fighters come into visual range of one another, the F-22 will have already pre-positioned itself to pounce on its helpless prey, undetected most of the time, but probably nearly as effectively even if it is spotted. In fact, from the reports I've read regarding training exercises, there seems to be an inordinate number of simulated gun kills made by F-22 pilots, as it is not unusual for the F-22 to have expended all of its missiles. While the F-22's signatures should help it survive even the most dire WVR circumstances to some degree, this would only be relevant when the pilot screws up. The common case is that he can choose when and how to engage, and I'd wager that not even the MiG-25 or MiG-31 could escape once the F-22 gets WVR.

Newbie Joined: Jul 21, 2007 Posts: 5 Status: Offline

Afterburned wrote:

Looks like external weapons carriage and conventional round nozzles... it WON'T be in the same league of stealth as the 22.

There are only so many shapes that are efficent and why would any one change an effecient shape so people would stop saying that they look alike?

Active Member Joined: Nov 22, 2004 Posts: 134

FightingIrish wrote:

Afterburned wrote:

Looks like external weapons carriage and conventional round nozzles... it WON'T be in the same league of stealth as the 22.

There are only so many shapes that are efficent and why would any one change an effecient shape so people would stop saying that they look alike?

Assuming strictly for the sake of argument that the above depiction of the PAK-FA is accurate, I suppose it's always possible to argue for "parallel evolution" in that form follows function. We see this quite often in nature, and I've used this argument a number of times in the past myself in various subjects. That said, it can only explain so much, and there are many cases where the same requirements resulted in very different designs. Did the YF-16 look much like the YF-17? Did the YF-22 look much like the YF-23? Did the X-32 look much like the X-35? Obviously, the answer in each case is no, not even close, even though they all came from companies in the very same country.

So why does the PAK-FA supposedly look so much like the F-22 (and nearly identical to the YF-22)? And why does it need to have a stealthy form? I thought that Russian designers and their legions of supporters believed that supermaneuverability combined with some RAM and plasma generators would win the day? They also said--and some still say--that the F-22 would maneuver poorly because of its stealth. Plenty of people around the Internet still seem quite convinced that the latest Flankers and the Su-47 are superior, so shouldn't they be disappointed that the PAK-FA has apparently "devolved" into an F-22 wannabe? What would that imply? Questions, questions, questions! Smile

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