Come one ... since years some Russians are claiming EVERYTHING for the Su-57
Excuse me. What these claims, made by "some Russians", have to do with a person we know under the nickname LMFS and the discussion about fighter jets generations?!

BTW, i remember some Westerners claimed that PAK FA, Okhotnik, Tzirkon and many other are fake/vaporware and wont fly ever. And...???
 
Come one ... since years some Russians are claiming EVERYTHING for the Su-57
Excuse me. What these claims, made by "some Russians", have to do with a person we know under the nickname LMFS and the discussion about fighter jets generations?!

BTW, i remember some Westerners claimed that PAK FA, Okhotnik, Tzirkon and many other are fake/vaporware and wont fly ever. And...???

Please be careful, I never said it won't EVER fly and only since it flew much too late in lesser numbers, any other claims are correct.
This black and white only is a stupid analogy...

Point is similar to some Russians some Indians constantly claim a lot since years: The XXX will be this and that, will enter service then and here in this and that numbers at that certain cost and still nothing, at least not at the claimed date, nor the claimed numbers if ever.

As such I have IMO several more than justified reasons not to believe when now again "some Russians and some Indians" claim again that YYY will be this and that, will enter service then and here in this and that numbers at that certain cost. Why? When not even the previous generation type is ready and no schedule was ever met, why should it happen this time?

XXX = PAK-FA or Tejas Mk.1 or whatever ... and YYY = Su-75/LFS or Tejas Mk. 2 or AMCA or whatever.
 
Last edited:
Please be careful, I never said it won't EVER fly
And i never said you did. Read my post carefully, you'll see i've made analogy "some Russians>>some Westerners" to show it's not objective and has no relation to fighter jet generations.

If we were talking about super-duper-hypersonic MiG-41, i'd agree with you. But LTS is just an affordable single-engine 2 Mach fighter jet that heavily relies on the whole airframe parts, electronics, engine, weapons and other systems already designed for Su-57. Even after USSR collapse, it took only 5 years, for Sukhoi, to develop Su-30MKI and start its serial production. So i don't see why Sukhoi can't make the same nowdays, when it's in the much better shape than it was in the second half of 1990's.
 
Come one ... since years some Russians are claiming EVERYTHING for the Su-57
Excuse me. What these claims, made by "some Russians", have to do with a person we know under the nickname LMFS and the discussion about fighter jets generations?!

BTW, i remember some Westerners claimed that PAK FA, Okhotnik, Tzirkon and many other are fake/vaporware and wont fly ever. And...???

Please be careful, I never said it won't EVER fly and only since it flew much too late in lesser numbers, any other claims are correct.
This black and white only is a stupid analogy...

Point is similar to some Russians some Indians constantly claim a lot since years: The XXX will be this and that, will enter service then and here in this and that numbers at that certain cost and still nothing, at least not at the claimed date, nor the claimed numbers if ever.

As such I have IMO several more than justified reasons not to believe when now again "some Russians and some Indians" claim again that YYY will be this and that, will enter service then and here in this and that numbers at that certain cost. Why? When not even the previous generation type is ready and no schedule was ever met, why should it happen this time?

XXX = PAK-FA or Tejas Mk.1 or whatever ... and YYY = Su-75/LFS or Tejas Mk. 2 or AMCA or whatever.
I don't want to be the smart-ass here...... But I hope we are not comparing pre- Ukraine 2014 sanction production numbers to production numbers after sanctions with the LTS production numbers as the same thing.
 
Last edited:
since years some Russians are claiming EVERYTHING for the Su-57 and still it is not yet in service in the once proclaimed numbers.

Words without real contractual confirmation on paper are nothing more than air shuffling. Even if "the air is shaken," people with epaulets and ministers.
The first contract that was signed for 2 Su-57s dates from August 22, 2018. Second from 2019. And the production schedule surfaced in general in 2020.
 
The Su-57 would never have made its initial serial production date of 2016 simply because the aircraft required a structural redesign due to structural cracking issues during flight tests. This resulted in the "first stage" and "second stage" airframes.

I suppose the LTS can save time by reusing Su-57 components, but systems integration and flight testing even for something seemingly simple like modifications aren’t trivial, to say the least…
 
Last edited:
The Su-57 would never have made its initial serial production date of 2016 simply because the aircraft required a structural redesign due to structural cracking issues during flight tests. This resulted in the "first stage" and "second stage" airframes.
Sources please and make sure they are good, not bad ones like me taking General Brown or Christopher millers opinion on the f-35.
 
The Su-57/T-50 structural issues are well known, and covered by Piotr Butowski and confirmed by program insiders, as @flanker and @flateric can verify.

The T-50 was originally meant to have six flying prototypes, plus a static test airframe and a systems integration airframe (KNS). The first two prototypes cracked after MAKS-2011, as evidenced by the lull in flight testing for much of the following year, and the numerous structural reinforcements applied to them and in following airframes (including a visibly reinforced metal alloy section in the fuselage between the wings). This resulted in a deeper structural redesign with T-50-6 being the first of the “second stage” aircraft, and T-50-7 being the static test airframe for the redesigned structure; the T-50-7 that we now see in photos is actually a repainted T-50-KNS.
 
Last edited:
Cracks or not, there really were two stages of the airframe design. And it's normal, just look how different YF-22 and F-22. And no one, even among the Russian aviation and military community, being in his right mind, believed that serial production of Su-57 will be started in 2016, not speaking about IOC. Just because PAK FA demanded a helluva lot of new technologies, from the MIC that was almost killed by the Soviet Union collapse. But now we have all of them, so LTS is going by the beaten path made by PAK FA. And this fact can't be ignored or denied. Especially seeing how much LTS got from PAK FA, literally.
 
And no one, even among the Russian aviation and military community, being in his right mind, believed that serial production of Su-57 will be started in 2016, not speaking about IOC.
This may be the case in hindsight, but official plans from the Defense Ministry, including the GPV 2020, had planned on PAK FA serial production to begin in 2016.

The “second stage” T-50 airframe was not something that was planned, but rather due to issues discovered during testing. It’s similar to the situation where the F-35B required a redesigned bulkhead to meet the designed service life, and a new ground test airframe (BG-3) was ordered to test the structure.
 
Last edited:
Who is piotr? a pentagon official like Christopher Miller or military official like General brown?
Stop with the passive-aggressive bullshit or be banned. Your choice. Its a matter of public record that T-50-1 suffered structural cracking and the repairs took over a year and later prototypes have beefed-up structure.

Piotr Butowski is a Russian-speaking Polish journalist and author with excellent contacts in the Russian aviation industry and a great track record.
 
Last edited:
This may be the case in hindsight, but official plans from the Defense Ministry, including the GPV 2020, had planned on PAK FA serial production to begin in 2016.
..and F-35 was intended to be in service by 2007, with a price tag for A model of $32-35mil in Y1997 bucks. Speaking of bold statements, yeah.

It happens, even to the countries with a well-funded science and technology sector and $700bil military budget. JSF is behind the schedule due to its overcomplication and bad management, and PAK FA because it demanded to develop a lot of technologies and restore many competences after 11 years of the horrible economical crisis and technological coma caused by USSR collapse. But nothing of this has anything to do with LTS.
 
This is the largest factor of whether Checkmate actually happens or not.
I remember the same talks in 2000's: "PAK FA program will cost billions and its life fully depends on Indian money, poor Russia can't afford it on its own". India sent $300 million in 2007, that's all. But PAK FA didn't die. I imagine how shocked were those Cassandras, from the old KeyPub and Militaryphotos forums. With UAE or without, this program already happens. Coz it's not about UAE, but about the whole World Fighter-Jet Market.
 
Come one ... since years some Russians are claiming EVERYTHING for the Su-57
Excuse me. What these claims, made by "some Russians", have to do with a person we know under the nickname LMFS and the discussion about fighter jets generations?!

BTW, i remember some Westerners claimed that PAK FA, Okhotnik, Tzirkon and many other are fake/vaporware and wont fly ever. And...???

Please be careful, I never said it won't EVER fly and only since it flew much too late in lesser numbers, any other claims are correct.
This black and white only is a stupid analogy...

Point is similar to some Russians some Indians constantly claim a lot since years: The XXX will be this and that, will enter service then and here in this and that numbers at that certain cost and still nothing, at least not at the claimed date, nor the claimed numbers if ever.

As such I have IMO several more than justified reasons not to believe when now again "some Russians and some Indians" claim again that YYY will be this and that, will enter service then and here in this and that numbers at that certain cost. Why? When not even the previous generation type is ready and no schedule was ever met, why should it happen this time?

XXX = PAK-FA or Tejas Mk.1 or whatever ... and YYY = Su-75/LFS or Tejas Mk. 2 or AMCA or whatever.

??? Four are coming out by end of the year as scheduled. Then eight the coming year, and so on. So far they have promised exactly what has been given. I know you got a beef with the indians but comparing AMCA with pak fa is nonsense. I am happy for the chinese and their aircraft full of lifted parts from lockmart. Their endless, tedious desire to emulate their foes.

Ruskies are going a path similar to older northrop designs but with their own defense ideology. Not just copying the west like everyone else seems to be doing.
 
Come one ... since years some Russians are claiming EVERYTHING for the Su-57 and still it is not yet in service in the once proclaimed numbers. As such it si NOT cynism and even lesser bad-wishing but simply an observation and experience based on following this topic since the last three decades.

As such IMO any concerns or being sceptical on such claims are more than justified.

On a funny side-note I see the same habit on some Indians for the Tejas Mk.2: NOW everything will be better, it will fly in 2023 and reach front-line status in 20256/2026, promised! And here to I have no faith at all that they will met their own timeline this time.
Same thing with literally every big fighter project, Russian, European American or whatever, with the only exception of J-20 which was actually faster than expected. I could be hammering Europeans and their decades long delays, US funny initial price statements for the JSF and so on for hours and hours. It does not change that the above statements about the LTS "not existing" are nothing but rhetoric and being a dick for the fun of it, when we know the design and features of the the LTS and the chief constructor has confirmed it is designed and tested by digital means. Hence the generation correspondence, concept and potential of the plane is clear for anyone with a clue and people's preference to bury the head in the sand and deny its mere existence is their own problem. What we write here remains written

I suppose the LTS can save time by reusing Su-57 components, but systems integration and flight testing even for something seemingly simple like modifications aren’t trivial, to say the least…
Here is where we will learn whether DE is all it is hyped to be and whether Sukhoi will manage to master it. The actual technical people are normally quite conservative in their statements because they risk their reputation with them, so I tend to take their estimations seriously. Of course we all know deviations and uncertainties exist in any program.
 
Come one ... since years some Russians are claiming EVERYTHING for the Su-57 and still it is not yet in service in the once proclaimed numbers. As such it si NOT cynism and even lesser bad-wishing but simply an observation and experience based on following this topic since the last three decades.

As such IMO any concerns or being sceptical on such claims are more than justified.

On a funny side-note I see the same habit on some Indians for the Tejas Mk.2: NOW everything will be better, it will fly in 2023 and reach front-line status in 20256/2026, promised! And here to I have no faith at all that they will met their own timeline this time.
Same thing with literally every big fighter project, Russian, European American or whatever, with the only exception of J-20 which was actually faster than expected. I could be hammering Europeans and their decades long delays, US funny initial price statements for the JSF and so on for hours and hours. It does not change that the above statements about the LTS "not existing" are nothing but rhetoric and being a dick for the fun of it, when we know the design and features of the the LTS and the chief constructor has confirmed it is designed and tested by digital means. Hence the generation correspondence, concept and potential of the plane is clear for anyone with a clue and people's preference to bury the head in the sand and deny its mere existence is their own problem. What we write here remains written


I agree with you ... but the main problem - at least as I notice the Russian side, is always budget. Don't get me wrong and I would love to see that bird flying as much as you but remain sceptical until then.
 
at least as I notice the Russian side, is always budget
Actually, if you look carefully at PAK FA program, its main problems were(and partially are): technological lag + deficit of industry capacity and qualified workforce. Money never was the main problem. Not for the country that could spend dozens of billions of bucks on the pointless(from my PoV) Olympic games or FIFA World Cup.
 
Both of which ended up positive in revenue, but that's not a discussion for this place.
Olympic Games brought $53 million of operational profit. With billions spent on it. New technological enterprises, been these billions spent on them, could do the same, but additionally could bring us new workplaces for qualified and educated people + new technologies. Then, may be the number of the young and talented scientists and engineers, emigrating every year from Russia to the West, wasn't so horribly high. That's why i think these shows were pointless.
 
I said it back when they first introduced the Su-35S(35BM) 2008, which for all intent and purpose was a stepping stone and building block for PakFa.

Sukhoi, UAC and now Rostek have to do their programs with the speed and progress that ONLY suite their then timelaps Industry.

I never bought the Idea that money was the main problem.. you cannot magical transform Money into knowhow hightech industrial base and infrastructure. It takes years and decades to build it up.

Delays are expected eighter way for such huge program. Its huge for Russia anyway.
 
Last edited:
I think it is brilliant that they were able to reuse parts of the Su-57, they already did most of the hard work so the testing time might be smaller due to the number of components already designed. I saw that they had lots of back and forward with the Su-57 vertical tail design judging by how many times they switched those components. The engine will be mostly done by the time the prototype is ready. I think it is the right move to make a single-engine fighter to complement the su-57 and possibly capture sales in countries that don't want or need a long-range fighter. I don't think this is an F-35 analogous, the f-35 is saddled with lots of compromises to fit Navy, Marines, and Airforce, it still came out awesome after all the money dumped into it. There is no doubt in my mind that if the f-35 would have been a single service airplane it would have been a better airplane. For example, it would have been a better maneuvering airplane with better numbers similar to what the f-16 is to the f-15. If you look at the Navy version it looks like it can fly slow and perform high alpha maneuvers but it looks like the performance is very unfavorable in comparison to the airforce version. Back in the day, the F-14 was in some ways superior to the f-15. The Navy currently doesn't have that type of performance. You can argue with the number of assets available to the US you still have superiority over any opponent... the problem would be if the opponent can match the number of assets the US possesses. One on one it could end up bad for the pilots so I think the airforce and navy are realizing they need the next big thing. I see a lot of negativity towards the Checkmate but if you look back they said the Su-35 was not going to happen, that they were broke to get it... few years forward even the Russian Knights have them, then the su-57 is not happening... we just saw. video of the assembly line with at least 4. For a country not so wealthy they managed to design 2 new fighters. I think it is a valuable lesson for the United States to take notes from.
 
I agree with you ... but the main problem - at least as I notice the Russian side, is always budget. Don't get me wrong and I would love to see that bird flying as much as you but remain sceptical until then.
Well, our scepticism doesn't change anything in the end, in retrospective it just shows how discerning we were back in the day, and whether our understanding of the events developing was correct or not, that is why I said that all that we write here will remain for the future. I can very clearly remind in what terms the West assessed the PAK-FA or any other Russian program in their early days, and sadly nothing has changed since then, nothing has been learned from their constant prediction failures. Proven wrong once and hundred times, they insist in the same narrative. So it is not a neutral objective assessment, but a clear bias which is not worthy of further discussion IMHO. I don't agree on that budget issue, this is a perennial claim from the West but I don't see MoD failing to implement their programs or having to rely on deficit to work, which would be the actual proof of budgetary restrictions being an issue. Quite the contrary, the VMF for instance has not been able to use their available budget for a number of years, due to industrial constraints. But the argument itself is a totally hollow, blatant propagandistic trick, since every single economy has budgetary limits that they need to respect and that constrain their development. You have USN and USAF complaining about budget tightening and doing all kinds of maneuvers to get funding for their programs for instance, despite the Pentagon handling the budget of a medium country just for themselves. They issue is not that there are limits to what you can spend, the issue is whether you manage to do what you need to do within them, and Russia is clearly succeeding in that regard. PAK-FA has never had to be cancelled or backtracked due to budget or because of the lack of foreign patrons (rather they increased expectations for instance with Project Megapolis instead or with the 76 units contract, instead of the Western projected cancellation), and the funding for LTS has been said to be in place, not to depend on any buyer in particular and stated to be quite reduced actually, due to the amount of testing done in the PAK-FA and the advances in digital engineering. So no, I don't really see what budget problem you are referring to and don't think this is a specially relevant threat for the LTS program.
 
Last edited:
So no, I don't really see what budget problem you are referring to and don't think this is a specially relevant threat for the LTS program.

"Budgetary problems" apparently have their roots in the statements of one American politician about the "torn to shreds of the Russian economy."
Hence the similar reasoning.

Although, in my opinion, the moment with Su's production facilities looks much more mysterious. And the KnAAZ itself.
It is banal somewhere to find a place for the Su-57 and 75 and so on with the not yet completed production of the Su-35S.
 
"Budgetary problems" apparently have their roots in the statements of one American politician about the "torn to shreds of the Russian economy."
Hence the similar reasoning.
Agree, projection and wishful thinking instead of facts. None of these people has ever bothered analysing the size of the Russian military budget and making some calculations based on them. It is Russia, therefore it must be poor and doomed to fail, that's all that the public needs to think.

Although, in my opinion, the moment with Su's production facilities looks much more mysterious. And the KnAAZ itself.
It is banal somewhere to find a place for the Su-57 and 75 and so on with the not yet completed production of the Su-35S.
Not sure I understand you. I think specifically at KnAAZ the effort right now is to set up a small but very efficient production line for the Su-57. Probably it does not make a lot of sense to scale things up until the setup has been tested and debugged and the second stage planes are available. The production of the LTS should already use a highly automated, very low cost per unit line.
 
It's a bit weird that there was no real discussion about it, even though (to my knowledge) it was shown for the first time at MAKS-2021.
 
The Rafale buy does not bode well for the UAE financing development in the short term.
Indeed, it lends credence to the theory that the UAE was only entertaining the idea as a way to put pressure on the U.S. to sell them F-35s.

Unfortunate for UAC. Based on their statements, they seemed confident that they had a guaranteed foreign customer for the craft.
 
The Rafale buy does not bode well for the UAE financing development in the short term.
Indeed, it lends credence to the theory that the UAE was only entertaining the idea as a way to put pressure on the U.S. to sell them F-35s.

Unfortunate for UAC. Based on their statements, they seemed confident that they had a guaranteed foreign customer for the craft.

It is necessary to think in new realities. If UAC sold LTS to UAE, it would close the door to trade with Iran. In the coming years and decades, Iran will become an extremely interesting market, which will not be interested in anything like CAATSA at all. Of course, Russia also has a new alternative in case it is to be forced from India. Although smaller, but also interesting. The world is changing.
 
Unfortunate for UAC. Based on their statements, they seemed confident that they had a guaranteed foreign customer for the craft.
The UAE Air Force, according to Russian Wikipedia, has 68 Mirage-2000 and 79 F-16 units.
Rafal is likely to replace the Mirage, but what should replace the F-16?
 
If UAC sold LTS to UAE, it would close the door to trade with Iran. In the coming years and decades, Iran will become an extremely interesting market, which will not be interested in anything like CAATSA at all.
How does the delivery of an aircraft to the UAE interfere with the supply of an aircraft to Iran? That's right, no way.
And in the case of Iran, CAATSA is luring complete disregard.
 
If UAC sold LTS to UAE, it would close the door to trade with Iran. In the coming years and decades, Iran will become an extremely interesting market, which will not be interested in anything like CAATSA at all.
How does the delivery of an aircraft to the UAE interfere with the supply of an aircraft to Iran? That's right, no way.
And in the case of Iran, CAATSA is luring complete disregard.

Ok.
The point is that if the UAE were a start-up customer, the development would be based on Arab investments (via Mubadala Investment) and contractual technical cooperation (Tawazun and Edge Group), which Rostec is already negotiating. This is one of the reasons why Iran bought "only" Tor-M1, although Pantsir-S1 also wanted at the time.
 

Similar threads

Back
Top Bottom