Is there any hope for this crippled bird? Delays, increasing

>>34273085
A few will get produced, enough for a favorable treatment in a vidya someday. It will fuel armchair pilot arguments about matchups. Otherwise, it's a 4th gen footnote.

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>>34273085
>against true 5th gen adversaries.
The only true 5th gen adversary is F-22 and there will never be a direct confrontation between US and Russian air-forces.

Lol at dumb russians, they actually have to test and finalize a complete piece of hardware instead of pouring 1,5 trillion into unfinished prototype of a fundamentally dysfunctional design that suffocates its pilots and self-combusts on the runway right in the middle of mass production. Lmao. It's almost like they actually need a working plane!

God bless America.

>>34273255
Obvious bait, no one is this retarded.

>>34273094
The problem with the failure of the pak-fa is that it cements the F-35 as the only export 5th generation for the next decade.

>>34273261
>5th generation
>No actual supercruise
Nope, technically it's not a 5th gen. Not with current engines.

>>34273222
The F-35 is/will be a 5th gen and those will end up pretty close to the russian border. Then we have the J-20, if pressure from the US/NATO RELENTS china and russia will turn on each other faster than a russian drinks a bottle of bathtub cleaner.
There is also the J-31 which may end up in the hands of russias enemies if the timeline is right. Russia has nothing to hold against those.
And who knows, in a proxy war the US might use stealth jets to trash russian planes and demand PROOFS and deny everything if confronted in the UN.

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>>34273255
I don't have the correct bingo card at hand but I'm sure someone is halfway to bingo from this post alone.

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>>34273285
At Russian border PAK-FA is a part of IADS. Russian military buildup is now all over that "integrity" and "network" thing.
J-20 and J-31 are enemies of India and what they're gonna have in their version is a big question. High chance that Indian version will end up having better avionic than Russian domestic version.
Indian screams about "that is a bad plane" is a regular trading shit. Just remember how long they washed Frenches brains with Mirage contract.
There is a high chance that F-35 will be too expensive to be used in actual conflict. Like Syrian or Ukraine or Yemen. But Pak-Fa is build as "plane to be used".

Son, Russia doesn't have the money. How do you think they feel entering a time in which they are falling further and further behind former peers? Yanks have always had an insane military budget ever since WW1, China is only ramping up theirs and continually reducing their dependence on Russia, and even tech challenged India is feverishly trying to make their arms industry completely indigenous.

Russia is a borderline banana republic.

>>34273412
The thing is that India is upset about more things than just the price and tech transfer this time around. They bring up legit concerns about the engine and the lack of stealth.
Who knows, they might get a decent radar in it eventually, good avionics and some of those fancy missiles too. The problem is that the adversaries whill have all that AND true stealth. The F-35 will very much be a workhorse in the future as it will literally the only combat aircraft many countries have and the US invests in four digit nubers of them. When all else is equal, having true stealth will be the tie breaker and the PAK-FA will be on the losing end.
As for network integration, rest assured that the F-35 got the very latest there is to offer and you can not afford to bank on china to not have a proper network.

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>>34273412
>There is a high chance that F-35 will be too expensive to be used in actual conflict. Like Syrian or Ukraine or Yemen. But Pak-Fa is build as "plane to be used".

>>34273412

>There is a high chance that F-35 will be too expensive to be used in actual conflict. Like Syrian or Ukraine or Yemen. But Pak-Fa is build as "plane to be used".

I'm going to have to doubt that the operational version of the PAK-FA will be significantly cheaper to deploy operationally than the F-35. This is a massive twin engine aircraft covered in RAM, which will never see the economies of scale that the F-35 will. We've already seen export Flankers having severe serviceability issues (particularly engines), without good reason I'm not going to believe that Russia has suddenly solved all these problems on their first clean-sheet fighter since the end of the USSR.

>>34273282
Didn't they increase thrust and efficiency recently by testing fuel management settings?

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>>34273610
You have a point here, true. But Soviet\Russian tech historically is cheaper and more cost effective than American. Also, Russians are pretty confident in 2nd stage engines for Pak-Fa. Anyway, Indians can ask to any changes and Suchoi will comply, because that is their business model.

>>34273773
It might have been historically, but not anymore. You can't just spam aircraft and overwhelm your enemies anymore, they would all get shot down before they get to within 100 miles of their target. I'm not saying it's 2017, but it's 2017 and if you want to stay competitive you need to spend the cash and get the tech, something that Russia (and to an extent, China) is having trouble doing.

>>34273773
Soviet planes were historically cheaper because they cut corners in certain areas like ergonomics and were a big practitioner of planned obsolescence. Soviet planes generally were not expected to survive long in a hot war, so they were built with lesser quality parts.

In the short term, this nets you big savings because you're paying less for the plane up front. However, it's a really crappy practice in the long term if you're in a period of peace and you're now stuck with having to constantly replace all those shitty parts to keep your fleet airworthy.

Go check up those Polish studies on the feasibility of keeping their MiG-29s or switch over to F-16s. They found that they'd have to overhaul their MiGs three times in the space of one F-16 overhaul period. That cost adds up over time which is why you're starting to see many air forces transition away from slavshit.

>>34273815
Modern conflicts are about bombing a group of people without airforces but with AA assets. From zero assets in Syria to heavy missiles in Ukraine. In that condition, operations goes on for years and you WILL suffer losses. Even without enemy firing at you, simply by pilot mistakes and malfunctions. In that conflicts you need a lot of planes and you need them to be relatively cheap. Like, you're Korea or Denmark, or Italy and you're in coalition against some hypothetical Iran and you send your F-35 to fight. Loss of even one of them will be painful. Then, would you actually send a F-35 or would you send good old F-16 which loss in not a disaster?

>>34273980
Except for the fact that the entire point of the F-35 is that they're cheap enough and enough are being produced that they can basically replace F-16s on a 1:1 basis.

>>34273980
>Modern conflicts are about bombing a group of people without airforces but with AA assets.
And what will be a "modern" conflict 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now? Or are you saying that we're witnessing the pinnacle of warfare and that we'll never see any other kind?

>>34273773
>But Soviet\Russian tech historically is cheaper and more cost effective than American.

Cheaper, yes.

Cost Effective, not in the slightest.

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>>34274053
>Or are you saying that we're witnessing the pinnacle of warfare and that we'll never see any other kind?
Hmmm. Maybe we already did it in Gulf War. That was biggest "modern" conflict. Since the end of Cold war and death of international balance systems, 1v1 conflicts are mostly gone. Modern here is a conflict of coalition of countries again one common enemy who is weaker economically, numerically and technologically. Modern weapon systems are so expensive that conventional classic 1v1 conflicts are economically unprofitable. Your profit from victory will not cover military spends on that war. Following that, basically, modern Russian weapon is a way to buy yourself thing that force the enemy to spend too much money on hypothetical attack on you, making that attack too expensive.

Or you can build a nuke.

>>34274146
One thing that might drive a return of conventional war is a side effect of increased autonomy and renewable energy - the potential end of globalisation as we know it - why have stuff made in China and then have to pay for the shipping to get it back to the US / Europe, when instead you can have robots make it for even cheaper, in the country you intend to sell it to? Why import gas from Russia, etc when solar / wind / hydro + storage becomes cheaper?

Then on top of that, what if interceptors (both kinetic and directed-energy) become good enough to make ICBMs almost useless? Or hell, what if after a period of peace, people decide that getting rid of nuclear deterrence is a good thing?

>>34273980

This is the point, the F-35 is supposed to be the 5th gen F-16. If you simply want something to drop a few PGMs you can get a UCAV or an armed trainer, otherwise, attacking Iran as you suggest with a "cheaper" 4th gen is unwise, because they have numerous air defense systems of varying capabilities, most concerning of which is the S-300.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Republic_of_Iran_Air_Defense_Force#Air-defence_missile_systems

In some ways the F-35 might cost less to operate than a "cheap F-16" here, since it won't need as much support in the form of SEAD and tankers, and is still at much lower risk of being lost.

>>34273980
>operations goes on for years and you WILL suffer losses.
If you taking years to roll back and enemy you just bumbled your way into a war and you're an idiot for doing so. The F-35 is designed to be a stealth aircraft that can decisively engage and destroy the enemy (planes, infrastructure, IADS). The idea is to use it's stealth and standoff weapons to lower the likelihood of losses on your team while maximizing losses for the other team.
>Korea or Denmark, or Italy
Those nations are wealthy enough to afford both the F-35, the top of the the line weapons for the F-35 AND customize them for domestic needs.
>Then, would you actually send a F-35 or would you send good old F-16 which loss in not a disaster?
You would send a stealth bomber to kill the big targets and 35s for striking not as well defended targets, sending in F-16s means you will lose some planes.

>Modern conflicts are about bombing a group of people without airforces but with AA assets.
Yugoslavia and Iraq 1 show otherwise

>>34274146
>being so naieve that you think that war is only done for economic reasons

Holy shit. day/k/are indeed.

>>34273927
>they'd have to overhaul their MiGs three times in the space of one F-16 overhaul period.

Well, the big part of it was because migs were maintained according to russian standards - per "service life" not by actuall conditions of the equipment. So if your instruction was telling you that service life of your engine is 600 hrs and you need to make a full checkup with removing engine from a plane, dismantling it and replacing the fan blades after every 150 hrs, you were doing said checkup and replacing the fan blades every 150 hrs even if fan blades actually DONT NEED replacement. Also, 600 hrs of service life passed - engine is scraped (even if it's in good condition and could be used for another 500 hrs) and you need a new one.
This "operation by service life" bullshit was a problem for all former WP armies, because this generates a shitload of extra costs. And they can't ditch this routine and switch to operate their equipement based on its actual state, because ruskies do not provide full documentation of their stuff, so nobody knows what are actual limits for safe operations and where to look to check if everything is still in order. Keep in mind that most of russian equipment up to this day do not have any build-in self-test/diagnose module and you need a detailed documetnation to properly monitor the status of your stuff.
If you move from service life to actual status maintance, the cost difference between slavstuff and ameryuropstuff is not that big. Take the Poles and their S-125 Neva / SA-3 SAMs: when their modernised them to S-125 SC version with digital comps instead of ass-old rusian vaccum tubes and shit, implemented pre-launch self-check systems and developed reliable procedures to control the status of fuel in engines and explosives and fuzes in warheads it turn out to be still usefull and reliable SAM. Maybe not state of the art, but still capable of making a big fucking hole in most of the flying shit within SAM range

>>34274228
>Yugoslavia and Iraq 1 show otherwise
Yeah, and after they they prefer to overthrown government first and destroy military by economic sanctions before invasion.

>>34273412
>High chance that Indian version will end up having better avionic than Russian domestic version
jesus christ russia get your act together

>>34273261
This is only a problem if you need the variety for fiction or something.

>Even India is starting to get tired of Russia's shenanigans

If the Indian Air Force finally tells the Russians to fuck off, from whom will the buy a 5th gen plane?

>>34274534
>Yeah, and after they they prefer to overthrown government first and destroy military by economic sanctions before invasion.
What?
Even if there was no sanctions on Russia, they would still be very hard pressed to defend their own airspace in the event of a conflict with NATO.

>>34274794
America, like the rest of the world

>>34275376
The US has no intention to sell it to India out of security fears.

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>>34275509
>>34275376
>>34274794

Any military exports to India requires transfer of technology and part of the number of planes/vehicles have to be built localy under license.

Examples being the Su-30 and T-90S.

>>34274215

>most concerning of which is the S-300.

Depends on which version you are talking about. A PMU-2 might aswell be an S-400-lite but a regular P version is a bit dated at this point.

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>tfw 5th gens will probably never actually go up against other 5th gens in a real dogfight and will probably just be used to drop legacy air frames of belligerent shit-tier states.

>>34273085
I could see LM offering the Indians a F35 variant at some point.

>>34275827
They will not for the reasons stated here >>34275668

Congress and LM would never allow the F-35 to be built under license.

>>34275834
Never is a long time. Whose to say LM won't push for export sales of a closed loop F35 in 20 years?

>>34275860
Pretty sure India is looking for something a bit more immediate than 20 years.

Plus India has traditionally been wary of buying American due to past arms embargoes.

>>34275901

LM has offered an F-16 production line. A modernized F-16 is basically a short range version of the F-35 without stealth.

>>34274809
There is a very limited list of countries who can build their own air defense systems. Economic sanctions close access to systems itself, their parts and technologies required to build a sophisticated weapon systems.

>>34274794
They'll try to build their own or place an order to Dassault Aviation.

there's a strong verifiable info that the russian govt will cancel the t-50 because sukhoi was way over deadline from solving exhaust stealth problem, and that the current circular shape is a huge factor on how the pak-fa was designed for its supermanouverability, so changing the current exhaust to a stealthy shaped one will prompting a whole aircraft redesigned and therefore cost overrun.

sauce: me, trust me

>>34275975
why do they care so much about super maneuverability in an age where maneuverability doesn't matter?

To impress slavs at airshows?

>>34274277
The sam issue is because of that a missile remains a tube with an engine, guidance and a sensor. If its aerodynamics are sound and the engine is decent, you have a solid base already.
A plane is very different. Pajeets modified some MiG-21 to the "bison" standard. Which made them up to date dogfighters. With the correct underwing sensor pod you could have a better EOTS than a F-35. But you can't fit the same radar in it. Nor can you give it the same legs, or stealth. So that is the problem friend.
>>34275668
Is that so Mat Herben ? I do not recall the same happening for more than 80% of the 19 military airframes that India currently operates. They only want R&D on the most capable material (which would include the T-50 here indeed). But I still think they would buy without technology transfer as there are no offers on the market yet besides the F-35. Leaving them with little choice as China progresses. I also think that when Pakistan starts inquiring about the J-31 the Indians will dump assloads of crores into the PAK-FA program.

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>>34275975
>changing the current exhaust to a stealthy shaped one will prompting a whole aircraft redesigned
Nope.

>>34276030
You have 2 planes with extremely low RCS and thermal signature jamming the shit outta each other. Missiles wouldn't work well in that situation.

>>34273282
>F-35 is a 4th generation aircraft

>>34275834
What is Japan for $500, Alex?

>>34274759
India already fields the best Su-35, even we don't them. It's already too late. And PAK-FA looks like glorified air show plane, if anything.

>>34276396
Then why didn't they put a stealthy exhaust on the PAK-FA?
Because muh super maneuverability?
Was the test exhaust shitty?
Where the designers russian and drank bathtub cleaner all day and just slapped a Su-27 exhaust on the engines the last day before deadline?

>>34276592
in visual range you won't be jamming optical guided missiles.

>>34280470
Russia's jet engine industry is basically dead. They can't build one powerful enough, that's also reliable, fuel efficient, and doesn't run so fucking hot that the US Airforce can't track it from orbit.

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>>34274235
>Being so naive to think that it isn't

>>34273529
We're probably going to see some crazy stupid shit being done by vatnikstan in the next few decades as the desperately try to stop the inevitable progress into obscurity and niggerdom.

>>34280860
>Vatnikstan

kek

> Delays, increasing costs and all russia has to show for it is a plane that would struggle against supposed previous generation aircraft
So where does this logic put F-35. The T-50 program has been running since 2004, with maiden flight in 2010, and planned adoption in 2017 (which has now been moved right to 2019). Of course manufacturing a next generation jet has proven to be a challenge for a budget starved nation with no access to foreign markets, just like it initially was with Su-27. And of course it will develop into a proper combat system just like Su-27. Not an invincible wunderwaffle, mind you, but a capable tool for intended purpose - air element of Russian IADS.

The F-35 however, the most expensive weapons program in the human history, has been going on since 1990s and it's still yet to show anything for itself besides litany of fatal defects, cost overruns and political scandals. Even now, you're basically throwing money at an unfinished prototype that would have to be retrofitted in order to leave the hangar - if that much is even possible. If the USAF was confident in thousands of combat ready F-35s by 2025 they wouldn't have to invest billions into 2040C and revamping ancient fleet of F-15s. There is perfect understanding in high command which plane would be a workhorse for the remainder of the century, and which would remain a fraud from its inception until decomissioning.

You guys are kidding, right? The PAK FA is going to blow the f35 away. It will have the speed, agility and radar needed to control any airspace.

I just want Ace Combat 7 to come out already.

>>34281924
>The T-50 program has been running since 2004
Earlier than that; Sukhoi was selected to develop it in 2002, which means they would have had a concept of what they wanted to do prior to that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WHtiNXFfqs#t=10m

Russia's adoption of the PAK-FA will also be little more than the RuAF finally standing up a squadron to train on and (theoretically) fight with. The equivalent metric for the F-35 program would be when they delivered the first operational jets in 2011.

So let's recap - the PAK-FA's been in development for at least 15 years now and won't have a single training squadron for another 2 years (19 years total). The jet also won't truly be ready / won't have properly finished development for a few more years after that, when it finally receives its proper engine and there's enough jets to actually have a training pipeline and jets exclusively intended for combat.

When the first F-35 squadron achieved IOC in 2015; the jet had been in development for 19 years as well, but they also had about 150 F-35s flying (20 for testing, ~115 for training, ~15 for combat). A year later and there were nearly 200 jets with 3 combat squadrons.

>If the USAF was confident in thousands of combat ready F-35s by 2025 they wouldn't have to invest billions into 2040C and revamping ancient fleet of F-15s

The USAF is considering retiring the F-15C fleet - if they don't, and instead keep them around, it'll be because the F-15's replacement, the F-22, had its production cut short.

>>34282030
The F-35 has a bigger radar, more advanced passive sensors, vastly better stealth, better missiles and will be present in such large numbers that you'd think you're fighting a stereotypical albeit high-tech China.

>>34281924

> unfinished prototype that would have to be retrofitted in order to leave the hangar

There are literally over 200 of them and counting, it is in operational service with the USAF & USMC, it is about to enter full rate production, it has flown deployments to Japan & Estonia, and it is appearing at the Paris Air Show next week.

> If the USAF was confident in thousands of combat ready F-35s by 2025 they wouldn't have to invest billions into 2040C and revamping ancient fleet of F-15s

The F-35A was never intended as a F-15C replacement. Perhaps you should finish drinking that bottle of anti-freeze you started before making your post, and do the world a favor.

>>34280737
>optical guided missiles

No such thing.

>>34282321
I doubt the f-35 has any kind of long wave radar.

>>34282661
Neither does the PAK-FA. It may or may not have a long wave IFF interrogator but that's it. A long wave radar that has any kind of useful kind of resolution would need an AWACS tier aperture and even then it would not be proper long wave radar. Long wave radars are those massive truck mounted things you see attached to the S-400 for instance.
The PAK-FA will be strictly inferior to the F-35 except for airshow acrobatics maybe.

>>34282648
>No such thing.
Not strictly true dual band trackers that search for negative UV spots could be said to be optically guided.

>>34282648
Modern missiles like the AIM-9X use an imaging seeker, so they are technically optically guided as opposed to just tracking a single IR dot

>>34278499
A nation conquered and culturally sanitized after the US literally burnt it to the ground and rebuilt as a completely-under-thumb proxy state to be used as auxiliaries and safe ground to deploy troops from? Do you think they're going to sell tech to the Chinese? Do you know anything about politics in Asia?

Protip: Sino-Jap relations make Sino-American relations look like a garden party. America is a rival to China because they're both superpowers and have occasional conflicting geopolitical interests. Japan and China are cultural enemies with thousands upon thousands of years of antagonistic relations and oceans of spilt blood between them. Japan selling American tech under the table to the Chinese, or anybody really, is about as likely as pigs flying, hell freezing over, Hitler converting to Judaism, jet fuel melting steel beams, and OP not being a faggot all on the same day at the same time.

>>34283249
>Japan selling American tech under the table to the Chinese, or anybody really, is about as likely as pigs flying, hell freezing over, Hitler converting to Judaism, jet fuel melting steel beams, and OP not being a faggot all on the same day at the same time.

top jej

>>34283249
they're talking about india, not china, moron

>>34284767
Dumbfuck. His post is saying that Japan is an exception, and such is allowed to license build the F35, unlike India and others.

Brush up on your reading skills

>>34280470
Because flat exhaust give very little boost to maneuverability, while giving also very little boost to stealth characteristics. 3D-vectoring exhaust is WAY more complex, yet russians managed to make them reliable. They simply made the better engine than americans. Thats all. Why use inferior tech just for little stealth boost in REAR hemisphere? Protip, your thruster exhaust is still way too hot to be hidden, even with flat exhaust.

>>34282934
Surprise-surprise... but PAK-FA do have long wave radar...

>>34285587
>everything Russian is better because it's Russian.

>>34282552
231 as of March.