'Russian Stealth' may gain market supremacy in ten years' time
13.02.2010, 12.39
By Itar-Tass World Service writer
Lyudmila Alexandrova
The Russian defense-industrial complex has delivered a fifth-generation jet that is promised to be far less costly than its US rivals.
The T-50, some have already dubbed the Russian Stealth, made its second flight on Friday.
The test was carried out at an airdrome in Komsomolsk-on-Amur. The flight lasted for 57 minutes and all systems operated normally. Several more test flights are due there. Then the plane will be moved to the Gromov Flight Research Institute in Zhukovsky, near Moscow, where most tests will be carried out.
The plane's maiden flight was on January 29, when it stayed in the air for 47 minutes.
The Sukhoi design bureau is the plane's brain-father. The first flying sample of the fifth-generation fighter was put together at the Komsomolsk-on-Amur-based aviation production association.
The plane's shape makes it invisible in the optical, infra-red and traditional radar wave bands. The T-50 will have the capability to perform combat tasks in any weather round the clock and extra maneuverability. The minimum runway length requirement for take-off and landing is 300-400 meters.
The new generation fighter's technical parameters will remain classified for the time being. Presumably, it will be able to fly at a maximum speed of 2,600 kilometers per hour and have fuel endurance of up to 5,500 kilometers. Refueling in flight is a possible option.
The T-50 has a spacious internal compartment for armaments. It may accommodate up to eight R-77 air-to-air rockets or two huge smart bombs 1,500 kilograms each. It will carry externally suspended two extra-long range rockets designed by the Novator bureau.
Each of these rockets is capable of destroying planes, including those carrying the airborne warning and control system AWACS, at a distance of 400 kilometers.
Next to the previous generations of fighter jets the T-50 boasts a number of unique capabilities of an attack aircraft and a fighter jet at the same time.
Its main distinction from the predecessors is all available information is processed by the onboard computer and offered to the pilot in the form of prompts. Extra-maneuverability and a super-sonic cruising speed, achievable without turning on the booster, are other noteworthy features. Largely the plane owes them to the fifth generation engine.
The fifth generation jet is less costly to operate. For instance, one flight hour of the fourth generation plane, such as Su-27, costs 10,000 dollars, while that of the fifth generation jet has been slashed to 1,500 dollars.
Experts say the T-50 will cost far less than its US counterpart, although discussing a likely price is too early at this point.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin the other day ordered the first batch of the T-50 jets should be supplied to Lipetsk, where pilots will be trained, as early as 2013, and batch production should be started as of 2015.
However, to some analysts Putin's expectations look unrealistic, because the financing of the T-50 project is rather limited, and the power plant still has unresolved problems. The chief of the Moscow-based Center of Strategies and Technologies Analysis, Ruslan Pukhov, has told the daily Kommersant that the plane may begin to enter duty at routine Air Force units no earlier than 2012-2020. He attributes his skepticism to an earlier decision by Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin to freeze state budge spending on military research as of 2011.
"In one's backyard one can make only one new fighter-jet. For launching its batch production very much will have to be done in the field of materials processing, know-hows and personnel training," the daily Gazeta quotes Colonel-General Anatoly Sitnov as saying. Sitnov in 1994-2001 was chief of armaments of the Russian Armed Forces. "Yet, the plane boasts very many new gadgets and parameters - new opto-electronics, new aerodynamics, and many other things. The basis has been laid. Now time is ripe to build up from it."
The emergence of the T-50 has prompted some experts to say that Russia now has a response to the United States' F-22 Raptor. The Russian fifth-generation jet will have a number of advantages over the US rival, the chief of the Russian Armed Forces' General Staff, Nikolai Makarov, says with certainty.
"First and foremost, it has a very advanced, practically human-like brain," he said.
However, the daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta's military observer believes that comparing the T-50 and US Raptor would be not quite correct. Their concepts are very different. For instance, the Pentagon gave up the intention of making the F-22 super-maneuverable. It is believed that highly-maneuverable, variable thrust rockets the F-22 is armed with make it unnecessary for the pilot to make a tail approach to the enemy for attack. Also, the US fifth generation plane can hit targets at extreme distances, beyond the range of the rockets of all other planes.
The F-22 had quite a few problems. Last year it turned out that its electronics may fail in rainy weather. Research found that moisture gets into complicated systems through cooling devices and may cause high precision instruments to malfunction.
Then there surfaced some problems with repairs and maintenance. It turned out that the most advanced US warplane requires nearly 24 hours of maintenance work after each hour in flight. The cost of one hour of flight operation exceeds 4,000 dollars. And even in that case planes go out of order all too often. According to Pentagon sources, in October 2008 through May 2009 about 50 percent of the F-22s in service were unfliable due to technical failures.
Besides, the Raptor is expensive and very unreliable, so the Pentagon decided against using it in Iraq or Afghanistan. Just recently it curtailed purchases of the F-22 altogether.
Anatoly Sitnov is certain that Russia will polish its T-50 to perfection faster than the Americans may do that to their F-22.
"If one looks back at how the Americans spent 25 years to tune up and adjust their F-22, it will look very likely that our plane will require far less time, because all of its aspects have been researched rather well - this is a second version of a fifth generation jet already."
The deputy director of the Center of Strategies and Technologies Analysis, Konstantin Makienko, believes that after 2020 two or three types of planes will dominate the market of fighter aircraft - the United States' F-35, Russia's T-50 and, probably, some Chinese simulator of a fifth generation jet.
"I believe that the Russian product will have every chance to comfortably control up to 30 percent of the fighter jets market."
Some countries, such as India, he speculated, may be forming their fleet by purchasing both Russia's T-50 and US F-35. The Russian-Indian plane may dominate in the markets of South-East Asia and some states of the Middle East and South-West Asia, as well as Maghreb countries - the traditional customers of Soviet and Russian aviation technologies.
Under the optimistic scenario batch supplies, he believes, may begin in 2016-2020, and initial combat readiness, achieved in two or three years after that.
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