negi wrote:Austin your assessment is wrong the only reason why RU might not have opted for emphasis on stealth like the US is because of the costs and may be even the lack of expertise and experience with building such airframes given the time frame for the PAKFA , the very fact that Russians have incorporated substantial RCS reducing features into PAKFA airframe is an indicator of the importance of having lower RCS . I am pretty sure next AC from RU stable would be better than the PAKFA in every aspect including RCS reduction however at the end of the day all is governed by the state of the art of the technology which Russians posses in order to achieve a 'practical' low RCS design which can be operated by its armed forces within their budget.
Negi Saar......
Partly True , first and foremost the Soviets never believed there is any thing like Stealth and even now they still say the same , In a question to RuAF chief recently if PAK-DA will be completely stealth , he mentioned it is impossible to make aircraft which is completely stealth or invisible.
They still believe that a combination of Metric/Decametric/Bistatic radar can nullify the stealth advantage and a combination of IADS and S-300/400 SAM is good enough to deal with it , that is the key reason why Soviets and Later Russians invested heavily in building new types of mobile metric/bistatic radar and new SAM all integrated in to tightly knit IADS , if stealth was such a threat and we know that F-117 and B-2 has been flying since 80's they would have just invested all the money in building one and even after breakup they would have pursued with all the money they had instead of building new types of radar or LR SAM.
All this talk of 0.0001 ,0.001 RCS of golf or tennis ball is ball talk and smart marketing by Pentagon/LM/NG , the practical stealth is far lower and one is always affected by the things like different frequency , bands, Angle of RF
Saying that I should add here that low RCS ( not the marketing golf ball BS figures ) do help in bringing some advantage on the table along with basic fundamental qualities of the aircraft , sensor fusion and weapons to match , only stealth in itself does not mean much or is any tilting advantage.
You quoting B-2 being accompanied by EW AC proves nothing , its a million dollar machine the decision to go all alone or accompanied by EW aircraft is a mission specific call , taken by the people in know . Stealth is important for it forces the enemy to have a re look at its ADS with AC like F-22 and PAKFA taking to the skies a plethora of small SAMs and old old generation air defense systems will now be relooked at by the either sides this is a cat and mouse game so the need to field AC with lower RCS and more powerful ADS systems will always exist. And both Americans and Russians are investing in both the areas its just that America has surplus funds .
B-2 not going alone for the mission deep inside Yugoslavian Airspace speaks a lot infact about USAF dilemma and hesitation to send that $2 billion bird alone.
As i mentioned previously that Pentagon suspected that Russia has secretly shipped in older S-300 SAM and Pentagon was not sure how to deal with it and if indeed B-2 can get in and get out without getting detected or hit , so they sent in fleet of jammers to aid in B-2 attack mission.
Remember B-2 as promoted by pentagon during Cold War was an aircraft which has all aspect stealth , was designed to penetrate alone and deep into dense Soviet airspace ( which has all kinds of radar and SAM ) for any strike mission and had all the survivable characteristic to do so and could hunt mobile ICBM.
Well the USAF was not confident enough to penetrate Yugoslavian airspace with B-2 alone , this is after all that cruise missile attack and degradation of AD of the enemy , so much for a $2Billion dollar super stealth subsonic aircraft.
The incident involving F-117 again only goes to prove that it takes a lot of coordinated effort in terms of early warning , prior info on the waypoints/routes which AC is likely to take and finally a well timed interception to actually down an AC with low RCS. F-117s flew multiple missions over Kosovo and one cannot rule out the fact that air defenses in and around Belgrade had a fair idea about the route AC was supposed to take in for its bombing runs one also cannot rule out a hint of over confidence as far as USAF is concerned given the success of its prior bombing runs .
Well true it also proves that with the smart use of mobile SAM , 1st gen Metric Radar and smart tactics one can bring down stealth inspite of all the overwhelming Air Superiority that NATO established and aircraft equipped with HARM were flying around ready to pin down any SAM radar.
Yes stealth comes at a cost but then for those who can afford it it is an acceptable cost
For all the wars we have seen , practically speaking stealth piddly did any thing to win a war most of the mission were by 4th gen aircraft and cruise missile doing the task with overwhelming air superiority against the enemy , which practically proves the point there is no use in investing huge money on a silver bullet , what one needs is all round practical and cost effective performer with low RCS being one of the many feature needed.
Probaby that is the reason why Pentagon is keen to build F-35 in big numbers and not a silver bullet whose advantage and superiority is questionable as best.
) compare to quite petit PAK FA 
why do you need all those complex formula s for comparing RCS 
BRFITES and their prediction are always correct... AUSI AIR POWER!
