Again you are simply stating the same fact Russia cannot achieve VLO because it cannot match US industry or exprience and Russia should revel all its card to prove to the world that can do it.
I say nothing of this sort. You bring up valid points about tactics and the entire gambit of how stealthy ops are achieved. I point out that the US has a clear advantage in this department having designed stealth aircraft for decades, having bought them, tested various generations of stealth and taken VLO designs to war.
I am not saying that the Russians can never match the US. With proper investment, time and money they surely can. All i am saying is that the rear aspect of the T-50 looks quite shabby for a VLO fighter. So do things like the IRST Bulb and the fact that they plan of having a FLIR/Targeting Laser designator as a pod.
Well it doesnt have to Stealth is a very classified area of research and US , Russia or India or any other country would have little reason to show how it achieved stealth beyond the generic thing known in public , Most aspect of stealth research is classified be it Structures , Materials , Theory , Engineering and many other aspects.
So there is no real advantage in having demonstrated capability through various industrial efforts over the last decades and of having actually taken the thing to war halfway across the world? When others have quietly built up parity (or surpassed) in the lab despite of having massive budgetary disruptions that lasted for over a decade.
Just as you have stated correctly that the US cannot state with certainty that JSF or Gowler cannot defeat the S-400 system in the same way no one can say with certainty that Russians cannot achieve similar RCS value as F-22 .
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to look at the rear aspect of the current T-50 prototypes and compare the level of stealth to the F-22 or even the YF22 which flew nearly a quarter of a century ago. The same argument can be taken and applied to the claim made by the T-50 designer that the average RCS would be at par with the F-22 (a design that first flew in 1990-91). The designer cannot state that with any level of certainty, while the US general CAN when he claims that the F-35 is stealthier compared to the F-22.
VLO rear-aspect?
Vs YF 22 prototype (First flight 24 years ago)
YF 23 (24 years ago)
Final product (first flight 17 years ago)
You say that a first full stealthified prototype of the T-50 is yet to take to the air. This compares extremely unfavorably to the F-22 where a fully stealth prototype was in the air in 1991, and a full mission systems enabled F-22 aircraft was in the air in 1997. This is in direct contradiction to the fact that the Russians seem to have caught up or even leapfrogged the US capabilities as far as designing stealth is concerned. Let them at least build a fully stealthy T-50/PAKFA prototype and lets see how the design matures into a fully stealth bird. Let them mount a full systems package into it and then industrialize the production and start churning out aircraft from the factory floor. Its too early to make that call and the evidence we have seen so far calls for an extremely large leap of faith. So far given what is flying its rather unlikely that these prototypes have the all aspect level of VLO that the YF22 and YF23 had around 1989-1992
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, I have a quote of the same person who mentioned the average RCS of F-22 is 0.3-0.4m2 and PAK-FA is 0.5 m2
Really? The RCS of the F-22 is highly classified and has never been revealed. So its at best what he estimates it to be. Others may estimate differently
So the F-22 and PAK-FA average LO values are not Identical but similar because according to Russians own research in the area of A2A combat in Many versus Many situation , Extreme Agility , Persistance and LO plays an equal role , so they had to incorporate these the characteristics which means they had to get a optimum between the three
Still begs the question, given that the F-22's RCS figures are classified (Even the figures not just the 100's of pages of testing that took months if not years to accomplish) from where are they getting the numbers from?
I saw you posted some books on Stealth , All opensource books on LO and Radar are just piece of Crap the military of any nation classifies key areas of work and all you get is piece of crums and many times with deliberate distortion of facts.
These books are the best resources available to us common people on the performance. Better to read them, to read what pilots, designers have to say then to purely speculate. Even air to air combat books do not get into all the classified elements of air combat, should we also not read them? You have certain views on stealth and how ops and mission planning is important. Where have you got those from? From classified briefings from stealth designers and operators? Or you got these views reading stuff in books or the internet?
IF any one on Internet sells you Book on Stealth or Radar its mostly a con artist thing for low level talking point
Every author's credentials can be checked
http://origin.www.uscc.gov/sites/defaul ... 0grant.pdf
Low level or high level, I do not see anything better. Its better to read published material that only talks about 40% of what is de-classified then to read nothing at all. When actual B-2 pilots talk, people notice specially when they say that they flew right over an F-15 and Mig-29 engagement without either of those birds noticing the B-2.
Radar has kept with stealth ( I am talking of most Modern AESA and PESA radar ) and it wont be easy to fool a modern radar using LO because they have much better ability to deal with it and yes most of the areas are classified.
I guess the designers of stealth don't have access to the most cutting edge radars
which only exist with those that do not have stealth designs in the works
One of the largest portable X band radars in the world (24,000+TR elements)
X and S band AESA
X Band Gallium nitride AESA
One of the largest X band radars
A lot of these radars are made by the same companies that also have high level research on stealth so its not quite that these companies do not know what is going on in the field of radars