If Russia does not support us from the air, we will have to retreat from Brooklyn to Long Island
Emergency message from I. Strelkov, November 2016
Every joke has its share of a joke. The recent statement that Russia in the outgoing year has outstripped the United States in the production of military aircraft, unequivocally indicated who our "probable enemy" is and with whom the domestic aircraft manufacturers intend to compete.
The US Air Force is not an easy opponent. The most difficult one. The world's first consumer of aviation kerosene. Currently the only operator of fifth generation fighters. Colossal combat experience. Thousands of aircraft units stationed at air bases around the world.
But will the Yankees manage to maintain their air superiority in the new century? The Russian military-industrial complex is slowly getting up from its knees - and here is another result. Overtook America in the production of military aircraft.
"If in 2013 we supplied 68 combat and combat training aircraft and one military transport aircraft for the Air Force, then this year we are planning to supply 100 aircraft - combat, military transport, as well as special aviation aircraft"
UAC representative Vladislav Goncharenko.
Experienced citizens reacted to this news with a certain amount of skepticism. What "effective managers" cannot come up with to justify their sorrowful "achievements"! There were three suspicious moments in Goncharenko's statement: combat training, military transport and special aviation planes.
But excuse me, is it correct to put in one row the training "combat" Yak-130 with max. with a takeoff weight of 10 tons with powerful combat vehicles from the "first line" - fighter-bombers with a takeoff weight of 30-45 tons? The Training Yak does not even have a radar, not to mention such high-tech expensive systems as optronic sighting systems or engines with a deflected thrust vector.
Transport "maize" L-410, "generals" business jet An-148, patched up MiG-31BM and Tu-95 … No! Indicate the number of truly combat-ready modern aircraft: representatives of the multipurpose Su-30 family, Su-34 tactical bombers, Su-35 super-maneuverable fighters. Nearby are the new A-100 "Premier" early warning aircraft (AWACS / AWACS), specialized aircraft for the Navy, heavy attack UAVs and strategic unmanned reconnaissance aircraft … This should temper your imagination and ask a simple question: "HOW MUCH?"
Front-line bombers Su-34
The answer will surprise - the number of new fighters and bombers delivered to the Russian Air Force at least not less than the same number of new combat aircraft, joined the United States Air Force in 2014. The aviation industry of the United States has somehow completely weakened - 20 … 30 fighters a year for its own air force and some more units for the air force of NATO countries. There are only a couple of models on the assembly line - the new F-35 and the multipurpose F / A-18 family (Super Hornet, Growler). All work on the construction / modernization of fourth-generation fighters is rapidly losing priority - now all hopes are associated only with the promising F-35.
Production of the Raptors ceased in 2011, the fleet of F-16 fighter-bombers has not been updated for ten years, and the last Eagle fighter was handed over to the US Air Force back in 1989. The "naval" fighter-bomber F / A-18E / F has long ceased to be popular in the domestic and foreign markets. All potential customers, one by one, choose the "Lockheed" F-35. Due to the loss of interest in its fighters, Boeing plans to completely phase out production of the F / A-18E / F and close the assembly line in St. Louis in 2015.
Against this background, the successes of the Russian United Aircraft Corporation look like a real triumph: a whole line of superplanes, each of which claims to be the best in its class. During 2014, the Russian Air Force was replenished with:
- 12 Su-35S fighters with unsurpassed flight characteristics;
- 18 front-line bombers Su-34;
- 7-10 (according to various sources) multipurpose fighters Su-30SM.
Alas, offensive facts are hidden behind the joy of victories. Leading Russia has only 5 prototypes of the fifth generation fighter, while its rival has 115 flying F-35s as of October 2014. According to the LRIP-8 option, Lockheed Martin received another order for 29 " Lightning "(4 deck F-35C, 6 vertical F-35B and 19 base F-35A) + an order for the construction of 14 fighters for five foreign customers. The first deliveries of machines from the LRIP-8 batch are scheduled for 2016. Given that at the present time at the enterprises "Lockheed Martin" is already at various stages of assembly of 71 multirole F-35 fighters from contracts of previous years.
The real situation is even more serious: the abbreviation LRIP in the name of the options means Low-Rate Initial Production - small-scale production at the first stage. Over the past eight years, Lockheed Martin has been slowly assembling its Lightning bolts, saturating various test units and training centers of the Air Force and Naval Aviation with them. 115 aircraft - by American standards, they have not even begun to be built. When the main assembly line at Fort Worth, Texas, comes on, the estimated production rate will be 1 aircraft per day, which means over 300 F-35 fighters annually.
Now the States clearly have nowhere to hurry - just over the past 10 years, their aviation has been replenished with a huge amount of modern aircraft, incl. 187 combat "Raptors" and four hundred F / A-18E / F (including the mod. EF-18G) for the aviation of the Navy and the KMP. Ahead is the ambitious F-35 program. As for the huge fleet of aging Eagles and F-16s, the era of these machines is steadily coming to an end. Today they represent a bridge between the fourth and fifth generations.
Something similar is observed in the field of unmanned aircraft. During the first decade of the 21st century, the Yankees have thrashed an impressive number of reconnaissance and strike UAVs of various models. The toys turned out to be entertaining, but not very effective: the level of technology did not allow obtaining the equipment that the Pentagon dreamed of. Inexpressive performance characteristics, a small payload, the need for remote control - as a result, a vigorous start was replaced by a prolonged period of recession and a reassessment of existing approaches.
Therefore, it is not surprising that for all its love for drones, the US aviation industry mastered only one prototype of the MQ-4C Triton marine reconnaissance UAV (based on the Global Hawk) in 2014. The X-47B concept demonstrator still flies from aircraft carriers. The machine demonstrates considerable potential, but any serious conversation will turn out only with the appearance of a twice larger X-47C with a combat load of 4.5 tons (not earlier than 2018). As for all kinds of "Reapers" and "Predators" - mentioning them in this context makes no more sense than mentioning the combat training Yak-130.
Special aviation
Few, but critical vehicles for the efficient operation of the Air Force and Navy. Basic anti-submarine aviation, aerial and radio-technical reconnaissance aircraft, air command posts, some completely unique vehicles for the command of special operations …
What has been done in this field on both sides of the ocean?
Russia - one Tu-214ON observation aircraft for flights under the Open Sky program. The scout is equipped with a full range of equipment for critical missions: modern digital equipment for aerial photography, side-looking synthetic aperture radar, as well as systems for observation in the infrared range.
Boeing, in turn, can be proud of the five Poseidons donated to the Navy in the past year. A multipurpose aviation complex for searching for submarines and illuminating the situation on sea lanes. The P-8 Poseidon is built on the basis of the 737-800 passenger airliner, the aircraft's equipment includes a high-resolution search radar, sensors for anomalies in the Earth's magnetic field caused by the submarine hull, as well as a set of jettisonable radioacoustic buoys (RSB), a radio engineering system reconnaissance and torpedo weapons to destroy detected submarines.
Domestic aircraft manufacturers are also making efforts in this direction. We do not have such progressive developments as Poseidon, but we have programs to modernize existing anti-submarine aircraft. In the summer of 2014, the aviation of the Russian Navy received the first modernized Il-38N with the Novella digital search and sighting system. Of course, the Il-38 is no longer young - it is about 40 years old (the Il-38 is a development on the basis of the Il-18), but the "stuffing" of such aircraft is much more important than their glider and flight characteristics. In this vein, the Novella modernization program is undoubtedly an important page in the history of Russian naval aviation.
Among other novelties in the aircraft industry, at the beginning of December 2014, two MC-130J Commando II aircraft were adopted by the US Air Force Special Operations Forces. Another improvisation based on the C-130 "Hercules" turboprop transport aircraft, designed to perform special tasks: landing and evacuating special forces (including non-stop - using the "Air Hook" system), conducting search and rescue operations and delivering special forces. cargo in the combat zone. The commando is distinguished from ordinary transport aircraft not only by its gloomy coloring and engines of increased power, but also by such purely military attributes as armoring of important components and cockpits, an in-flight refueling system, optoelectronic search systems operating in the visible and infrared ranges, as well as means Electronic warfare and systems for shooting dipole reflectors.
Conclusion
Nothing much happened. Aircraft manufacturers do their job by methodically fulfilling the terms of their contracts. At the same time, the situation is alarming: the Yankees build as many aircraft as they want. We are as much as we can. Despite all the hype around the great State Defense Order, domestic aircraft are still produced in piece quantities, with no chance of reaching the pace of building 50-100 combat aircraft of one model per year.
In turn, this casts doubt on the possibility of rearmament within an adequate time frame of the domestic air force. What the pilots of the first PAK FA combat squadron will have to face in the air (with all the declared avionics, an uninterrupted cockpit canopy and "second stage" engines). Some kind of unmanned Superraptor or X-47C? This is worth thinking about now.
Modernized Il-38N aviation of the Russian Navy (w / n 19) with the personal name "Radiy Papkovsky"
On board the IL-38N
Lokheed MC-130J Commando II
MC-130J cabin
