Can Russia afford two fifth generation development programmes

Published: 3/8/2000

The long-awaited maiden flight of the MFI Article 1.44 finally took place on 29th February from Flight Test and Research Insitute in Zhukovsky. The test flight lasted for 18 minutes and was was reported to be 'generally uneventful', with the plane making two circles above the runway at a speed of 600 km/h and landing safely. MiG test pilot Vladimir Gorbunov later commented that the flight was 'surprisingly straight-forward' and that 'aircraft behaviour was totally predictable'. It seems that unusual aerodynamic layout of the statically unstable airplane (truncated delta wing with large foreplanes) has brought no surprises, and that the remote flight control ('fly-by-wire') system developed by MNPO Avionika and high-speed actuators from MPO Rodina performed well. Witnesses say that landing of the Article 1.44 was shortly followed by takeoff of the Sukhoi S-37 Berkut, its primary competitor in the now-closed RusAF tender for a heavy-weight multirole fighter of the fifth generation. The S-37, although also being more of a demonstrator aircraft than a combat fighter prototype, was conceived three years later than the MFI but entered flight trials back in 1997, three years before the Article 1.44. The Sukhoi S-37 project is ahead of its Mikoyan rival in that it has been reported as having completed the first phase of its flight test program and has made over 100 test flights and is therefore considered to have more chance of evolving a prototype worth series production. However, both the S-37 and Article 1.44 are experimental aircraft, and are not prototypes for next-generation fighters. The S-37, for instance, uses outdated Perm Motors D30F6 engines instead of the Lyulka Saturn Al-41Fs originally planned. The plane has a simplified fuselage construction, landing gear and vertical fins from Su-27 family aircraft. The Article 1.44, despite having experimental examples of the state-of-the-art Al-41F motors, is far from what Mikoyan offered RusAF as the MFI (or, better, the Article 1.42). In particular, it has much simplified design of air intakes, no radar or other weapons aiming systems and no radio-wave absorbing coatings. To evolve into a fully capable fighter, the S-37 needs some five years of intensive work, while the MFI, should it ever be developed further than a technology demonstrator, from seven to ten years. The Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD) has repeatedly told both manufacturers that its interest in such expensive aircraft as the MFI has vanished on economical grounds, although it did initially allocate some funds for fight tests of the S-37, and has indicated that new economic realities dictate that ageing RusAF fighters should be replaced by modern highly capable but affordable aircraft, such as the LFI (Light Front-line Fighter). Sukhoi head Mikhail Pogosyan, who is known to be putting pressure on MoD for further funding of S-37 development into a fully capable combat aircraft, has said that it must must make a decision by the year-end, otherwise the US manufacturers might get too far in development of the affordable JSF next-generation fighter able to force older Russian designs (MiG-29 and Su-27) out of competition on the international market. The most likely way Russian fighter aircraft development will continue is that a union of now-existing design houses will be given a job to create an affordable aircraft (LFI) on the base of technologies developed earlier in frames of the S-37, MFI and Yak-141 projects and Sukhoi, Mikoyan and Yakovlev are known to be working on their LFI proposals. Management staff at Mikoyan and Sukhoi say flight tests of the Article 1.44 and S-37 will give invaluable experimental data for creation of the LFI, which will most likely be a single engine aircraft powered by either AL-41F (or improved variants of the Al-31F or Klimov RD-33). The LFI will most likely feature 3D thrust vectoring, a 360-degree airspace surveillance with passive and active sensors, a modern low-sized phased array radar and a backward-looking radar. The more sceptical commentators may cynically note that in the past the various design bureaux have found it extremely difficult to overcome traditional clashes of ego too achieve such cooperation. Although the retirement of some of the more prominent members of the old guard may ease the way. Both the MFI and S-37 have been offered for export as the basis for development of fighters tailored to customer's specific needs. MFI was once offered by former Mikoyan general director Mikhail Korzhuyev to China, while Sukhoi offered the S-37 to a Middle East customer. Although these proposals met some interest from potential clients, they did not evolve into contracts. However, such an outcome remains theoretically possible, but in that case the resulting aircraft will most likely be a far cry from the original proposals submitted to RusAF. In particular, export models will most likely have current-generation avionics and missiles, and hardly be made 'stealthy'. If the things go this way, avionics sets for would-be export versions of the S-37 and MFI will likely to incorporate some critical foreign-built elements, such as satellite-based navigation systems, communication, IFF (identification friend or foe) and electronic warfare equipment. It is unlikely, however, that MoD would agree to allow a western company to be the primary avionics integrator. Instead, it would insist on a Russian company heading this process so as to keep all critical technologies, including these in avionics, in Russia.

Article ID: 1648