http://www.difesaonline.it/mondo-militare/russia-nostro-caccia-di-sesta-generazione-volo-entro-il-2025-lanalisi-degli-studi

(Franco Iacch)
10/06/16

"Our sixth generation fighter prototype will fly before 2025 and will be hypersonic". Ambitious declaration was issued by the United Aircraft Corporation by TASS.

Although Russia has not yet made operational its fifth-generation fighter, Moscow hopes to fly next within the ten years, an hypersonic platform.

Our sixth-generation fighter will fly before 2025 - said Vladimir Mikhailov, head of the Directorate of military aircraft of the United Aircraft Corporation - will make its first flight, as we plan, no later than two or three years beyond 2020.

Statements are impossible to confirm, but the UAC also specify the design phase is well underway, with already validated the final concept.

"It will be hypersonic, single-seat, invisible to the enemy, super-maneuverable, multifunctional and made with composite materials. The aircraft will be produced even in unmanned variant".

We know that the preliminary studies on the sixth-generation fighter are ongoing in both the US and Russia, while the hypersonic assets, as well as costly, it still imposes certain technological limitations. The United States, despite the progress in the apparatus for driving the hypersonic regime, are not yet able to produce cells of resist that flight scheme because of the high temperatures.

The Russians, therefore, may have discovered a new material? This question can not be answered. The Mikhailov statements, however, should be read with some caution.

Moscow, is encountering serious difficulties in the development of its first fifth-generation platform. The T-50 PAK FA, although arouse a certain charm in promotional flights, such as the one in the Crimea, it is far from being operational. We know that in six years, the six prototypes of the T-50 have only completed 700 test flights.

The last known incident of a T-50 dates from June 10, 2014, when one of the fifth prototype caught fire engines. By Sukhoi had to suspend production of the sixth prototype and use the components already designed to repair damaged aircraft. Despite the proclamations and announced a production of the series in 2017 (was announced for the end of the current year), the Russian Air Force reduced the initial order of sixty T-50 to a dozen platforms with changes implemented.

All the fighters were equipped with AESA radar and three-dimensional vector thrust control. When, one day, the development of the PAK-FA will be completed, Moscow will have a formidable fighter. The design is probably sophisticated enough if not similar in performance to the F-22 Raptor (pictured right). Whether it can be even higher this is open to question. The Russians paid the inexperience with the fifth-generation technology, such as the integration between the different sensors and approach with the new stealth coating of which the Pak-Fa comes. It could take years and billions of dollars.

The T-50 got up in the air for the first time on January 29, 2010 (without, however, part of the avionics such as radar and the arms management systems). The Russians confirm that Pak-Fa will be built in a number between 800 and 1000 units, including exports. For the T-50, is expected to forty years operating cycle, with an estimated cost of 100 million dollars to hunt.

The T-50 is the first experience for the Russians with radar absorbing materials (RAM), than thirty years experience gained by the Americans with the F-117.

But what do we know of the sixth-generation fighter? It should be a platform to reach hypersonic speeds, with a reduced RCS, equipped with high energy laser weapons, with capacity to hack enemy computer systems and with a self-healing structure. This, ideally, the specifications for the Next Generation Tactical Aircraft or Next Gen TAC AIR.

Science fiction? The opposite. Just think of that are in place also preliminary studies on the seventh generation, imagining a specific operating environment is at least 60 years.

(Photo: Sputnik / Lockheed Martin)

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IZAKOVIC