- 19 Mar 2006 01:47
#832919
“The Russians never got out of the fighter-building business. They are delivering aircraft to nations around the world that outperform anything else we have - except the Raptor,†said General Jumper after he piloted the F-22 at Mach 1.7. But the truth is he could be terribly wrong……
With Indo-Russian Aviation Limited (IRAL) planning joint co-production on new stealthy Russian aircraft which has been HAL’s longstanding expertise in erstwhile Soviet fighter plane designs, the MiG MFI project is definitely what India is eyeing.
Who knows 20 years from now, an IAF MiG 1.42 “Raptor Killer†may once more score kills over a USAF F-22 in DACT
All-in-all it just boils down to this. Whatever the Americans have, the Russians have better. The failure of the Sabres against Korean MiGs saw the development of the F-5. The low kill ratios of the Phantoms and F-5s against the nimble MiGs over N. Vietnam saw the development of the F-16 and the high speed MiG-25 lead to the F-15s development. Yet an integrated BVR attack capable IAF MiG 21 Bison armed with a Phazotron Kopyo-M radar and R-77 BVRAAMs can still “schlemm†any F-16. And while the ATF program began in the early 1980s with the YF-22 making its maiden flight in September 1990 the F-22 probably won’t be fully operational with the USAF by 2008-2010. So with the F-22 being technologically three decades old one can only fathom how much superior the MiG MFI is.
Having greater agility and range than the F-22 the aerodynamically superior MFI will have a top speed of Mach 2.6 versus Mach 1.7 for the F-22 Raptor, and the MFI will be able to cruise supersonically for a longer period. To reduce RCS it sports a heavy coating of RAM, S-shaped compressor channels, internal weapon storage, LO airframe geometry, and maybe an active radar cancellation system (RCS) or a plasma cloud stealth (PCS) system making it stealthier than the F-22 as MiG MAPO claims. Two three-dimensional thrust-vectoring Saturn/Lyulka AL-41F turbofans, capable of 44,100 lb of thrust in afterburner power the MiG 1.42. The key to the MiG-1.42 is its new Phazotron N-014 phased array fire control radar and rear-facing N-012 radar system operating in in air and ground modes simultaneously with ground mapping, search-and-track of moving targets, synthetic aperature radar and terrain avoidance it is capable of detecting any stealth aircraft without a special radar.
With Indo-Russian Aviation Limited (IRAL) planning joint co-production on new stealthy Russian aircraft which has been HAL’s longstanding expertise in erstwhile Soviet fighter plane designs, the MiG MFI project is definitely what India is eyeing.
Who knows 20 years from now, an IAF MiG 1.42 “Raptor Killer†may once more score kills over a USAF F-22 in DACT
All-in-all it just boils down to this. Whatever the Americans have, the Russians have better. The failure of the Sabres against Korean MiGs saw the development of the F-5. The low kill ratios of the Phantoms and F-5s against the nimble MiGs over N. Vietnam saw the development of the F-16 and the high speed MiG-25 lead to the F-15s development. Yet an integrated BVR attack capable IAF MiG 21 Bison armed with a Phazotron Kopyo-M radar and R-77 BVRAAMs can still “schlemm†any F-16. And while the ATF program began in the early 1980s with the YF-22 making its maiden flight in September 1990 the F-22 probably won’t be fully operational with the USAF by 2008-2010. So with the F-22 being technologically three decades old one can only fathom how much superior the MiG MFI is.
Having greater agility and range than the F-22 the aerodynamically superior MFI will have a top speed of Mach 2.6 versus Mach 1.7 for the F-22 Raptor, and the MFI will be able to cruise supersonically for a longer period. To reduce RCS it sports a heavy coating of RAM, S-shaped compressor channels, internal weapon storage, LO airframe geometry, and maybe an active radar cancellation system (RCS) or a plasma cloud stealth (PCS) system making it stealthier than the F-22 as MiG MAPO claims. Two three-dimensional thrust-vectoring Saturn/Lyulka AL-41F turbofans, capable of 44,100 lb of thrust in afterburner power the MiG 1.42. The key to the MiG-1.42 is its new Phazotron N-014 phased array fire control radar and rear-facing N-012 radar system operating in in air and ground modes simultaneously with ground mapping, search-and-track of moving targets, synthetic aperature radar and terrain avoidance it is capable of detecting any stealth aircraft without a special radar.