Ok, so in case you live in a complete void and have no contact with the news what so ever and have never heard of the Suhkoi T-50 and it's first flight this past week, here is the story:

Story:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwy9T9Jj5WQ

Just the footage:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxWZiSdWvns

Also, if you don't keep up with this type of stuff, this is nothing new in terms of what we know about the program, the Air Force magazine had an article that touched briefly on it back in '08, here is the electronic copy of it: http://www.airforce-magazine.com/Magazi ... nance.aspx

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Now that we have the basics taken care of, lets talk about the T-50 and what it means for the world, and more importantly the United States. I'm going to be brief for the time being, but I think that it has the potential to be a very, very big problem for us, especially considering we are not procuring anymore F-22's. That's just my two cents though. Comments? Concerns perhaps?

Weasel

Considering the Russian government's previous tendency to buy very small amounts of high-tech equipment since the Cold War, I can't imagine that they'll have enough T-50s to actually pose a threat to NATO air forces any time soon - and if they do intend to produce them by the hundreds, I still imagine that the US would manage to use its financial superiority to win any such arms race.

The issue is that the Russians will sell the T-50 to whoever writes them a check.

I bet LockMart/Boeing are giddy over the news.

So we should just write them a bunch of checks and buy some.

Precisely my thoughts.

In what scenario is a likely threat country going to buy enough T-50s to challenge our air supremacy?

It's more likely that a threat country may buy T-50's to challenge the air supremacy of one of our allies, forcing us to commit. Or localized, but distinct from us arms races, that may include our allies, or destabilizing a region that contains our allies.

I don't see anyone overtly or directly challenging us head on anytime soon.

Well, say we keep up our current thought process on military spending, we continue to slow down production of aircraft specifically and overall slow down military research, then you have, say China, who either buys, steals, or does both and starts building up their fleet of stealth aircraft. Then you also have the prediction that in the next decade, China will in fact have more warships than we do. Now you have a country that can directly threaten our allies at the least, if not us. Now say Russia decides it wants to reestablish it's former military prowess. That ends with a very bad situation for us and those are not the only countries that don't like us. Of course, that is just my prediction and for quite some time, similar predictions involving China have been brought up by all kinds of military analysts. Take this one for instance: http://www.airforce-magazine.com/Magazi ... 5edit.aspx

Or this one from the very late 90's: http://www.airforce-magazine.com/Magazi ... china.aspx

China will flop real quick when they decide to give us bullets instead of cheap plastic toys.

Or so we hope...

Weasel, you need to check out Thomas Barnett.

Already do...JamesN posts him on facebook on occasion...

The primary area that will determine the T-50's ability to go one-on-one with the F-22 are the capabilities of its avionics suite and associated weapons systems. This is where most of the advancement of the last 30-40 years has gone, and where it will show in combat. The inherent strengths of its airframe will be evident in combat, but that will only help so much.

However, even a moderately capable fitment of avionics packages and weapons systems will allow a larger flight of T-50s to tangle with a smaller flight of F-22s on a closer to level playing field (3 to 1 odds, perhaps?), and if a country can afford to buy enough to fight those battles and have some left over, that would be a problem, and that is the most likely scenario where a limited number of frontline fighters will be a handicap. There's an op-ed in the April issue of Flight Journal by Walter Boyne about this that looks fairly good, though they also did an article a few years ago about buying Russian fighters for the US Navy, and that was also an April issue, so the "April Fool's joke" angle is evident.

In any event, the potential for this airplane to perform well against the F-22 is there. The ability of some countries to buy them in quantity is there. The need - or desire - is not as evident at the moment, but it takes a lot longer to build up a fleet than it does for major military powers to get itchy trigger fingers. I don't think the government should freak out just yet, but it should definitely pay close attention to what happens here.

I haven't delved into the T50's specs, but I would be shocked if it has the electronic warfare, networking, and isr capabilities of the F22.

The F22 isn't only a fighter... It's insane.

That usually isn't the Russian focus, they tend to build everything as simple and rugged as possible. However, the danger is the fact that the Indian's may not be that way. Which would explain why they are working together...

Right, the Indians.

Yeah, well, they are the smart ones in the partnership....then again, they are working with Russia...what's smart about that...

They've been buying Russian stuff for quite a while now. They know how it works. And their pilots are very well trained.

Don't let your prejudices mislead you.

Any war fought between the US and either China or Russia is likely not going to be long enough for any planes to get into the air anyway.

Sarcasm...I realize they've been buying aircraft and military technology off of the Russians for quite some time, usually in place of what we market to them They just purchased Su-30MKIs in place of our F/A-18....



Maybe...maybe not, wouldn't you rather be prepared for all scenarios...

Sure. And I'm sure the US thinks that way too.

I also figure that the full capabilities of the F-22, as well as the full technological inventory that the US has at its disposal, far exceeds what we THINK we can use to defend ourselves.

not so much as it used to, actually...

the office of the secdef (and secaf) has been *very* public over the past 2-3 years that the DOD is no longer going to outfit itsself for 'imaginary' worst case wars (wars vs 2 near-peers at the same time, which is what the strategic plans call for), but instead focus on the "likely" wars, namely insurgencies similar to what we are seeing today.

DOD is in QDR right now, and I think we may see a pretty serious change in strategic policy coming out of this process.

Couldn't have said it better myself...

This isn't the Cold War and Regan isn't our president (unfortunately), Star Wars is dead and gone. Replaced by an underfunded MDA. Military funding as a whole is being and has been slashed. The DoD has cut programs that many would consider vital to the protection of the US in the coming future. Specifically ABM technology, not just aircraft procurement.

ABM technology? This is something we've beaten up here before. It's a waste of money. If someone wants to pop a nuke on us, they'll put the daggone thing in a shipping container and zap Los Angeles. Who in the world is a likely ICBM threat against us? Other than our NATO allies, the only countries that have missiles that can reach us are China and Russia. Spending untold billions on ABM technology is an unconscionable waste of money. Far better to spend those ducats getting us off oil and out of the countries and societies that are causing us all these problems.

But...but....Reagan!

Iran just launched a satellite into orbit.
Satellite, warhead, whatever.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7866357.stm

Quibbling: That satellite weighted 27kg. That's not a militarily significant payload and it doesn't change the key part of my assertion, which is: If not for oil, The Middle East would be even lower on our national and strategic Concern'O'Meter than Africa....

Well, since we aren't going to any of the above, including spend money on missile defense, get ourselves out of an economic recession, or move towards domestic oil...maybe we should all just give up?

Prediction: The next 10-20 years is going to yield a very difficult time for America, especially in concerns to foreign relations and more over the rise of unfriendly foreign powers. In essence, I think we're going to end up having a large scale, more conventional war in the near future...

Back to the Russian/Indian/POS stealth fighter....we should still buy more F-22s...

Actually, I think we're going to move away from foriegn oil organically. It's not going to be huge, it's going to take a long time, and it may very well take some legislation (but not much), and it's not going to be a matter of domestic oil, either. Power will come from hybrids, from electric cars, from hydrogen, from ethanol (not that ethanol is much better than oil), and it's going to happen because of economics. It is going to become cheaper over time to use alternate sources of fuel both a) as the cost of oil increases and b) as technology improves how challenging it is to make alternate fuel sources and the cars and machines that operate on alternate fuels.

While California is practically another country in itself, and therefore not necessarily indicative of the national trend, I believe a city there (San Fransisco?) installed electrical outlets on street lamps and parking meters last year in order to create a grid for cars. The demand is nowhere near requiring that sort of investment, but obviously SF thinks that providing the infrastructure will increase the demand (it's a chicken and egg problem).

And when we start moving away from overseas oil, the Middle East, as Stanford says, is going to drop right off our radar.

Highly unlikely. We could barely afford the small-scale wars we got ourselves into this last time.


Nobody outside the Fighter Mafia, congressmen with component manufacturers in their districts and the 'higher-faster-farther' fanboys seem to agree.