Russia has started manufacturing the prototype of its first stealth bomber, state news agency TASS reported on Tuesday.
Local media reported that material was being shipped for the project and that work had begun on the cockpit of the bomber, known as the PAK DA.
“The final assembly of the entire machine should be complete in 2021,” one of the sources was quoted by TASS as saying. It is also understood that aircraft maker Tupolev — which is part of United Aircraft Corporation — is in charge.
Three PAK DA prototypes are expected to be constructed and the aircraft is expected to enter serial production in 2027, according to the 2020 Izvestia report.
Earlier in the year, we reported that the Russian MoD had signed a contract with the developer of PAK-DA long-range stealth bomber to commence production for a possible delivery by 2027 according to state media.
The aircraft is expected to be of subsonic speed, have a 12,000 km operational range and a capability to continuously remain in the air for up to 30 hours while carrying both conventional and nuclear payloads up to 30 tons. The aircraft is expected to have a crew of 4.
Looks like a plastic mock-up. Having just finished reading Peter Westwick’s excellent book on Stealth, I wish them luck! It’s one thing designing a stealthy aeroplane. Quite another making one. Meanwhile the US is powering away with their third generation stealth bomber, the B-21.
Won’t be long before stealth is obsolete with better radar!.be all about drones now.back when the F-117 Nighthawk came out in gulf war British radar could pick them up just about!.
I doubt it. The only radar that the British claimed could pick up a F117, and only from certain angles, was the Type 965, a VHF set on certain RN ships of the time, now all long since retired. Long wavelength radars like the 965 can sometimes pick up stealth air vehicles but there’s not much you can do with the information. As soon as you switch on your E/F or I/J band radars to get a proper target indication and fire control solution on the air vehicle there’s nothing there. F117 rode into Bagdad into one of the world’s most sophisticated air defence systems and was never seen. And stealth has got a lot better since then. Besides, stealth never claimed to make something invisible. The idea has always been to reduce the RCS to such an extent that you reduce the defences’ time to react to such an extent that it’s impossible to get a firing solution on you in time. That concept will hold true for a very long time to come whether the vehicle is manned or not.
Can anyone explain the lack of fin / vertical stabiliser?
This design mimics the American B-2 bomber. That hasn’t got vertical stabilisers either. Nor does the new B-21 successor. Scissor type ailerons near the wing tips opening and shutting under control from the FBW system control yaw stability instead. This improves stealth further.
They keep on producing new defence products with a relatively small defence budget. Either they are producing defective equipment or they are significantly more efficient than the UK and US. Looking at the number of submarine and aircraft accidents they have had for instance indicates it is the former rather than the later. No point in pumping out all this defence equipment if it is defective, poorly made and lasts only a few years. Look at their aircraft carrier for instance being pulled along by tug boats…All in all I don’t think it will hold up to close scrunity but then again I could be wrong.
It seems to me russia hasn’t realised it’s not a superpower anymore and it’s trying its hardest to replace everything it once had however it doesn’t have the economy to support it
Yes the are not super power any more but try the and see if New York will not turn to ashes in a minute.
Do you know how many F35 that have crashed or how many F22. You sound brainwashed. If Russia lays hand in type of money America is wasting America will be a century behind.
They don’t tend to put them into mass production, they will build a prototype and show it off with some outrageous performance claim but a few months after the reveal it will be quietly cancelled.
Spot on, Wz. June’s edition of Air Forces Monthly has a report on work resuming on the T-160M strategic bomber. In the same report the Russian Deputy Prime Minister, Yuri Borisov, is quoted as saying “… we have postponed the next-generation PAK DA bomber, to gain experience and restore technology” while [the modernized Tu-160M] “will suit the armed forces until [the] 2050s or even 2060s”.
Don’t be foolish. Of the 3 of the nuclear triads, they have the best land based ICBMs, some of the best SLBMs and hypersonic weapons in which the US still lags behind. They have more nuclear warheads than the US and those weapons are pretty cheap to produce in Russia because all the re materials are found in Russia. Have you ever wondered why the US for instance sells too expensive but fake weapons such as they did to the Saudis Patriots SAMs that can’t even intercept Houthi made drones? My friend go back to your books again. And yes Russia is still in every respect a nuclear super power. Sanctions! Sanctions!! Sanctions!!! That’s all the US is about.
Outside of CGI it will probably be absolutely invisible once operational, so we’ll only ever see the prototypes. We won’t have to wait long to find out though since its apparently going to proceed from first assembly to serial production in just 6 years, assuming on the off chance that it is actually visible.
I sometimes speculate that all these CGI wonder weapons coming out of Russia are just to drive up US defence industry stock prices, where Russian’s in the know have their money … via shell companies.
For example look at the Tu-160M2. First flew in 2017…. only it was an uncompleted one from the 90’s that they just put together. They announced they would built 50 of the upgraded model but only ordered 10 with the first new one now expected in 2021 and a production rate of 3 a year from 2023. Only they haven’t yet got a working new engine to put in it, they are building a more primitive version of the engine from the 1970’s that powered the original TU-160 although this new version of the engine wont be capable of afterburning (which should give it more range at the cost of lower speed). The problem they are encountering both building the airframes and the engines is they have lost a lot of the metallurgy and advanced welding techniques they used to have, they have had to rediscover how to weld titanium for example as the company UAC lacked both the equipment and the staff knowledge.
A salient lesson on the importance of investing in the continued development of your engineering teams.
Sovereignty is more than fielding weapon systems or having political independence – it is the ability to give substance to your choices and sustain your independence in times of difficulty.
It’ll be like the Stealth fighter, the Su-57, which has so far been almost 20 years in development. First flown in 2010, it’s still yet to enter service, with a date of 2028 pencilled in, the latest of many, many dates.
Russia is all mouth and no trousers.
And despite all the rip-off copies and prototypes, neither Russia nor China have still produced a proper functioning stealth fighter or bomber that’s gone into production and become fully operational. One thing is to design a stealth vehicle, quite another to put it into production, as the Americans found out to their great cost.
what do ya know Russia copies anothe US aircraft. atleast not as bad as China i dont think they have ever created something original aircraft or otherwise. lol
What do you mean all of accidents their aircraft and submarines have had, where, when how many and how long ago. If I’m not delusional the US has suffered a crashed F-22 & F-35 in the past few weeks. If I remember correctly its the 1st time since 2011 that a rocket manufactured in the US has successfully taken humans into orbit today. That was done by a private company not the US government. I wonder how US astronauts have gotten to the ISS in the past 9 years. Maybe it was by the most reliable rocket that has ever been in production with over 1400 launches. How many people have died on these inferior Russian rockets? How long ago did that happen? It’s a lot less than the US has lost and a longer time ago for that matter. Yous really need to stop believing the anti – Russian propaganda spouted out by our western media and do a little research for yourselves, if you don’t it makes you look like ignorant bigoted idiots. Richest country on the planet natural resources wise, no national debt. Record amounts of physical gold bullion buying, world’s biggest purchaser for past 5 years in a row. Probably one of the very few countries who can sustain themselves financially through this virus pandemic without borrowing. Small economy? No wealth have you seen Moscow recently. It puts most US cities to absolute shame. Just because a country doesn’t want to label its children and its children’s children with trillions of dollars of debt doesn’t make it poor. Every single negative comment I’ve read here have stated total falsehood and BS. The people making these comments are probably that clueless about reality they think the F-35 is a great fighter jet. Its a pity that the USAF won’t allow it to reside in a country where those backward Russians have sold their pathetic SAM’s to. Wonder what they’re scared of surely the Russians couldn’t build a SAM system as good as a block 3 patriot system for much less cost. I think I might have to take that last remark back, as the patriot has a pretty terrible record while a system known as the S-400 has a pretty good reputation. Just ask the Saudi terrorist regime.
It’s got Winglets!
How are Winglets stealthy?
They will increase the RCS even in a head on aspect let alone a side aspect
Taxi for Mr Tupolov.
Winglets can be stealthy, if they’re made form a carbon composite. However, if it’s all composite, you will have erosion problems on the leading edges. This is why the F35 for example is still metal with a RAM coating that can be more easily repaired.
The overall design has a lot of merits in being a blended wing body rather than a flying wing ala B2 and B21. By using this kind of design it gives you a large volume bomb bay in a clean aerodynamic shape. Cranfield University when teamed with NASA developed a blended wing body that is 35% more efficient than a standard aircraft configuration of main plane + tail plane + fin/rudder. Cranfield’s design became the X48 test aircraft that flew in 2012. It’s a pity it never went any further.
The PAK-DA has a few issues though. From the CGI it looks like the engine/s are in line with the intake and exhaust. This probably means the compressor and power turbine are not shielded from view. Therefore from a frontal or rear aspect the engine will show up on radar like a beacon.
The other issue it has, judged from the images and video clip (see below) is that it looks like it does not use thrust vectoring. Pitch and Yaw control gets tricky with flying wings. This is because there moment length i.e. the distance from the centre point to the flying control is very short. This makes the flight controls less responsive. Which is one of the reasons the B2 uses differential thrust for yaw control. Mind you it’s a bomber not a fighter, so does it really matter?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEvdm-DfvWM
Its a paper plane IMHO Russia has a GDP about the same size as Italy and it joints the 100,000 ton aircraft carriers nuclear powered missiles, Armata, its all just a paper exercise to appease some of the Russian people who seem to think corruption, poverty and ignorance are things worth protecting
I agree it is “probably” Russian wishful thinking. But they do have a habit of building outstanding prototype aircraft. As a paper aeroplane, I think this has the greatest chance of being made. I would not be surprised to see a very small number of these built say 10, much like they are currently doing with the Su57 (PAK-FA) aircraft. Because of what it is, it would be very doubtful if the PAK-DA is something they’d put up for export.
There has been very little said about the Mig 29/35 replacement the Mikoyan Light Multi-Function Frontal Aircraft (LMFS). What has been said however, is that if Turkey jump in bed with the Su57, they will pass details over on their TFX program to Mig. Russia believe there is a market for a light weight fighter in the Gripen class that can perform multi-role tasks. From what I’ve seen they are waiting on the development of the Su57 before funding the next aircraft project. Although there has also been a lot of media on the Mig31 replacement the Mig 41, which sounds more and more like the Firefox.
Love that film. Wish they had made Firefox 2, like the book.
Perhaps its just a development exercise to keep / nurture their engineering and skill?
Merely for the sake of irony, we should buy a dozen stripped down versions and fit with our own avionics, weapons systems and engines. That being said, they do look pretty cool.
Join the discussion…They may look cool but they are all flamed when they come up against the west’s (particularly USA) hardware in an armed exchange. Think Pantsir, AAA system bristling with the latest radars, missiles and guns flamed by an Israeli drone that looked like it was made as part of a school science project.