Putin: Russia To Build New Strategic Bomber

[Purveyor]

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV (AP) – 21 hours ago

MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Monday that Russia will build a new strategic bomber, a move that comes as the nation tries to upgrade its aging military arsenal.

Putin said in televised remarks that work on the bomber must follow the development of a prospective stealth fighter, which made its maiden flight in January and was hailed by the government as a big step in military modernization efforts.

"We won't limit ourselves to just one new model," Putin said at a government meeting that focused on military aviation. "We must start work on a prospective long-range aircraft, our new strategic bomber."

Putin didn't mention any details in his public remarks, but said that the development of new aircraft engines, materials for aircraft construction and electronics will be the top priorities.

The chief of the Russian long-range aviation, Maj. Gen. Anatoly Zhikharev, said earlier this year that a prospective new bomber must join the air force in 2025-2030. Zhikharev said the new aircraft should replace the Soviet-built Tu-95 and Tu-160 strategic bombers.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j9FexEQwJuL7rrG-jtp4lY2KqPAQD9E61CFO0

[HopeHoops]

1. That "stealth fighter" flight in January was a pretty immature prototype based on old technology.

Putin likes to blow smoke out of his ass every once in a while to see if the US is awake. They're way behind in technology right now and they know it. Meanwhile, we're pre-occupied with Bush's stupid fucking useless wars. I'd call our situation with Russia a stalemate at the moment.

[happyslug]

5. True, especially since the Russians first came up with it

Stealth technology is based on a Scientific Paper firs published in the early 1970s in Soviet Scientific Journal. The US Translated it and thought it would be a good idea on how to get around Soviet Air Defense systems. The Soviets looked into it at the same time and determined it was NOT worth the investment. The reason for the difference is assessment was based on how integrated the NATO and Warsaw pact Air Defense Systems were. The US and NATO developed a very sophisticated and integrated Air Defense system that tended to use one or two radar frequency. The Soviet decided it was better to jam these Frequency then to hide from them.

The US AND NATO faced a different set of Defense. The Soviet Union did no rely on an integrated Defense system, but several layers of Air Defense with different Radar Frequency at each level. What the Soviet gave up in Communication capacity (Radar waves took over Communication Frequencies), they gain in a more robust air defuse system. Part of the problem was the Soviet accepted they were NOT as advance in Electronics as the Western Allies and thus decided NOT to compete at that level, instead replacing technology with overlapping capacity. Thus the problem for the US and NATO was how to overcome this overlapping capacity. The US had been successful in the late 1960s and early 1970s in breaking the Soviet Based system in use by the North Vietnamese, Israel had a similar success in 1967. The concern was the 1973 Yom Kipper War. As long as the Egyptian army stayed under the cover of their Soviet Based Air Defense System, the Egyptian army did well. With the defeat of the Syrian Army in the North, the Egyptians decided to go out of their defensive umbrella to put pressure in Israel so to relive pressure on Syria. This lead to massive air Attacks and defeat of the Egyptian army. While Israel and the US quickly claim credit to their superior technology, the early success of the Soviet Equipment shocked both of them and lead to an upgrade of both the Israel and US Armies. These included the following:
1. Night fighting capacity became standard do to the early success the Syrian Army had do to the fact the Syrian had Soviet Night Version devices and the Israelis had none)
2. A decision (later reversed) to equip the New M1 tank with a Automatic Grenade launcher to fight off light infantry. This was reversed in the 1980s when it became clear that the US could NO longer assume it would have air superiority in Europe, thus the M1 was given 50 caliber Machine Guns as Anti-air Defense.
3. The US looked into anyway to attack enemy air Defense units so to destroy them. The Israeli maintain 175mm Howitzers to this day for this duty. The 175mm was developed during the 1950s as a super long range artillery piece. Used in Vietnam, but replaced afterward by longer barrel (but Shorter range) 155 and 8 inch Howitzer in US Army service, but the Israeli keep them to this day for this purpose.

Stealth came out of the above search. The chief Reason the Soviets did NOT develop Stealth is that it is a specialist plane. It is NOT a Fighter, despite its F designation. If it would come into battle with even a MIG-15 (or American Sabre, F-86) of the Korean war ear, it would be shot down (while it might survive a fight with a Mustang or similar late WWII Fighter, that is do to its superior speed NOT its fighting ability). The Stealth Fighter enters a battle zone under the cover of Darkness (so it is NOT viable) then relies on its radar Stealthiness to be NOT detected by Radar. It then drops its bombs on a designated target and goes home. Ideally it destroys the Air Defense Radars thus freeing the Combat Zone for use by other aircraft. If the other sides moves its Radar at Night (one way to defeat such an attack) a Stealth bomber becomes useless for it can NOT wait till daylight to hit that target for if it did, the Stealth would be shot down.

Now, the Soviets of the 1980s relied on its ability to jam radars. The reason for this is NATO relied on air based radar for Air Defense more then Ground based radar and the Soviet accepted any attack in the Air Base Radar would be defended first and foremost. Thus something like the Stealth would be useless to them. They needed a long range fighter to get to the Air plane carrying the Radar and shoot it down. Thus the Soviet Developed its SU-27 fighter instead of the Stealth. The US and NATO faced Soviet Ground based radar and thus Stealth seemed a good option for them, just sneak it and destroy (Through the Soviet also relied on mobile Radars that could be shut down and moved, but again a target Stealth could attack at night).

Given the above the real question is why did the Russian Republic finally break down and make a Stealth Fighter? The US and NATO is still heavy depended on air borne Radar Systems so it still has limited use to the Russian Air force. Against someone like Guerrillas, you do NOT have to worry about them having Radar, so not a concern in the internal conflicts of the Russian Republic. Iran is NOT a concern and neither are the Former Soviet Central Asian Republics. Georgia is a concern, but nothing conventional Russian tanks can not handle. China is a great customer for Russian Natural Gas so not a concern. Japan is NOT a concern for it has no capacity to attack the Russian Far East and no one really cares about Alaska as a threat (And the same with Canada, the distance is just to great for a Fighter Bomber). Even a Long Range Bomber has only limited applications from a Russian point of view. The Russians are NOT going to attack the chief debtor of its main customer (China is Russian Main customer for Natural Gas, and the US is China's number one debtor).

The best explanation is both the Fighter and Bomber are for advertising purposes only. They are to show potential customers the Russian Defense industry could produce something like this if it really wanted to. If someone wants one, the Russians will gladly sell it to them, but the main thrusts is to show the capacity of the Air Defense industry and to get people to buy their other products not the Stealth.

My point is Stealth has been overrated. If used in the environment it was design to operate in, a good investment, but outside of that limited environment of limited usefulness.

Side note: Since 2000 the Russian use of the Net and Computer in general have increase exponentially. You can NOT go by the level of their Technology of just five years ago, it has improved that much. US Computer have also improved but no were near as much as in Russia (Mostly because the Russians were starting from such a low level, the jump was thus huge). This is quickly moving into the defense industry through as a whole Russian electronics is still below US and Western European Levels. I make this comment to point out the advantages the US defense industry had in the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, have disappeared since 2000. A gap still exists but it is no where near what it was in the late 1990s. It is still severe in the Defense Industry but that is slowly disappearing. Thus the observation that by 2030 both the Russians and the US would start replacing maned fighters with advance "unmanned" missiles and fighters.

[HopeHoops]

7. Bingo.

Thanks for the reference! I looked for one but couldn't find a good one so I just made a simple post. I was pissed that I couldn't even find the article I was looking for and it was only two months ago!!!!

[HeresyLives]

2. So much for the idea that Russia is 'giving up'.

[d.gibbs]

3. They can't even build their own ships anymore

They have to buy them from France

[HeresyLives]

4. Well they're transporting you to the space station.

[happyslug]

6. Russia has had the best Rocket Technology for almost 30 years.

When the Russians lost the Space Race and the US invested its dollars into Skylab, the Russians went into the basic Rocket research it skipped in the 1960s (as did the US, we just built a bigger version of the V-2 into the Saturn Rocket). Thus by the 1980s the Russians had the best Rockets and continue to have the best rockets to this day. The latest set of US Rockets are based on this Russian Technology (the Russians were selling everything in the late 1990s, so it sold the Rocket Technology, but the US used it in ICBM that were no small for manned missions, thus we rely on Russian Rockets today).