Pak-Fa , some russian language

XaNDeR

New Member
I found this , seems to look like plans for the Pak-Fa , but there are 2 kinda diferent aircraft , anyone can read russian?
Are they 2 plans what it could look like , or 2 variants ?

 

Chrom

New Member
While I will agree that aircraft overall do look similar, the Russians have been known to copy Western designs. Here are some examples-
Concorde-TU-144
XB-70-Sukhoi T-4
Space Shuttle-Buran
B-1-TU-160
All these are copies of general concept and not a design.

For example, Buran, while externaly looking similar to SS, dont even have some CONCEPT, let alone same design. SS posses own powerfull engines what helps accelerate during intitial phase - Buran dont. SS should be manually controlled during landing - Buran do it automatically. There are many other important differences.

Tu-160 - again, while looking quite similar externally, is much better performer being almost twice faster than B-1B. They similiraties represent rather similar technological level than anything else. Same with Mig-25 -> F-15-> Mig-29/Su-27 line.
Another importand difference between Tu-160 and B-1B is they armament. B-1B being "almost" conventinal bomber in Tu-22M3 class while Tu-160 is a carrier for ultra-long range nuclear missiles.

Concord vs Tu-144 - no wonder the arey looking similar, after all french and russian design teams had quite close links in initial stage. And again, same technological and airodinamical understanding level...
 
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Brandon

New Member
Ok. thanks for the insight. Didn't really know that much about the designs. Also, the Tu-160 is faster than the B-1B, but not as fast as the B-1A. The reason the B-1B is slower is because the intakes aren't variable so it would be more stealthy. Surprisingly, the B-1B can carry a heavier payload than the TU-160 although it is smaller.
 

Chrom

New Member
Ok. thanks for the insight. Didn't really know that much about the designs. Also, the Tu-160 is faster than the B-1B, but not as fast as the B-1A. The reason the B-1B is slower is because the intakes aren't variable so it would be more stealthy. Surprisingly, the B-1B can carry a heavier payload than the TU-160 although it is smaller.
T-160 can carry more payload at maximal range. Allthought the comparasion is probably pointless as initially B-1B was fielded even without any missile at all! As pure bomber! Only in later 90x it recived missiles. What a, how to say it mildly, wrong and short sighted concept for a strategic bomber in 80x !
 

Chrom

New Member
It had SRAM right from the beginning.
We can speculate about how much 10-years old missiles worth for a new aircraft. The SRAM producton ended in 1975. Either way, 50-160km range also wasn't impressive, and could be used only with nuclear warhead against stationary targets due to simply inertial guidance. Compare it to KH-15 which had much longer range, was much faster, and had variants with active and passive radar homing.
 

Waylander

Defense Professional
Verified Defense Pro
No doubt that KH-15 is more advanced.
I just wanted to show that "no missiles" was not right even if the missile was not state of the art. ;)
 
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