Prime Minister Vladimir Putin pressed the aviation industry to design a new strategic bomber as the designer of Russia’s fifth-generation stealth jet fighter said the plane would be ready for use in 2015.
Moscow is scrambling to update its aging fleet of military aircraft. It test-flew the long-awaited fifth-generation fighter, the T-50, at the end of January, presenting it as Moscow’s first all-new warplane since the Soviet collapse.
“We won’t limit ourselves to just one new model,” Putin said at a government meeting that focused on military aviation Monday. “We must start work on a prospective long-range aircraft, our new strategic bomber.”
Putin did not mention any details in his public remarks, but said the development of new aircraft engines, materials for aircraft construction and electronics would be the top priorities.
The chief of the Russian long-range aviation, Major General Anatoly Zhikharev, said earlier this year that a prospective new bomber must join the Air Force between 2025 and 2030. Zhikharev said the new aircraft should replace the Soviet-built Tu-95 and Tu-160 strategic bombers.
While the first flight of the fifth-generation fighter, the T-50, was cheered by the government, observers noted that it came nearly two decades after the first stealth prototype of the U.S. F-22 Raptor took to the air.
Asked to compare his brainchild to the F-22 Raptor, the Russian jet’s chief designer, Alexander Davydenko, told reporters: “The basic features are the same, but we tried to do it better.”
He said Sukhoi, which produced the T-50, had simulated duels with the U.S. stealth fighter. “I think we will have a competitive price. As for the efficiency-and-cost ratio, we will be much better,” Davydenko said.
The first MiG-29 and Su-27 prototypes of the previous fourth generation took to the air in 1977. Analysts say several nations, including Libya and Vietnam, had expressed interest in the fifth-generation fighter.
Putin, who toured Sukhoi’s design bureau in Moscow on Monday, said Russia still had much work to do before it starts producing the plane. “Before this machine can go into serial production, there are over 2,000 test flights left. There is still a lot of work ahead,” he told the government meeting.
Sukhoi CEO Mikhail Pogosyan said he saw his company’s market share growing from 13 percent of the estimated global $200 billion market from 2006 to 2015 to 15 to 16 percent of the $300 billion market from 2016 to 2025.
He said three more experimental fighters would be built by next year.
Davydenko said 2015 was the deadline for delivering the plane to the armed forces.
Analysts from the Moscow-based Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies said in a survey published last week that the T-50 prototype’s engines did not measure up to new-generation fighters in terms of thrust-to-weight ratio and fuel economy.
The T-50 will also be produced in a 50-50 joint venture with India and could be armed with jointly made BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles, Davydenko said.
(Reuters, AP)