VLAD SHLEPCHENKO
21 NOVEMBER 2021 17:05
CHECKMATE TO THE US AVIATION INDUSTRY: RUSSIAN CHECKMATE FIGHTER WENT INTO PRODUCTION
The fifth generation fighter Checkmate ("Checkmate") became a sensation at the MAKS-2021 air show in July this year. It was shown to the general public out of the blue: no leaks about the development of this machine had previously been leaked to the media. And now - from the first photos to the launch of the serial assembly, it took only four months, an absolute record in Russia!
The first information about the unique aircraft appeared in open sources literally a couple of days before the presentation, when "kind people" photographed a full-size model of the fighter - first covered with cloth, and then already installed in the pavilion.
And now the real production of these fighters has started . The assembly of the aircraft was started by the specialists of the aircraft plant named after Yu.A. Gagarin in Komsomolsk-on-Amur.
Universal Soldier
The presentation of the new machine was glamorous, at the highest level, thanks to which Checkmate largely overshadowed other participants in the exhibition - including the civilian MS-21 airliner, ready for production, and unmanned helicopters, and many other interesting products of the aviation industry. The novelty rushed to discuss not only the Russian and American press (which was quite natural), but also Chinese, Indian, Vietnamese publications.
The fighter impressed the audience not only with its advanced design, but also with the declared characteristics.
NEW FIFTH GENERATION FIGHTER CHECKMATE. PHOTO: ROSTEC STATE CORPORATION
Firstly , the manufacturers - Sukhoi and Rostec State Corporation - announced that Checkmate will be an open-architecture aircraft, that is, it is just a platform on which electronics and weapons systems from various manufacturers and different standards can be installed. Thanks to this, the machine should become a "universal soldier" in the air war of the future. In the version of the fighter, Checkmate will fight for the seizure of air supremacy, and, having changed equipment, will carry out strike missions against ground and surface targets of the enemy.
Secondly , the aircraft fully complies with the criteria of the fifth generation: a glider made using stealth technology (both in contours and in the used composite materials); weapons placed in the internal compartments, radar with an active phased antenna array (AFAR), supersonic cruising flight speed without putting the engine into afterburner mode. Moreover, Checkmate can be turned into a drone. As applied to fighters, this is already a feature of not the fifth, but the sixth generation. That is, in all respects, this aircraft promises to be advanced.
According to the calculations of the manufacturers, it will be able to accelerate to Mach 2 (Mach 1 is the speed of sound, approximately from 290 to 330 m / s, depending on altitude) and carry up to 7.4 tons of payload at a range of up to 2800 km. What do these numbers say? Almost seven and a half tons of bombs and missiles is an indicator, albeit less, but still comparable to the payload of the American all-weather F-15 fighter, a vehicle of a heavier class. Two speeds of sound is quite an ordinary achievement for aircraft of the third generation of jet aircraft, but for representatives of the fifth generation it is a very, very good level. Checkmate should be twice as fast as the American F-35 Lightning fighter-bomber and equal in speed to the "golden" F-22 Raptor, a multi-role fighter from the American defense flagship Lockheed Martin.
And given that the export of the latter is prohibited, it follows thirdly : the Russian “chess player” simply has no competitors on the international market. By the way, it is worth talking about the market in more detail.
Initiative fighter
The Russian car was not developed by order of the Ministry of Defense, but on an initiative basis. This is a very important detail. First, it means that the developers used corporate rather than budget money. We can say that they created the aircraft "on our own", as far as this definition is applicable to a state corporation. In addition, the developers proceeded not from the demands of the military, but from the actual requirements of the market.
"The idea was born from the economy. In our opinion, there are a lot of single-engine aircraft on the market now ... But there is no fifth-generation single-engine aircraft at an acceptable, economically justified price that would be within the power of most customers of military multifunctional aircraft."
- the general director of the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) Yuri Slyusar explained the history of the origin of the fighter .
As a result, the developers got a fighter that has everything that the international market is willing to pay money for.
Obviously, another fulcrum of Checkmate is the huge scientific and technical groundwork accumulated during the creation of the Su-57. The planes are not only similar in appearance: Checkmate, in fact, is a single-engine version of the "fifty-seventh", maximally adapted to the requirements of foreign customers. The development program for a promising frontline aviation complex (PAK FA), which later became the Su-57, was carried out with the active participation of India. New Delhi has invested $ 6 billion in the program since 2007, according to open sources, covering 35% of research and development (R&D) and testing costs.
PROMO VIDEO FOR THE FIFTH GENERATION FIGHTER CHECKMATE, TIMED TO COINCIDE WITH THE PREMIERE OF THE AIRCRAFT AT DUBAI AIRSHOW - 2021. SOURCE: ROSTEC CORPORATION
However, in 2018, India withdrew from the project, preferring to purchase French Rafale fighters . This deal had some signs of a large-scale corruption crime (at least, some Indian politicians are convinced of this) and is worthy of a separate material; here we note that the French aircraft manufacturer Dassault Aviation sells fighters to the Indians at a completely cosmic price tag: 208 million euros apiece. As a result, 7.5 billion euros (60,000 crore rupees; 10 million rupees) allocated for the re-equipment of the Indian Air Force is enough to purchase not a hundred fighters, but only 36.
In 2019, Indian pilots had to fight Pakistani F-16s and JF-17s in obsolete, albeit modernized MiG-21s. Having received not the most pleasant impressions from the week-long conflict, the leadership of the Air Force urgently demanded the purchase of 12 Su-30MKI and 21 MiG-29 fighters.
Against this background, Rostec rolled out a fighter, whose name just screams about the connection with India, the homeland of the smartest game in the history of mankind. In fact, Checkmate has combined everything that is dear to the heart of the Indian Air Force: supersonic flight in non-afterburner mode (the absence of such was one of the main officially declared reasons for India's withdrawal from the PAK FA program), stealth technology, an open architecture that would allow it to be used as a Russian and Western weapons, and versatility on the battlefield. With all this, the creation of these "goodies" has already been largely paid for by Indian taxpayers.
One engine is good, but two are many
Since the late 60s of the last century, the military on both sides of the ocean began to come to the understanding that the air force fleets should include both single and twin-engine vehicles. The latter have a longer flight range and payload, and have greater survivability. However, single-engine fighters are indispensable for many routine tasks in a limited theater of operations, for which the use of twin-engine vehicles is redundant.
Tactically, single-engine vehicles feel more confident in maneuverable battles, the so-called dog dumps. But their main advantage lies in the plane of the economy. An airplane with one engine requires half as many consumables, service work and spare parts as a twin-engine analogue. Modernization and reengineering of the fleet of such fighters is also several times cheaper than twin-engine ones. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, an aphorism was born: if you want to ruin a small country, give it a cruiser. In the last half century, combat aviation has been doing an excellent job with this task.
Classic examples of such complementary pairs are the American single-engine F-16 and twin-engine F-15, as well as the F-35 and F-22. Top-performing single-engine fighters include the Swedish Saab JAS 39 Gripen, the Soviet MiG-21 and its many Chinese clones.
The USSR turned from the path of creating a mixed fleet of single and twin-engine fighters in the late 1970s, when the Mikoyan Design Bureau created a twin-engine MiG-29 under the program of a light promising front-line fighter (LPFI). The car turned out to be very traction-armed, and therefore incredibly maneuverable. The Soviet Union did not spare money for defense, and at times did not even consider it, so the operating costs did not bother anyone. And one cannot even say that the 29s did not fit into the market: at different times they were acquired by India, Egypt, Malaysia and Myanmar, Eritrea and even Peru. However, time passes, and the attractiveness of these planes is gradually decreasing.
Alas, at the end of this technological revolution, it turned out that Russia simply does not physically have a light single-engine fighter. The last successful representative of this class was the MiG-21, but already the MiG-23 was neither simple nor light, and by now has turned into a relic of the Cold War, which is in service only with the Air Forces of Kazakhstan, India and Sri Lanka.
Blow up the market
The head of Rostec, Sergei Chemezov, reported that Checkmate will cost customers $ 25-30 million apiece - almost an order of magnitude cheaper than Rafale. Other figures for comparison: you can buy the American F-16D Block 52 (if you are not under sanctions) for 34 million dollars, the more advanced Su-30 - for 50 million within Russia and for $ 83 million if you are a foreigner. And most importantly, the American "Lightning" F-35, the closest analogue of Checkmate, only recently dropped in price to $ 77 million. It is obvious that Checkmate will become a very unpleasant competitor for the F-35.
FIGHTER CHECKMATE. PHOTO: PJSC UAC / GLOBALLOOKPRESS
Why is the price of such an outstanding machine according to the declared characteristics so low? Apparently, the fact is that Checkmate was created on the basis of the Su-57, and as you know, R&D costs make up a very significant share in the cost of each new fighter. When selling finished machines, the manufacturer must not only recover the cost of production and make a profit, but also return the funds spent over 10-15 years of work of qualified teams, dozens of experiments, the construction of experimental samples and studies ordered from subcontractors.
Another factor that significantly reduced the cost of the machine is that Checkmate was created using a supercomputer. This approach not only accelerated the development, but also made it possible to abandon many expensive field tests. However, no modeling would be possible if the developers did not have extensive databases derived from previous research. And the development of these data was provided by the program for the creation of the Su-57.
So what?
And then there are problems.
Let's not lie to ourselves: how strong Russian technical developments are, just as a weak feature of our military-industrial complex is the timing of the introduction of the developed products.
Frigates in Russia are built as much as Chinese aircraft carriers.
For ten years drones have not left the stage of flying prototypes and pre-production samples.
Even the production of modern armored vehicles is constantly slipping.
If Rostec and Sukhoi manage to meet the stated deadlines and begin serial production of Checkmate within five years, this accomplishment will be no less, but rather even more significant than the development of the aircraft itself.
Ending the bad tradition of long-term military construction and long-term procrastination is an absolutely necessary condition for success in modern conditions for both the army and the military-industrial complex.
Source tsargrad.tv
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