Soviets beat Northrop with F-20 idea?
- Thread starter tomo pauk
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Two engines and engines' management, cross-flow fuel system, rough-field undercarriage, bigger allowance for weight and space for cannons and ammo.
The jump from Galeb/Jastreb to Orao was a big jump.
Radar suite is what Soviets will be doing.
As counterpoints: advanced turbofan engine as opposed to 50s turbojets; given the expected mission of your Soviet F-20 it'll also want a rough-field undercarriage; and not by much, or else that's totally overtaken by added avionics anyway.
And yes, it was a big jump over its predecessors, but we're not talking about that sort of jump.
They still have to do installation and that's not an easy task.
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Range (without declaring the conditions) seems to be 8 km - not much of a BVR missile, but certainly more useful against the incoming targets than that was the case with the chase-only AA-2 versions.
Hush Kit on line magazine did an article on the MiG Project 33 that might be of interest to this discussion. Here's the link
10 Incredible Soviet Fighter Aircraft that never entered service
Faced with such a mouth-watering menu of Soviet fighter projects that never entered service, it was almost painful to select a mere ten. I won’t promise anything, but when the Hush-Kit writer…
hushkit.net
Back to this - seems like Soviets didn't make the follow-up with the R3R idea on the new versions of the AA-2, called R13 by the Soviets, that were introduced in mid-1970s. The range of those was doubled by using a better engine that offered more than double worth of 'controlled flight time' - 52-54 seconds vs. 21 second on the R2S and R3R. The 'allowed' G load of target was also much improved, from 2-3 G (!!) to 7-8 G.
Hush Kit on line magazine did an article on the MiG Project 33 that might be of interest to this discussion. Here's the link
10 Incredible Soviet Fighter Aircraft that never entered service
Faced with such a mouth-watering menu of Soviet fighter projects that never entered service, it was almost painful to select a mere ten. I won’t promise anything, but when the Hush-Kit writer…
Those are indeed interesting, much was already discussed in the thread that was about MiG keeping simple & affordable with the 'frontline fighters' past MiG-21.
R-27 preferably. A radar-guided R-73 would've been interesting, too, but it was never made. Granted, the R-73 have had a fairly long range as per OTL.
R13 with radar guidance is the bare minimum.
what about a version of R98M1 with better seeker for dealing with agile targets [like those on R4 missiles?]
WHy does it need to have BVR missiles ? Even the early model Falcons did not have them
ANd how many do you think should be produced and will VVS operate it too ?
Ideally yes but carrying a fleet fighter means bigger, more numerous carriers [as the 4 Kiev in separate fleet are so far apart during deployment] and associated expenses something the soviets can ill afford even in the best of timesYou'd be surprised. This is what the Arctic bastion encompassed:
Note where the bastion defense line itself is: in Norwegian waters outside of the range of most of the USSR's land-based fighters. And in any case, history has shown multiple times that the most efficient way to run fighter defense over a fleet is to bring the air cover yourself.
Maybe equipping the mig23 with IFR would be a better option? And didn't the soviet older interceptors like tu128 for such purposes? To cover approaches from the arctic and to protect their SSBN from MPA
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Because land-based air cover wouldn't incur increased expenses itself...
Sure, if the Soviets were worried solely about NATO MPAs, they might have been able to get away with land-based fighters. But that wasn't the worry, else the bastion defenses wouldn't include several Backfire regiments and oodles of missile-armed surface ships and submarines. The big worry for the Soviets was a carrier battle group or three blasting through their defenses and destroying their ASW assets so that the Americans could flood the bastion with hunter-killer submarines.
Which brings us back to the point that relying on land-based air incurs additional expenses of its own, and may not be cheaper than the carrier option. For one, due to the needs of maintenance and transit, maintaining a continuous fighter patrol over the defensive zone is going to require at least three times the aircraft the carriers could embark, which between the five carriers the Soviets actually built involves 240 additional fighters instead of the 80 they actually had to put on their carriers. Then you need more tankers, because you will need tanking to maintain patrols at such a distance, and then they need to be new fighters, because rather than having to chase off MPAs there's a strong likelihood of encountering F-14s that'll eat a Tu-28 for breakfast or Norwegian F-16s that'll do the same, and even then, the Soviets are still going to want a number of large flat-deck aviation vessels, because if their experience with Moskva-class helicopter cruisers was anything like the Italian they need such ships to provide blanket ASW helicopter coverage. Then there's the operational and maintenance costs, because continuous fighter patrols like these are expensive as sin and eat airframes alive.
Granted, the Yak-141 isn't quite a match for the Tomcat either, but it'll do a damn sight better than a Tu-28 or similar-vintage aircraft, and would eat American carrier strike aircraft alive. And has the grand advantage of not having pilots exhausted by multi-hour patrols.
It's exactly because the Falcon doesn't have BVR that you want BVR capability for this fighter. It allows you to not play the F-16's game; the early models were positively murderous in WVR, best not to tangle with them there.
I don't see the VVS operating this fighter, the priority will be the WARPAC air forces that need it far more urgently and the VVS would prefer the MiG-29 anyway. As far as numbers...
Well, it's just plain too hard to keep track of MiG-21 numbers, and in any case I doubt they'll be replaced 1-for-1. Still, even discounting Yugoslavia, who probably wouldn't merit such sensitive new tech, and Bulgaria, which seemed to prefer ex-VVS MiG-21bis, there's probably a market for 500 of these aircraft just in the Eastern Bloc states. Then consider this has a chance of cutting into contracts the F-16 got and which the more expensive MiG-29 couldn't get, not to mention the strong possibility of 150+ built in India.
R98 strikes me as obsolete by late 1970s.
We probably want to give any plausible advantage for the new shiny fighter. BVR is part of that advantage, we don't know when the F-16 will get BVR missiles anyway. Plus there is a host of actual and possible enemy fighters that do have BVR capability - Mirages, F-15, F-4, even the F-104S; F-18 and Tornado ADV are is pipeline. BVR, being predominatly radar-guided, also works in clouded sky, and offers a head-on shot capacity. BVRs can thin out enemy fighters and, being typically much faster & longer ranged than IVR missiles than catch bombers more reliably.
Sales:
For W-P: hundreds; Romania alone bought more than 320 MiG-21s historically, Bulgaria more than 220. Syria, Iraq, Libya, Algeria, Cuba, Angola, N. Korea - another hundreds. Yugoslavia - over 100, possibly close to 150. India - 100+ instead of MiG-29 and Mirage 2000, plus what is needed to replace of their MiG-21 force (they bought more than 1200 of those); makes sense to them to licence produce it.
Soviets will probably not consider it for a wide-scale use until 1991, since there will be no high demand for MiG-29 from abroad. Past 1991 and with now Russian finances in shambles, it might became attractive for them.
It's only a market if you get paid.
Basically the USSR gave weapons to it's War Pac allies and regarded them more as a source of manpower than as independent actors.
In that context making a fighter just for their use rather than just giving them standard soviet material doesn't make much sense. In a real war I assume the soviets considered them a useful diversion of NATO ressources, since while NATO would be busy shooting down Hungarian and Polish aircraft there would be less NATO assets to deal with the Soviet aircraft the USSR really cared about.
Considering their mission was to provide targets for NATO for a short while before the war was over or they changed sides MiG-21MF would do very nicely and even the more capable MiG-21bis would be a waste. For the soviets they were very realistic decoys.