PAK-FA / Sukhoi Su-57 - Updates and Discussions

[Hyperactive ADD]

You are assuming max thrust at zero and max thrust at high altitude. It would make more sense when there's a gradual increase in thrust to max thrust from min burner.

The thrust curves you posted in the second image for the AL-31F and F110 are both different. F110 climbs up straight without ram drag while AL-31F does. It's obvious both thrust curves have been tested for something specific.

View attachment 52182



It's normal specs for this generation. It's an efficiency-focused design compared to F-15A.

View attachment 52181

Throughout the entire history of aviation, absolutely no one has ever heard of this 'min burner' term you just pulled out of thin air. The diagram is clearly labeled right there: 'Maximum Thrust AB (Afterburner power) power.' It is written in black and white, crystal clear.

And as for that PowerPoint slide you posted — in the entire universe of PowerPoints, that has to be one of the crudest I’ve ever seen.
Honestly, the doodles I drew in the corners of my middle school English textbook were better than that.

 

[batman]

Lose what? You're saying we should import Su-57 over AMCA. Why on earth would I support that view?

Why not the F-35 then? It's even more ready than the Su-57?

Your reasoning is just dumb.

When did I make any of these claims? Are you perhaps demented or sadly suffer from schizophrenia? I would love if you could point me to such claims I never made.

Common sense. And because ADA said so.

Yeah, we're gonna need a better explanation and source for your claims and I would trust the pioneer of stealth doctrine to know what they are doing.

Yes, sir, whatever you say.

Thanks

Of course, you know more than ADA. Why didn't I see this coming? Oh, I did.

Lol, only one of us reveals about projects here which neither the MoD or Scientists from DRDO even thought about.

Sure, forget reality. Let's live in your world.

Lol, I don't wanna be rude to you, lets just agree to disagree, since you make an effort to be respectful to people who disagree with you and it's something I appreciate.

 

[batman]

These theories and arguments are an exact replica of the scenes on the Chinese internet years ago, when people were swearing and vowing over whether China should import the Su-35. I personally witnessed someone solemnly swear that if China ever bought the Su-35, they would literally eat their own computer screen. In the end, not a single one of them fulfilled their vows.
They especially love to brag that China’s electronics engineering and composite weight-reduction technologies are exponentially superior—by multiple orders of magnitude—to whatever 'Russian garbage' is out there.
After all, when every single tangible, hard parameter of their hardware gets absolutely demolished in the real world, they have no choice but to retreat into the nebulous, ethereal realm of 'electronics metaphysics' to salvage their pride

The most recent, catastrophic reality check for this exact crowd occurred just a couple of days ago, when Ukrainian hackers confirmed that the Chinese military had actually purchased Russian 2S25 Sprut-SD airborne tank destroyers. The entire Chinese internet erupted into a collective wail of despair, because for years, these people had spent countless hours boasting about how the domestic Type 15 and VT5 light tanks—with their supposed 'black technology'—could effortlessly slaughter any piece of Russian junk.
So, this naturally begs the question: is India currently hosting its own version of this 'Sprut barbecue' festival as well?


Today's debate is nothing more than pure 'Same'—using the PPT possibilities of a non-existent project to clash with the advanced capabilities of an already existing, tangible product. They operate on the absolute, blind conviction that a planned domestic product will inherently surpass an available foreign alternative, and then they use this delusion to engage in endless circular reasoning and self-referencing citation loops

Well said.

 

[randomradio]

Throughout the entire history of aviation, absolutely no one has ever heard of this 'min burner' term you just pulled out of thin air. The diagram is clearly labeled right there: 'Maximum Thrust AB (Afterburner power) power.' It is written in black and white, crystal clear.

Flying the Flanker (Topgun)

freerepublic.com

"We brought it back to min burner, but I'm cruising at 1.3 Mach," Gallop says.

You can read the article, it's interesting. It's about a USN Top Gun pilot flying a demilitarized Su-27UB.

Anyway, an afterburner has multiple stages, not to be confused with compressor stages. Stage 1 is called "minimum burner." Stage 2 to X are intermediate burners. And Stage X+1 is simply called "the zone."

Essentially, afterburners have multiple rings. Each ring is called a zone. And every time you need more thrust, you activate one of the zones, and you get thrust based on the number of zones that are open. For minimum burner, only 1 zone is activated. For max thrust, all zones are open.

So I'm saying the F110 started off with 1 zone open and progressively activated each zone. That's why when you said it's undulating due to variable intakes of the F-15E, it's actually just zones being activated before each trough in the graph.



You can see the concentric rings here, there are 4. This is probably the Adour engine on Jaguars. The 4 rings provide afterburner thrust in 4 stages. More advanced engines like F110 provide 5 or 6. More zones, the more efficiently you can burn fuel for thrust at different flight regimes.

For an efficient flight profile, you don't activate all zones at once. That's why AL-31F starts off at max thrust, they are testing something here, like absolute performance ceiling. And F110 starts off with minimum burner for real-world operations.

And as for that PowerPoint slide you posted — in the entire universe of PowerPoints, that has to be one of the crudest I’ve ever seen.

Honestly, the doodles I drew in the corners of my middle school English textbook were better than that.

That's DRDO. We have always made fun of their slides. But they use old PowerPoint software in order to maintain secrecy and only old software from the 90s and early 2000s is compatible with even their new operating system and it's locally hosted.

And they don't care about flashy, gimmicky presentations. They prefer having less distractions.

 

[Choice_of _inevitability]

That's fine. If you can play videogames with someone on the other side of the world, you can do this as well.

The operator is only making decisions for strategic employment, the tactical decisions will be made by the aircraft itself. He only needs the macro picture.

Plus I'm exaggerating for effect. Obviously within AMCA's timeframe, its operational environment will be within the IOR and in fact much closer, like Jodhpur or Bareilly or Gwalior to the border areas.

But this technology will be transferrable to longer ranged systems in case we eventually operate them, like Mig-41, B-21, or any new 7th gen fighter in the future with strategic range.

That's the thing. You can't. Even with fastest internet you get 60-millisecond ping for servers based in Singapore. European servers are unplayable because you get 197 to 300 ms latency.
For military, you get several hundred milliseconds is you use Geo-sync SATCOM. We can get it down to tens of milliseconds in the subcontinent operations because of fiber-optic based AFNET, it grows dramatically for operations outside of it because we don't have any LEO-based relays

 

[randomradio]

When did I make any of these claims? Are you perhaps demented or sadly suffer from schizophrenia? I would love if you could point me to such claims I never made.

Then what was the point of comparing Su-57 with AMCA?

Yeah, we're gonna need a better explanation and source for your claims and I would trust the pioneer of stealth doctrine to know what they are doing.

ADA said it themselves. Their goal is to deliver better stealth than what was offered for FGFA. And it was demonstrated. That's why FGFA got junked in the first place.

PDP completed in 2017, after IAF accepted the design at the end of 2016. FGFA got junked a year later.

So even the design in 2017 exceeded the FGFA. And then AMCA went through further refinements and PDR was cleared in 2020.

 

[Speedster1]

How come Su-57 does not have the matte grey exterior finish of counterparts like F-22/35 and J-20/35? Have the Russians discovered a novel form of CNT based RAM that goes with pixelated digital camo schemes?

The T-50 prototypes that flew to China and India last year would've been targeted by Western/Chinese ELINT/SIGINT the whole time. So they probably know the basic RCS of the airframe all too well by now. What makes the Russians so confident about their RAS/RAM tech, I wonder?

 

[randomradio]

That's the thing. You can't. Even with fastest internet you get 60-millisecond ping for servers based in Singapore. European servers are unplayable because you get 197 to 300 ms latency.
For military, you get several hundred milliseconds is you use Geo-sync SATCOM. We can get it down to tens of milliseconds in the subcontinent operations because of fiber-optic based AFNET, it grows dramatically for operations outside of it because we don't have any LEO-based relays

You are confusing tasking and decision-making with combat.

It's impossible to make real-time combat decisions remotely, that's handled by either the local pilot or AI. By the time all this is introduced, we are talking AI. But tasking and making decisions still rest with a commander.

If the commander is flying the plane himself, it's all well and good. But most of the time, the commanders are offboard, and are operating with limited information. They end up having to rely on what the pilot is seeing without any complex data overlays and sometimes with just voice.

The new stuff, even with high latency, will allow decision-makers make decisions with eyes in the cockpit. They will even be able to retask and prioritize targets on the go thereby directly assisting the pilot. Even performing EW. Essentially an offboard WSO.

Gaming latency is based on human reaction speed, 50 ms is 2-3 times faster than professional gamers and fighter pilots and about 5-6 times faster than normal people. But retasking and decision-making is fine with even a second long latency. I'm basically saying the kind of latency we already get is sufficient for this purpose. What's necessary is data rates. 6G requires hundreds of Gbps to a few Tbps, even via wireless, which is achieved with laser comm. The main impact for latency will continue to be range.

To deal with range, and multiplayer gaming, they can mitigate high latency with edge computing. But I'm not sure about it helping air combat. That's a different topic.

 

[batman]

Then what was the point of comparing Su-57 with AMCA?

You were the one who started the comparison first, go through this threat if you aren't sure and I'm sure you haven't forgotten the name of this thread.

ADA said it themselves. Their goal is to deliver better stealth than what was offered for FGFA. And it was demonstrated. That's why FGFA got junked in the first place.

FGFA and Su57 are different jets and we know our not so proud history of delivering what's asked, so again what's your actual evidence for any of your claims here?

PDP completed in 2017, after IAF accepted the design at the end of 2016. FGFA got junked a year later.

So even the design in 2017 exceeded the FGFA. And then AMCA went through further refinements and PDR was cleared in 2020.

There were multiple factors to the FGFA falling through but use it as an reason to go against my argument that Su57 havs better side and rear aspects stealth is funny to say the least.

 

[Hyperactive ADD]

Flying the Flanker (Topgun)

freerepublic.com

"We brought it back to min burner, but I'm cruising at 1.3 Mach," Gallop says.

You can read the article, it's interesting. It's about a USN Top Gun pilot flying a demilitarized Su-27UB.

Anyway, an afterburner has multiple stages, not to be confused with compressor stages. Stage 1 is called "minimum burner." Stage 2 to X are intermediate burners. And Stage X+1 is simply called "the zone."

Essentially, afterburners have multiple rings. Each ring is called a zone. And every time you need more thrust, you activate one of the zones, and you get thrust based on the number of zones that are open. For minimum burner, only 1 zone is activated. For max thrust, all zones are open.

So I'm saying the F110 started off with 1 zone open and progressively activated each zone. That's why when you said it's undulating due to variable intakes of the F-15E, it's actually just zones being activated before each trough in the graph.

View attachment 52187

You can see the concentric rings here, there are 4. This is probably the Adour engine on Jaguars. The 4 rings provide afterburner thrust in 4 stages. More advanced engines like F110 provide 5 or 6. More zones, the more efficiently you can burn fuel for thrust at different flight regimes.

For an efficient flight profile, you don't activate all zones at once. That's why AL-31F starts off at max thrust, they are testing something here, like absolute performance ceiling. And F110 starts off with minimum burner for real-world operations.



That's DRDO. We have always made fun of their slides. But they use old PowerPoint software in order to maintain secrecy and only old software from the 90s and early 2000s is compatible with even their new operating system and it's locally hosted.

And they don't care about flashy, gimmicky presentations. They prefer having less distractions.

So in other words, you are actually trying to rewrite the history of aviation by redefining what 'Maximum Thrust AB (Afterburner power)' means? Does your grand theory now include redefining how GE and Pratt & Whitney define engine performance as well?

What on earth do you even mean by 'maximum upper limit' and 'minimum upper limit'? Are you suggesting the manufacturers were just being 'kind-hearted' and chose not to tune that extra performance out for you? And cut the crap about 'efficiency'—by your flawed logic, there are plenty of test-flight versions of the D-30F6 that were tuned up to 20 tons.

You’ve been rolling around on the floor this entire time, completely devoid of logic, constantly moving the goalposts and switching concepts whenever it suits you. It’s so hilariously pathetic that people are literally doubling over with laughter.

Furthermore, where exactly is your concrete data showing that the F110 or F100 has better fuel economy than the AL-31F? Where is the empirical proof that the F-15 or F-16 possesses superior flight range and fuel efficiency compared to the Su-27?
Therefore, your absurd theory about 'gradually activating several burner rings to optimize fuel economy, unlike the AL-31F which unleashes maximum power right from the start' implies exactly what I’ve been saying: the F-15 and F-16 suffer from utterly atrocious lift coefficients, garbage aerodynamics, and an absolutely abysmal combat radius. Is that why they are forced to lug around those two hideous conformal fuel tanks (each weighing hundreds of kilograms) every single day?

I stated that the military static thrust of the American engine is only 10 tons.
You refused to accept it, insisting on pulling out your own diagram to prove me wrong.
But then, right there on your own diagram, it literally writes '22,000 pounds' in massive letters.
And now, suddenly, your own diagram is incorrect?

The people on this forum really have a staggering amount of patience to entertain your circus act all day long. And I must say, you guys sure are incredibly forgiving and accommodating when it comes to American products

 

[Hyperactive ADD]

Flying the Flanker (Topgun)

freerepublic.com

"We brought it back to min burner, but I'm cruising at 1.3 Mach," Gallop says.

You can read the article, it's interesting. It's about a USN Top Gun pilot flying a demilitarized Su-27UB.

Anyway, an afterburner has multiple stages, not to be confused with compressor stages. Stage 1 is called "minimum burner." Stage 2 to X are intermediate burners. And Stage X+1 is simply called "the zone."

Essentially, afterburners have multiple rings. Each ring is called a zone. And every time you need more thrust, you activate one of the zones, and you get thrust based on the number of zones that are open. For minimum burner, only 1 zone is activated. For max thrust, all zones are open.

So I'm saying the F110 started off with 1 zone open and progressively activated each zone. That's why when you said it's undulating due to variable intakes of the F-15E, it's actually just zones being activated before each trough in the graph.

View attachment 52187

You can see the concentric rings here, there are 4. This is probably the Adour engine on Jaguars. The 4 rings provide afterburner thrust in 4 stages. More advanced engines like F110 provide 5 or 6. More zones, the more efficiently you can burn fuel for thrust at different flight regimes.

For an efficient flight profile, you don't activate all zones at once. That's why AL-31F starts off at max thrust, they are testing something here, like absolute performance ceiling. And F110 starts off with minimum burner for real-world operations.



That's DRDO. We have always made fun of their slides. But they use old PowerPoint software in order to maintain secrecy and only old software from the 90s and early 2000s is compatible with even their new operating system and it's locally hosted.

And they don't care about flashy, gimmicky presentations. They prefer having less distractions.

The engine suppliers for the AMCA project are derived from two utterly unreliable sources: France’s Safran, which proposes to recycle their own M88 infrastructure for some late-stage salvage value, and America’s GE, which plans to subject their F404 series to yet another round of opportunistic recycling.
The so-called 'upgrades' are to be superimposed on top of these two legacy architectures—both of which are essentially dead-end fire-sale commodities with zero future prospects or practical utility within their own domestic militaries.

I spent a few minutes mapping and normalizing the thrust curves of these engines at altitudes of 0, 3,000, 6,000, and 12,000 meters, consolidating them onto a single, unified coordinate system.
The data is clear: except for a narrow envelope at medium altitudes where the French M88-2 can barely match the RD-33, it gets absolutely demolished by the Russian baseline across both spectrums—low and high altitudes alike. As for the F404... it is an unmitigated engineering joke.
If you are going to waste capital procuring these two defunct platforms, you would be far better off acquiring the RD-33 directly from Klimov and undertaking an indigenous modification program

They are already writing rubber checks promising a fantasy thrust of 110 to 140 kilonewtons. Neither the French nor the British have even managed to deploy that level of performance for their own militaries, and yet they are somehow going to gift it to you as a 'dowry'?

And while we are on the topic of the illustrious French supplier Safran, just look at that 'exquisite' SaM146 engine on the SSJ100. Its operational lifespan turned out to be barely half of what was promised. The hot section—including the combustor and the oil sump, which were France's direct responsibility—consistently cracked under operational stress, and then Safran had the sheer audacity to cut off the parts supply entirely. Who on earth do they think they are?
The exact same structural nightmare reappeared on the Ka-62 helicopter as well.

As for GE... in just the past few days, the United States has launched attacks against three Indian cargo vessels right in the Persian Gulf. And the grand offense? These ships 'actually dared' to transport oil from Iran

 

[Barcid]

The engine suppliers for the AMCA project are derived from two utterly unreliable sources: France’s Safran, which proposes to recycle their own M88 infrastructure for some late-stage salvage value, and America’s GE, which plans to subject their F404 series to yet another round of opportunistic recycling.
The so-called 'upgrades' are to be superimposed on top of these two legacy architectures—both of which are essentially dead-end fire-sale commodities with zero future prospects or practical utility within their own domestic militaries.

I spent a few minutes mapping and normalizing the thrust curves of these engines at altitudes of 0, 3,000, 6,000, and 12,000 meters, consolidating them onto a single, unified coordinate system.
The data is clear: except for a narrow envelope at medium altitudes where the French M88-2 can barely match the RD-33, it gets absolutely demolished by the Russian baseline across both spectrums—low and high altitudes alike. As for the F404... it is an unmitigated engineering joke.
If you are going to waste capital procuring these two defunct platforms, you would be far better off acquiring the RD-33 directly from Klimov and undertaking an indigenous modification program
View attachment 52198
They are already writing rubber checks promising a fantasy thrust of 110 to 140 kilonewtons. Neither the French nor the British have even managed to deploy that level of performance for their own militaries, and yet they are somehow going to gift it to you as a 'dowry'?

And while we are on the topic of the illustrious French supplier Safran, just look at that 'exquisite' SaM146 engine on the SSJ100. Its operational lifespan turned out to be barely half of what was promised. The hot section—including the combustor and the oil sump, which were France's direct responsibility—consistently cracked under operational stress, and then Safran had the sheer audacity to cut off the parts supply entirely. Who on earth do they think they are?
The exact same structural nightmare reappeared on the Ka-62 helicopter as well.

As for GE... in just the past few days, the United States has launched attacks against three Indian cargo vessels right in the Persian Gulf. And the grand offense? These ships 'actually dared' to transport oil from Iran

Maybe you shouldn't claim that Russian engines are superior to western, and then bitch about how Russia imported those inferior western engines from France in the same post.

 

[Hyperactive ADD]

Maybe you shouldn't claim that Russian engines are superior to western, and then bitch about how Russia imported those inferior western engines from France in the same post.

Blindly groveling to the West in the wake of shock therapy was a massive institutional disease for Russia. Beyond that, a primary motive was their delusional attempt at 'interest bundling'—insisting on dragging Western partners into projects they were perfectly capable of manufacturing independently. They even sent lucrative orders to outsiders while their own domestic enterprises were literally starving. For instance, they kept playing house with Ukraine, purchasing Zenit rockets and co-developing the M90 gas turbine. In the end, wasn't it all just fetching water with a wicker basket—a total exercise in futility?
Tragically, this exact catastrophic farce is precisely what the Indian government loves to indulge in the most

By the same token, the United States 'imports' Boeing AH-64 Apache helicopter fuselages from India. Is that somehow because the US lacks the industrial capability to manufacture them domestically? Hardly. Yet, the asymmetric leverage and institutional 'bundling' that Washington imposes on these dependent nations invariably proves highly effective

This extends even to Safran itself: their 'participation' in the design and development of the American CFM56 engine largely extinguished France's own technological and political autonomy, reducing the company to little more than Washington's puppet. And just to be clear, this was never a case of the Americans lacking the capability to independently complete the development of the CFM56

When it comes to playing this exact game with the Americans, every other country is nothing but a bunch of clueless babies. They are completely out of their depth, overthinking their own worth

Ultimately, the sheer superiority of the RD-33 over the M88 and F404 is an immutable physical reality; it requires absolutely no rhetorical assertion

 

[randomradio]

FGFA and Su57 are different jets and we know our not so proud history of delivering what's asked, so again what's your actual evidence for any of your claims here?

Pogosyan confirmed IAF chose the same airframe to cut down development timeframe.

There were multiple factors to the FGFA falling through but use it as an reason to go against my argument that Su57 havs better side and rear aspects stealth is funny to say the least.

The IAF initially wanted FGFA operational by 2019, then 2021. The Russians pushed it to 2023. And then with decision still pending in 2018, the Russians basically claimed 2026, ie, 8 years, so it died. Of course there were other reasons too, like lack of technical documentation for the Russian version, questionable ToT etc, but FGFA started crossing into AMCA's timeframe. That killed FGFA specifically. But there was still license production and direct import.

ADA promised and delivered a far superior airframe, which actually led to converting FGFA from license production/stopgap imports to junking the Su-57 program entirely. So this is the second half of that story. By 2017, FGFA was dead. By 2020, after AMCA's PDR, Su-57 was dead. The Russian delays killed even the stopgap import, a sad ending to the trilogy. Su-57D is now a sequal to the trilogy, but I believe history will repeat.

The sequel, a Su-57MKI, whether M or D, will take us closer to 2040. The Russian version was supposed to be ready by 2020-21 with Izd 30, which we could have MKIzed and operationalized before 2030, but now it's crossing into AMCA's new timeframe too.

That's also why I'm not such a big fan of the SCAF JV. It will be inducted when our potential next gen will start flying, and it's designed to distract ADA from making their own tech. I'd rather see it imported like Rafale than pull ADA into it. But if ADA doesn't join, then there's no other expertise in India at that level for the airframe, so we will end up as a financial contributor rather than a partner. It's a bigger threat to indigenization than Su-57 was without ADA sustaining some sort of parallel program that supports their own R&D.

 

[randomradio]

So in other words, you are actually trying to rewrite the history of aviation by redefining what 'Maximum Thrust AB (Afterburner power)' means? Does your grand theory now include redefining how GE and Pratt & Whitney define engine performance as well?

No, you are assuming it's max burner right from the start.

What on earth do you even mean by 'maximum upper limit' and 'minimum upper limit'? Are you suggesting the manufacturers were just being 'kind-hearted' and chose not to tune that extra performance out for you? And cut the crap about 'efficiency'—by your flawed logic, there are plenty of test-flight versions of the D-30F6 that were tuned up to 20 tons.

Seems like translation error. I never said anything about "upper limit."

Furthermore, where exactly is your concrete data showing that the F110 or F100 has better fuel economy than the AL-31F? Where is the empirical proof that the F-15 or F-16 possesses superior flight range and fuel efficiency compared to the Su-27?

I never said anything about fuel economy. I'm talking about flight efficiency, ie lift and drag.

Therefore, your absurd theory about 'gradually activating several burner rings to optimize fuel economy, unlike the AL-31F which unleashes maximum power right from the start' implies exactly what I’ve been saying: the F-15 and F-16 suffer from utterly atrocious lift coefficients, garbage aerodynamics, and an absolutely abysmal combat radius. Is that why they are forced to lug around those two hideous conformal fuel tanks (each weighing hundreds of kilograms) every single day?

They don't have enough fuel. Fuel fraction for F15A is 31%, F-16 is 30% and Su-27 is 37%. More fuel = more range.

Rafale is 33%, Su-35S is 40%.

I stated that the military static thrust of the American engine is only 10 tons.
You refused to accept it, insisting on pulling out your own diagram to prove me wrong.
But then, right there on your own diagram, it literally writes '22,000 pounds' in massive letters.
And now, suddenly, your own diagram is incorrect?

Yes, I'm refusing to accept that. I'm saying the diagram is correct, your interpretation of the diagram is wrong. I'm saying the military static thrust is 13 tons.

This is minimum burner to max burner transition. Takeoff from 10 tons, and gradually increasing that at every leg of the flight to maximum burner which gives it maximum thrust of 17 tons at mach 0.9. This is how a jet operates in reality.

In which world does an engine provide a 70% increase in thrust from static to mach 0.9? What alien technology is this?




Funny how F100 for F-16 starts at 24000 lbs and ends at 30500 lbs. That's 11 tons and 13.8 tons. Why this disparity?

I found another diagram for F100-PW-229 and it also starts at 22000 lbs. Which means the graph is simply starting with a baseline 10 tons. I don't have access to a higher quality image.



This goes 22000 to 33000 lbs at mach 0.9, that's 10 tons to 15 tons. Or 34000 at mach 1.2, 15.5 tons.

You have just randomly decided this on your own and are sticking to it. You are not being receptive to basic logic.

 

[randomradio]

The engine suppliers for the AMCA project are derived from two utterly unreliable sources: France’s Safran, which proposes to recycle their own M88 infrastructure for some late-stage salvage value, and America’s GE, which plans to subject their F404 series to yet another round of opportunistic recycling.
The so-called 'upgrades' are to be superimposed on top of these two legacy architectures—both of which are essentially dead-end fire-sale commodities with zero future prospects or practical utility within their own domestic militaries.

I spent a few minutes mapping and normalizing the thrust curves of these engines at altitudes of 0, 3,000, 6,000, and 12,000 meters, consolidating them onto a single, unified coordinate system.
The data is clear: except for a narrow envelope at medium altitudes where the French M88-2 can barely match the RD-33, it gets absolutely demolished by the Russian baseline across both spectrums—low and high altitudes alike. As for the F404... it is an unmitigated engineering joke.
If you are going to waste capital procuring these two defunct platforms, you would be far better off acquiring the RD-33 directly from Klimov and undertaking an indigenous modification program
View attachment 52198
They are already writing rubber checks promising a fantasy thrust of 110 to 140 kilonewtons. Neither the French nor the British have even managed to deploy that level of performance for their own militaries, and yet they are somehow going to gift it to you as a 'dowry'?

For LCA Mk2 and TEDBF, F414 was found to be more than sufficient. It's a far superior engine compared to F404. The EJ230 lost to it. Both engines were found to have met the required parameters and the F414 was cheaper.

American engine to power LCA: but Eurojet remains optimistic

www.ajaishukla.com

AMCA's engine is a clean-sheet design.

And while we are on the topic of the illustrious French supplier Safran, just look at that 'exquisite' SaM146 engine on the SSJ100. Its operational lifespan turned out to be barely half of what was promised. The hot section—including the combustor and the oil sump, which were France's direct responsibility—consistently cracked under operational stress, and then Safran had the sheer audacity to cut off the parts supply entirely. Who on earth do they think they are?

The exact same structural nightmare reappeared on the Ka-62 helicopter as well.

They became enemies, can't help it. India and the West do not consider each other as enemies.

As for GE... in just the past few days, the United States has launched attacks against three Indian cargo vessels right in the Persian Gulf. And the grand offense? These ships 'actually dared' to transport oil from Iran

It's a difficult problem politically. They are foreign ships with Indian sailors and indirect Indian links. The problem is all three ships turned off their AIS transponders without permission.

 

[randomradio]

Maybe you shouldn't claim that Russian engines are superior to western, and then bitch about how Russia imported those inferior western engines from France in the same post.

I don't mind criticism, but it needs to make sense.

There is no logical flow to his opinions about engines. He's not making an apples-to-apples comparison.

For example, both F404 and M88-2 were designed for 71 kN and 75 kN compared to RD-33's 81 kN, and he's using these two engines to compare to a 98 kN F414, an engine known to blow all three engines outta the water.

And he's unable to relate the engines to the airframes they have been designed for. Like F110 maxing out performance at lower altitudes for multirole jets compared to AL-31F's higher altitude requirement. Or a 75 kN M88-4E being sufficient for the Rafale 'cause the canards generate up to 25% more lift.

 

[Hyperactive ADD]

For LCA Mk2 and TEDBF, F414 was found to be more than sufficient. It's a far superior engine compared to F404. The EJ230 lost to it. Both engines were found to have met the required parameters and the F414 was cheaper.

American engine to power LCA: but Eurojet remains optimistic

www.ajaishukla.com

AMCA's engine is a clean-sheet design.



They became enemies, can't help it. India and the West do not consider each other as enemies.



It's a difficult problem politically. They are foreign ships with Indian sailors and indirect Indian links. The problem is all three ships turned off their AIS transponders without permission.

Oh, so because you Indians are just so 'kind-hearted,' you get to be buddies with the West? But Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, and Vietnam—including historically Japan, Germany, and Italy—they only failed because they were 'stupid'?
Are you suggesting there is a massive cognitive gap and an intellectual chasm between their IQs and India's
So, that leaves us with a submissive, obedient little India?

Furthermore, it doesn't matter if the F404 gets redesignated as the F414, F424, F434, or even the F444—it is genetically garbage to its very core. By your absurd logic,
I suppose the RD-33 changed its name to the RD-93 as well then？

your rhetoric regarding the three Indian vessels recently bombed by the United States shares a striking, unmistakable resemblance to how the die-hard loyalists of the Chinese government frame the victims of the anti-Chinese massacres in Indonesia. On the Chinese internet, these hardcore regime apologists are colloquially dubbed 'WuMao' (or 'Fifty-Cents'-“五毛”), implying they earn a meager 0.5 RMB for every post they publish.
According to the logic of this particular crowd, the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Chinese massacred in Southeast Asia essentially brought it upon themselves, simply because they chose not to return to their 'great motherland.'
To make matters worse, during last year's massive military parade at Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government actually invited the current president—who was not only a commander of the military units involved in those massacres but also the former son-in-law of Dictator Suharto—to be an honored guest. They even arranged for him to be seated on the Tiananmen rostrum right next to Vladimir Putin, basking in supreme privilege and honor.
Your underlying cognitive pattern is indeed profoundly 'Chinese.' It gives me a strong sense of familiarity and closeness; should you choose to pursue a career in China in the future, I am certain you would find yourself exceptionally well-suited for success there

 

[Lolwa]

That's also why I'm not such a big fan of the SCAF JV. It will be inducted when our potential next gen will start flying, and it's designed to distract ADA from making their own tech. I'd rather see it imported like Rafale than pull ADA into it

I'd rather want a private consortium led by the ADA members and the air chief deal with SCAF and the same private partner being involved with the French who will be producing the rafale. HAL & ADA can focus on the su-57 and AMCA. That was always the priority.
From what I've found Under the partnership, Tata Advanced Systems is setting up a production facility in Hyderabad to manufacture the Rafale's key structural sections, including the lateral shells of the rear fuselage, the complete rear section, the central fuselage, and the front section.
So they should be the main Indian partner for the FCAS too. With L&T, Bharat forge (likely AMCA joint development partner) as support partners integrating the AMCA to the Rafale and SCAF. And TATA, L&T and Bharat forge have enough ability to replace Airbus in FCAS for developing

Ultimately, the sheer superiority of the RD-33 over the M88 and F404 is an immutable physical reality; it requires absolutely no rhetorical assertion

Rd-33 mk pretty much has ej-200 and ge-414 as competitor engines but both of them are way too expensive and producing them as a non western country is highly impractical. Both of these engines are dependent on US and UK at the end of the day. And rd-33 matches the ej-200 in performance. And costs cheaper at 3.5 million dollar per unit as compared to ej-200 at 4 million dollar and ge-414 and 3.8 million dolars(in India 10 million $ per unit) mtbf is 6000 hrs for Western engines compared to 4000 hrs for rd-33 mk but won't face similar supply chain issues as Western engines.

 

[randomradio]

Oh, so because you Indians are just so 'kind-hearted,' you get to be buddies with the West? But Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, and Vietnam—including historically Japan, Germany, and Italy—they only failed because they were 'stupid'?
Are you suggesting there is a massive cognitive gap and an intellectual chasm between their IQs and India's
So, that leaves us with a submissive, obedient little India?

I don't know what you mean by success and failure, we have more failures than Russia or China at the very least.

The US needs India to counterbalance China and prevent India from funding Russia's defense industry. So both US and France are working hard to make us independent from Russian technology. And we are obviously okay with that.

Furthermore, it doesn't matter if the F404 gets redesignated as the F414, F424, F434, or even the F444—it is genetically garbage to its very core. By your absurd logic,
I suppose the RD-33 changed its name to the RD-93 as well then？

RD-33 is different from RD-33 Series 3, and RD-93 is just the single-engine version of RD-33 Series 3 with a redesigned gearbox.

The Russians are apparently developing a new generation of RD-33 for the new Mig-35. So this could be a serious upgrade compared to the older ones where all they did was improve the existing design and introduced new materials and FADEC.

F414 competed with and defeated EJ230, a more advanced engine than what's on the Typhoon. So what do you say to that?

your rhetoric regarding the three Indian vessels recently bombed by the United States shares a striking, unmistakable resemblance to how the die-hard loyalists of the Chinese government frame the victims of the anti-Chinese massacres in Indonesia. On the Chinese internet, these hardcore regime apologists are colloquially dubbed 'WuMao' (or 'Fifty-Cents'-“五毛”), implying they earn a meager 0.5 RMB for every post they publish.
According to the logic of this particular crowd, the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Chinese massacred in Southeast Asia essentially brought it upon themselves, simply because they chose not to return to their 'great motherland.'
To make matters worse, during last year's massive military parade at Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government actually invited the current president—who was not only a commander of the military units involved in those massacres but also the former son-in-law of Dictator Suharto—to be an honored guest. They even arranged for him to be seated on the Tiananmen rostrum right next to Vladimir Putin, basking in supreme privilege and honor.
Your underlying cognitive pattern is indeed profoundly 'Chinese.' It gives me a strong sense of familiarity and closeness; should you choose to pursue a career in China in the future, I am certain you would find yourself exceptionally well-suited for success there

No, what I said is the ships are foreign-owned and there are problems politically. This won't impact larger relations with the US, but the US will face repercussions for it. I never said anything about supporting US interests.

Since going to war with the US is not an option, there are other areas of impact, just like we did against China after 2020 and against Pakistan after 2025.