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Thursday, April 28, 2016

Sukhoi T-50 PAK FA Continues Air-to-Ground Weapons Integration? Really?

The picture at the link below says something important, but I am perplexed about exactly what that is. No, I am not making fun of the story, I am just confused. The airframe geometry clearly says that stealth is intended to be one of the plane's capabilities, but the discussion of external gravity-bombs as part of the plane's load-out is very confusing. Help me out, somebody...

You've got to get up close and personal with your adversary if you want to drop a gravity-bomb on him. But unless you have done a mighty good job of reducing weapon and pylon radar cross sections, he's going to know you're coming, so the stealthy air frame is not much help. The testing of multiple external-carriage non-stealthy weapons either says that they will have enough stealth assets so that someone else can blow a hole in the Air Defense to make way for this guy, or it says "Whoops... this pig is not as stealthy as we had hoped... Wonder what else these planes can do..."

https://www.ibcworldnews.com/2016/04/14/first-pictures-of-russias-t-50-pak-fa-fighter-fitted-with-air-to-surface-weapons/

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