Russia allegedly chooses flying wing design for PAK-DA bomber

According to reports, the Russian Air Force has abandoned a hypersonic bomber replacement for their PAK-DA bomber competition, and instead gone with a blended flying wing design. The rumor is that Tupolev has been chosen to create the design, after the competition was opened last year. They will submit the design, and budget requests by next year, with production to begin in 2020 to replace the Tu-95 and Tu-160 bombers.

The deputy prime-minister, Dmitry Rogozin, had wanted a cutting edge design able to penetrate defenses and carry out a strike, instead of creating a design similar to the B-2.

The Russian air force has selected a subsonic Tupolev flying wing proposal as the basis for its PAK-DA long-range bomber programme, according to command sources quoted by local media. If confirmed, the choice would end a long campaign by deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin to develop a hypersonic aircraft, which appears to have been abandoned as technically incompatible with the air force's insistence on extended-range performance and stealth characteristics.

Moscow announced a competition for bomber designs during 2012. Its programme "attracted several proposals from various design bureaus, including the Tupolev flying-wing design and at least one hypersonic proposal", a defence ministry source told the Izvestia newspaper.

A blended fuselage flying-wing design will permit installation of the engines inside the aircraft, maximising stealth and minimising the aircraft's infrared signature, air force sources say.

"Given the timescale, the general state of the Russian aerospace sector, the demands being placed upon it, and the likely available funding, a high-speed option was unlikely to be favoured given the enormous technical risk," says Douglas Barrie, air warfare analyst with the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. "Hypersonics may feature as part of the PAK-DA programme, but as strike weapons carried within the aircraft's internal bay or bays."

Flight

reply to post by Zaphod58

? why would a hypersonic aircraft be technically incompatible with the air force's insistence on extended-range performance and stealth characteristics.

reply to post by tinhattribunal


Hypersonic aircraft generate very large amounts of heat, due to friction. Unlike engine heat, that is much harder to dissipate. Not to mention that sustained hypersonic flight is really really hard. The USAF has discovered that there is an apparent 8 minute barrier in dealing with hypersonic flight. All of their failures in recent attempts have failed at 8 minutes. A couple of them because of fuselage skin breaking off due to the heat. It also has large flat surfaces.

A flying wing design on the other hand is inherently stealthy by design.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Wow has the Rodina mellowed? The idea sounds like they are seeking to limit their offensive capabilities.
It makes sense they should develop themselves rather that invade somewhere else.
We sure as hell don't want to start a war with the(however knowing the history of our leadership I should add I hope).They should beef up their defensive game anyway with China getting big for it's britches. Man when their bubble breaks things may become worrisome there.

Thanks fo the update Zaphod, its nice to be able to count on somebody paying attention to the way things are going in the air.......
As regards this bomber, have you seen a concept yet?
Does it resemble the B2 by any slim chance?

reply to post by stirling


The only drawings I've seen of it are older ones (2005 range). They haven't finalized any design yet as far as I know. The drawings that are out there look more like the X-33 Venture Star than the B-2 honestly.

reply to post by Zaphod58

thanks for the explaination, i was confusing hypersonic with supersonic.

reply to post by tinhattribunal


That was another design they were looking at, was a supersonic bomber, but by making it even high subsonic they can increase the stealth, and payload (albeit slightly).

reply to post by Zaphod58


Very good news for Usaf, with a subsonic flying wing they will go nowhere in the actual contested air environnements, flying wing is a solution of the past, B-2 soon will have not the capacity to penetrate the higly contested airspace, so with a similar design for Russian air force it will be the same.

That is a key word in the headline, "allegedly."
I swear, it would seem that aviation enthusiasts that come to ATS can't conceive anything that isn't propaganda by the government or aerospace industry in a news release or a video.

Why is there some limits being applied to aircraft above mach 1? Let's see, the SR-71 has been around for about 50 years. In 1976, about 13 years after they had been flying, one sat a world speed record of over 2000mph at over 86k feet. And then there was our Valkerie (sp?) program that was killed for suspicious reasons. Our programs have remained static since? No one can believe that! (I don't count the subsonic B-2 as a worthy aircraft for anything other than a curiousity of what can be done for public consumption while the bulk of the money goes into black programs. --You realized, that the B-2 was never a very black program? why would that be? Maybe bigger and better things were in the Skunk Works and at Boeing and Northrup?

You have got to be kidding or disinfo agents. How about one of the more adventuresome of you giving us a detailed story on the growing sightings of black triangle craft that definitely are not convenntional aircraft? C'mon now people. if the Chinese and the Russians know about triangles why not enlighten the mass public.

As I've said before, I and about 20 other witnesses saw a low, slow and silent triangle over Laramie in 1998, and I wrote up a detailed report on two reported as UFOs by a former paratrooper and his son in1985.

Some of you get tired of my trying to ruin your nice conventional chatter every once in awhile, but I get tired of the endless attempts by so-called enthusiasts attempt to portray and convey all is alive and well with aviation. Fellows, the triangles prove two things, First, all conventional aviation, the use of air and "flight" itself, is by-passed by the triangles that simply negate mass to lift and move. Second, the existence of the triangles virtually prove that UFOs, alien technologies, are here.

reply to post by Aliensun


I know a lot more than I'm willing to put on the boards. I won't put it up because if it got traced back to the people that told me they would be in a lot of trouble, and I'm not willing to do that to them. They opened up to me in confidence, and trusted me, and I'm not going to betray that trust by putting things out there that could harm their careers or worse, land them in jail. So sorry, you're going to get the speculation and the mundane reports, so you'll just have to deal with it.

Originally posted by Aliensun
Why is there some limits being applied to aircraft above mach 1?

50 years ago people realized that if you want to deliver things that hurt to a distant location you can send an airplane over a couple hours or an ICBM in 30 minutes. As a weapons platform, ballistic missiles are just better. As a reconnaissance platform, satellites are just better. For air defense, it is cheaper to field more of a slower aircraft than attack the challenges posed by high supersonic and near-hypersonic flight. Dealing with the heat alone at Mach 2 and 3 poses such hostile conditions that it is extremely difficult to design an aircraft that will last even a few flights. Hypersonic only gets more complicated as the air becomes so agitated that it undergoes chemical reactions.

Some of you get tired of my trying to ruin your nice conventional chatter every once in awhile, but I get tired of the endless attempts by so-called enthusiasts attempt to portray and convey all is alive and well with aviation.

Huh... That's odd. The sign on the door says Aircraft Projects Discussion. We must all have the wrong room.

Fellows, the triangles prove two things,

As a former UFO enthusiast myself, I would offer you the friendly advice that this is generally considered a bad word to use in speculative discussions.

First, all conventional aviation, the use of air and "flight" itself, is by-passed by the triangles that simply negate mass to lift and move. Second, the existence of the triangles virtually prove that UFOs, alien technologies, are here.

Actually, if their mass is truly zero then any finite force would project the body to infinite velocity and indeterminate direction, so it would probably be more true to say that they are everywhere simultaneously.

I wouldn't be surprised if the final design ended up to be somewhat similar to the proposed Lockheed Martin FB-22 medium bomber.

If I were to speculate, I'd say they would use the Sukhoi PAK FA as a base. Extend the fuselage. Give it an extended delta wing. Dramatically increase the payload capacity while maintaining stealth capabilities.

Probably something like this sketch I found on ye olde iterwebs:

It's not quite a flying wing, but the PAK-DA has received official approval. It looks a lot like some of the hypersonic designs the US has produced in the Falcon, and X-51, although it won't be hypersonic.

theaviationist.com...

Would you say that is more of a giant Delta Wing aircraft? Similar to the Avro Vulcan?

reply to post by allenidaho


It's about the closest name I know for it. It's not really a true delta, or a true waverider design, but it has characteristics of both.

Originally posted by tinhattribunal
reply to post by Zaphod58

 

? why would a hypersonic aircraft be technically incompatible with the air force's insistence on extended-range performance and stealth characteristics.

Hypersonic = bad fuel efficiency

Hypersonic = sonic booms, constraints on engine intake geometry = less stealthy

reply to post by Zaphod58


Hi Zap, I would be very surprised if that image turns out to be the Pak-Da. The design shown there is the Sukhoi T-4MS and dates from 1970. It was one of the proposals put forward for the requirement that led to the Tu-160 Blackjack being built. Its a design I've been familiar with for a number of years, heree are some images from my photobucket album.

reply to post by waynos


I thought it looked familiar. Although it would be a good time to build it now as their technology has caught up to the point where they could do it a lot easier than in the 70s. Thanks for the pics, those are pretty cool to look at.