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Originally Posted by canoe
http://mdb.cast.ru/mdb/6-2001/di/rsqr/
Theres also the major question of can they afford to develop a totally new fighter, the prohibitive cost of developing new engines (to allow for supercruising), avionics and technoligy required for a 5th generation fighter may put it out of their current price range given their military is already stretched too thin trying to maintain the soviet era equipment their already have.
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I know for sure that Russia has a supercruising technology tested on MFI and Su-27 in 1993 and in 2004-05. Russian government financed $70mln on these works in 2004-05..... The continueing works on 5th gen engine would cost either $1-1.5bn + 3 years or $3-5bn + 5-7 years.
This is code name is izdeliye 117..... it is inferior to what Russian engineers think of Raptrors engines in some aspects still higher fuel consumption rate on supersonic modes than believed Raptor has, but better in other aspects (several supercruise modes and one assuming more than 2.2 mach speed). The engines are also considered to be lighter than what is though of Raptors and have higher weight to trust ratio.....
These engines exist, tested on ground, and flown. Now there is a time when designers need Government and RAF to decide between two alternatives
1) SCRAP THIS PEICES AND give designer additional billions of $ to improve consumption rates to be better or at least matching that of raptor. Then knowledge accumulatedo on this would be used to design better....
2) or start making the prototypes to serial production so that it could be produced in 2008-09 serially.... First of all this is investment into research on how to increase the resource of the engine. And also requries significant investments into component producers.
New Russian Izdeliye 117 has a monocrystalic disk with blades being part of the disk rather than being assembled into it on earlier generations of the engine..... In fact blades are made together with disc as part of it!!! And the technology for such a precision metal work is really unique... Indeed even normal balancing of the blades in the disc inside engine is such a precise work that even a 0.1 gramm disballance may lead to catastrophic result at slow rate of just 20,000 rotations a second!!! and they make it a one big and precise peice!!! I was really impressed listening to all this.
The problem with current 117 is that fuel consumption can not be gramatically reduced without starting all the work from the begging - basically making new design. The problem is that is was designed to have much higher trust/wieght ratio than they believe Raptor's engines have.... and this advantage turns to disadvantage as trust means comsumption.
However its advantage is that it made as a buildup to current AL-31F engine - you may use same hondolas - give a fifth generation engine to esisting Flunkers. It also has higher speed on its supercruise mode than what they believe Raptor may have...
No decision is made yet!