Throughout the Cold War, the Tupolev Tu-95 was an enduring symbol of both tensions between the United States and Soviet Union and of raw Soviet nuclear power. The massive bomber—the most-powerful and fastest production propeller-driven aircraft ever built was placed on nearly-constant patrols for decades and was re-introduced to patrol duties by President Vladimir Putin in 2007 in service of the Russian Federation.
Tupolev Tu-95
Photo: Wikipedia, Marina Lystseva
In the 1980s, advances in radar, stealth technologies, and anti-aircraft weapons demanded newer, faster, and more sophisticated jet aircraft and the Tu-160 was introduced into Soviet service in 1987, providing long-range bomber coverage for nuclear and conventional weapons alongside the Tu-95 and the smaller Tu-22M which had been in service since the early 1970s. These planes were what kept the US Air Force’s Strategic Air Command up at night and, alongside the American B-52s and later the Rockwell B-1B, were the bombers that many during the Cold War years speculated would one day fight World War III.
Even though the most-modern of the Soviet bombers, the Tu-160, remains in service and are used today alongside the other two Tupolev aircraft mentioned above, they are aging despite numerous upgrades in technology and will need to be replaced.
Tupolev Tu-160
Photo: Wikipedia, Sergey Krivchikov – Russian AviaPhoto Team
Military aircraft technology is advancing as fast, if not in fact faster, than ever before and while there was a lull after the fall of the Soviet Union on the part of both Russian and American interest in new fighter and bomber aircraft, both nations have picked that interest back up and are developing what is known as the fifth generation of tactical fighter aircraft. Fighters, however, are limited in their usefulness—a limitation that drone warfare may soon make even more apparent—and bombers are still necessary for long-range strategic capacities.
Thus, both superpowers have had their eyes on new bombers, with the United States at one point having projected that an all-new strategic bomber to replace its B-2 Spirit bomber would enter active service around 2018, thus dubbing this aircraft the “2018 Bomber” although now the same airplane is known as the “Next Generation Bomber” and such an ambitious date of service-entry has been removed from the plans. Russia has commissioned Tupolev once again to provide their newest bomber and following on the heels of the new Sukhoi-designed PAK-FA fifth generation fighter aircraft, Tupolev is designing this PAK-DA bomber to augment the extant bomber fleet while adding new advantages in terms of stealth, navigational and computational avionics, and speed.
PAK-FA (Sukhoi T-50)
Photo: Wikipedia, Alex Beltyukov
The PAK-DA doesn’t just fill in a technological gap in the current Russian aircraft inventory, but should have the capacity to return Russia — should Mr. Putin desire such — to the glory days of Soviet bomber power, pushing a dynamic long-range bomber into the air that could be the worst of threats to enemies the world over. It was that threat — the threat of rapid deployment and possibilities for diverse missions—that was as powerful a psychological weapon against the Americans in the Cold War as the core aspect of nuclear weapons to be placed aboard these bombers.
Even as ICBM (missile) firepower grew in its ability to offer greater speed and sheer warhead strength to the Soviet and American forces alike, it was the bombers that could move swiftly, possibly undetected, and if need be, re-arrange themselves in mid-flight to configure for totally different mission parameters on an instantly-changing battlefield. The political, emotional, and strategic value of that capability is far more priceless than the issue of what’s outrightly “faster” or “more powerful”. It was these bombers and also the submarines lurking in the deeps that provided a comprehensive and highly-adaptable nuclear fighting force. The PAK-DA, with all its newness, its current-era design with a look to the future, could in theory return that vast strategic worth to the post-Soviet bomber force.
As journalist Andrei Kislyakov has noted in Russia Behind the Headlines, some analysts believe the PAK-DA will be more or less a copy of the American B-2, though this seems at best unlikely and if accurate at all, will only be true in the most basic of terms. While the “flying wing” design of the PAK-DA may resemble the B-2 somewhat, it should be noted that most stealth aircraft designs being tested world-wide currently—including those of unmanned drone aircraft—are some variant of a reduced-surface flying wing design. That the new Russian aircraft would share this trait with the older American bomber, which was one of the first truly “stealth” combat aircraft produced, does not seem very surprising.
Proposed design of PAK DA
Image: Wikipedia
Other details about the PAK-DA are both classified and still in the development process so it is difficult to really get a fully-accurate impression of what the aircraft will entail insofar as weapons, defensive systems or even basic operational parameters. It may not be, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, an ultra-fast supersonic aircraft, however: the race for fast-moving bombers has by and large been overshot by the development of hypersonic missiles that could be launched from this aircraft and use the speed and range of the missile and not the airplane itself to take the enemy by surprise.
Mr. Kislyakov’s analysis as voiced in his article on the PAK-DA that current technical know – how does not allow for the design of an ultra-fast yet stealthy bomber of reasonable size with the weapons configurations that would be desired, however that point can well be contested: It is indeed possible such an aircraft could be designed and produced and a lot of the type of technology required for such a project is probably being applied to Lockheed’s new SR-72 spy-plane for the US Air Force and moreover, the XB-70 bomber program of the early 1960s in America reached for similar goals insofar as speed in a large-scale, long-range, bomber weapons platform. The decisions made in the design of the PAK-DA probably have much more to do with cost and projected strategic applications, which are no longer centered around Cold War concerns germane to the United States but now more concerned with China and other growing powers that are quickly developing their own robust air forces.
Stealth, regardless of the specific enemy, is a key concern for any fighter or bomber. Prior to the past few decades, most testing of stealth concepts was done with scale models in radar ranges where the model would be placed on a pylon and various types of radar would be used in an attempt to detect it, with the goal to reduce the visibility of the model — and thereby the aircraft that would be based upon it — to radar as much as possible. While such applied testing is still key in designing stealth aircraft, vast advances in computer – based design and modeling technology in recent years allows for much of the actual testing of stealth concepts to be done in a virtual manner instead of via physical models. That is a truth common to both the contemporary American and Russian approaches to stealth technologies and one that makes the development process much faster than it was in the 1980s or earlier.
In contrast to what is sometimes reported in the aviation press, the advances in computer design modalities however has not put the traditional functions of the radar ranges out of business and indeed, several in the States exist in the American West and are in the hands of the military or defense contractors and in pretty constant use. What has changed though are two things: the ability to design stealth aspects faster and also the ability to get small yet crucial details exactly right the first time around. This, and advances in defensive capacities for detecting and intercepting enemy aircraft have made the quest for stealth the centerpiece of combat aircraft design that it is for fifth generation fighters and by extension, for the next generation of bombers.
Many technologies pioneered in application and trajectory if not outright in innovation on the PAK-FA will without a doubt carry over to its sister aircraft, the PAK-DA. These probably will include the supermaneuverability, economy of size (for a bomber, at the least), and flexible provision of navigation and communications systems. Sukhoi has always had an edge on bringing the newest technologies to life in terms of computer and control systems whereas Tupolev has always held the high ground in bomber design, so it stands to reason that what Sukhoi is learning in the PAK-FA project will very much be carried over on the PAK-DA. The Russians have by convention valued navigation as a key aspect of air-crew training and while the Americans, British, and others are more and more seeing GPS-based systems as the answer for all navigational needs, the Russians have been stubborn — perhaps very adroitly so — in reserving their navigational training to still include all the facets it would have half a century ago plus the novel technologies used today.
The concept of the PAK-FA and PAK-DA being able to offer the individual pilot or pilots more autonomy from ground, sea, or satellite-based support systems may stem from this view on air-crew robustness and the importance of basic pilotage skills, but will almost certainly be a cornerstone of the unique design of the PAK-DA. This is not at all to imply the PAK-DA will be lacking in the most advanced of technologies, for these are expected in every role, but that the whole philosophy behind the aircraft is one of independence. The can-do attitude that was necessary due to budget restrictions and the general centralized, cloistered, approach to planning and development taken by the Soviets in the later Cold War years did breed a few strong advantages found on the aircraft of that era and those advantages can be fully expected to carry over into the PAK-FA and PAK-DA.
Make no mistake, there is no evidence the Russians wish to simply copy the B-2 or to ape the current design parameters of the Eurofighter Typhoon or the American Lockheed-Martin F-35 in what they are accomplishing in the PAK-FA and PAK-DA, but instead to provide a fully unique, tailor-made approach to the next generation of Russian fighters and bombers. Since we have not seen a new bomber design (at least one headed for actual production) since the 1980s from the Russians, the PAK-DA is certainly an aircraft a lot of people will be watching very keenly — especially since it will probably enter active duty before the American “next generation” bomber will do so.
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