That New Russian Fighter Plane Design Sure Looks Familiar!

That New Russian Fighter Plane Design Sure Looks Familiar!

The Russians now have a new fighter plane to compete with the United States' F-22 Raptor, and the Russia Stealth Aircraft also a fifth generation fighter plane looks like the real thing, or is it Memorex? Indeed, the newest fighter aircraft design from Russia looks awfully similar to one of the America versions of the stealth fighter which competed for the JSF Contract.

Many folks marvel at the Russian aerospace designs and rocket technology, and yet, when looking closer things look eerily familiar, specifically many appear to be outright copies of US aerospace designs. This is well-known by military analysts. Indeed, not long ago, I met a post cold war US-Russian scholar, and I just had to ask him about all this. His name is Jesse Giraldo, perhaps you've heard of him.

Here is the question I asked Mr. Giraldo; "Are you concerned with the new Stealth Fighter copy of Northrop's JSF design bid entry into the Joint-Strike-Fighter fly-off, in Russia; " and here is what he had to say about the whole thing;

Not at all. In fact I find it a bit humorous that this stealth fighter was built in direct response the Air Forces F-22 raptor. It's juvenile but it honestly just sounds like Putin needed a new 5th generation fighter jet to "one up the west". I suppose it is crucial to remind the world that Russia is still capable of challenging the U.S in terms of military but I really doubt the jet lives up to the fanfare. The claims he's making of improved maneuverability and performance at 1/3 of the cost also strikes me as dubious. Of course I doubt the Russian military will be releasing any technical data to backup any of these grandiose statements so all anyone can really do right now is speculate.

Indeed in my opinion, I do agree with Giraldo, and believe the design is good with thrust vectoring, but I question the small vertical (angled) stabilizers, and flutter challenges, we will see. Of course, it is a copy of the Northrop design. You know the Russians seem to have made a version of almost every major aerospace design the US has ever come up with, including their version of our Space Shuttle, B-1, etc. Giraldo agreed stating; "Russia seems to take great pleasure in reverse engineering our creations."

Yes, and the cold war was really all about "our Germans vs. their Germans," as all those scientists in NAZI Germany either went to Russia or came here. Well, at least they seem to enjoy each other's company in the Space Efforts? I've been at least a little impressed with Russian innovation over the years, considering they don't have as much to work with as our abundance and wealth here provides. It's just too bad their spies are busy stealing all of our technology. And let's not even talk about the Chinese and their intellectual property thievery. Please consider all this.