A new video showing the tests of the T-50 PAK FA’s 9-A1-4071K cannon has appeared on Youtube.
The Sukhoi T-50 PAK FA, Russia’s 5th generation radar-evading jet, has undertaken live testing of its 30 mm cannon.
Footage reportedly filmed at a range outside Moscow shows a test platform fire the 9-A1-4071K cannon, an upgraded version of the GSh-30-1 30 mm automatic cannon developed by the Instrument Design Bureau for High Precision Weapons in 2014.
Based on the data released so far, the gun (that complements a wide array of weapons that the aircraft will be able to carry), 50 kg in weight, can fire at a rate of 1,800 rounds per minute, “the best such performance for this type of weapon around.”
According to the state-run Sputnik news media outlet “another thing that makes the 9-A1-4071K so special is its autonomous water cooling system where the water inside the barrel jacket vaporizes as it heats up during operation. The 9-A1-4071K cannon can fire blast-fragmentation, incendiary and armor-piercing tracer rounds and is effective against even lightly armored ground, sea and aerial targets. The cannon can hit ground targets up to 1,800 meters away and aerial targets at a maximum distance of 1,200 meters. Flight tests of the 9A1-4071K modernized rapid-aircraft cannon were earlier conducted on the Sukhoi SU-27SM multirole jet fighter.”
Expected to enter mass production next year, the Russian Defense Ministry plans to buy at least one squadron of T-50 aircraft in 2018.
Theoretically, exports should start in 2020: Sukhoi is working on T-50 variant (that will embed Indian hardware) for the Indian Air Force, even though the latter in 2014 complained in a report that was given wide publicity, that the stealth jet is too expensive, poorly engineered, equipped with inadequate radar.
And, above all, the Indians criticized the unreliable engines.
The Russians have countered that a new, more powerful engine, expected to replace the old AL-41F engine used by the Su-27 family, is under development.
The brand-new motors, along with improved sensors (and more reliable radar – this, as well, planned), will probably make the T-50 a dangerous enemy for both the F-22 and the F-35, preventing embarrassing episodes like those occurred at MAKS 2011.
Back in the 2011, when PAK-FA debuted, both T-50 prototypes had technical problems. The first one, “51” had structural breaks, while second one, “52” suffered a quite embarrassing flameout at the beginning of its MAKS 2011 performance and was forced to abort take off and display.
H/T to @aldana_jp for sending the video over to us.
It shows 13 F-22 Raptors along with 9 other aircraft for a collective 22 planes squeezed inside inside a giant NASA Langley Research Center hangar, rated for Cat. 2 hurricanes, where the multi-role stealth jets were recovered in preparation of the arrival of Hurricane Hermine.
When there is no enough space to accommodate all the aircraft, airbases about to be hit by Hurricanes evacuate their aprons temporarily moving the planes to other airfields: an operation dubbed “Hurrevacing” (from HurrEvac – Hurricane Evacuation).
The video was filmed by Star SAFIRE 380-HDc a compact, high performance, stabilized, HD imaging systems specifically engineered for helicopter.
According to FLIR, the manufacturer of the Star SAFIRE 380-HDc and a leader in such systems, the camera “provides an unmatched SWaP-C advantage for airborne applications that demand high performance ISR [Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance] in a light-weight, compact package. Specifically tailored to excel at long range performance under extreme rotary aircraft conditions.”
Needless to say, the IR signature of the F-35B during hovering is impressive.
The heat signature of a LO (Low Observability) aircraft is also what IRST (Infra Red Search and Track) sensors of a “legacy” unstealthy aircraft will seek during an aerial engagement against a stealth plane.
A swarm of honey bees found hanging from the exhaust nozzle of an F-22 Raptor stealth jet’s engine.
On Jun. 11, 192nd Fighter Wing Aircraft Maintainers found something weird during post-flight operations checks at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia: a swarm of honey bees hanging from the exhaust nozzle of an F-22 Raptor engine.
192nd Fighter Wing Aircraft Maintainers found a swarm of honey bees hanging from the exhaust nozzle of an F-22 Raptor engine on June 11, 2016 at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia. A local honey bee keeper was called to remove and relocate the bees to a safe place for them to build their hive. (U.S. Air Force courtesy photo)
“A cloud of thousands of bees” according to the 192nd Maintenance Squadron crew chief who was there.
Maintainers notified Capt. Katie Chiarantona, 192nd Aircraft Maintenance Officer about the honey bee swarm explains a USAF news release.
Since this had never happened on the flight line before, Chiarantona initially called the on-base entomologist to assess the situation. The entomologist immediately knew that he did not have the means to relocate the bees, so he referred Chiarantona to a local honey bee keeper in Hampton, Virginia.
Andy Westrich, U.S. Navy retired and local bee keeper, arrived on base with the needed materials and supplies. According to Chiarantona, Westrich said the swarm was one of the largest he had ever seen. He was escorted to the aircraft and used vacuum hoses to safely corral the honey bees off of the aircraft into large buckets. He then took the bee’s home and found that, as a hive, they weighed eight pounds which calculates to almost 20,000 bees!
“The honey bees most likely came from a much larger bee hive somewhere else on base,” said Chief Master Sergeant Gregg Allen, 192nd Maintenance Group Quality Assurance chief, who also happens to be a bee keeper. “Bee hives are constantly growing and they eventually become overcrowded. Around springtime, the bees will make a new queen, scout for a new location and take half of the hive with them to that location.”
Westrich suspected that the swarm of bees were on their way to a new location to build a hive for their queen. Queen bees typically fly with eggs to lay at the new hive and do not eat for up to 10 days before leaving to start a new colony. As a result, the queen is often malnourished for the journey. Westrich believes she landed on the F-22 to rest. Honey bees do not leave the queen, so they swarmed around the F-22 and eventually landed there.
According to Chiarantona “[Westrich] said that one out of two things could have happened, the queen would have rested and gained energy and the swarm would’ve left in the morning, or they would have decided that the jet engine would be a great place to build a hive.”
Westrich was able to safely relocate the colony to a local beer producer where they will maintain the honey bee colony and use the honey for their production facility.
“Every bee is important to our food source; lots of things would die without bees,” said Baskin. “Most of our crops depend on bees, and our bees need to pollinate. This is why I knew we needed to save them instead of [exterminate] them.”
192nd Fighter Wing Aircraft Maintainers found a swarm of honey bees hanging from the exhaust nozzle of an F-22 Raptor engine on June 11, 2016 at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia. Andy Westrich, U.S. Navy retired and local honey bee keeper, was called to remove and relocate the bees to a safe place for them to build their hive. (U.S. Air Force courtesy photo)
The Raptors of the latest Block can drop GBU-39 small diameter bombs on ISIS targets.
The Raptors deployed to Al Dhafra airbase, UAE, are the most up-to-date F-22As flown by the U.S. Air Force.
Assigned to the 90th Fighter Squadron from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, the modernized Raptors made their debut in Operation Inherent Resolve, the air war on the Islamic State, in April, bringing expanded capabilities in the fight against Daesh.
“What our squadron is bringing to the fight now versus some of the previous squadrons, is we have the most up to date software and hardware loads that an F-22 can carry,” said Lt. Col. David, 90th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron commander in a recent Air Force release. “There is a huge advancement in the capabilities of the avionics, the radar system, the sensors and certain electronic features on board the aircraft.”
Although they are rarely requested to attack ground targets, the Alaskan Raptors can now drop 8 GBU-39 small diameter bombs while previously they were limited to carry two 1,000-lb GBU-32 JDAMs (Joint Direct Attack Munitions) in the internal weapon bay: with the latest upgrade they can be tasked for missions which require greater precision.
An initial air-to-surface capability, including that of dropping the GBU-39 (a 250-lb multipurpose, insensitive, penetrating, blast-fragmentation warhead for stationary targets equipped with deployable wings for extended standoff range, whose integration testing started in 2007) had been introduced with the software increment 3.1 back in 2012.
Even though the odds of using an advanced air-to-air missiles over Syria are pretty low, another important addition to the F-22’s payload is the latest generation AIM-9X (already integrated in most of US combat planes since 2003): on Mar. 1, 2016 the 90th Fighter Squadron (FS) officially became the first combat-operational Raptor unit to equip an F-22 with the AIM-9X Sidewinder.
Noteworthy, the AIM-9X will not be coupled to a Helmet Mounted Display (HMD) as the F-22 is not equipped with such kind of helmet that provides the essential flight and weapon aiming information through line of sight imagery (the project to implement it was axed following 2013 budget cuts) but the Raptor will probably benefit of the AIM-9X Block II, that is expected to feature a Lock-on After Launch capability with a datalink, for Helmetless High Off-Boresight (HHOBS): the air-to-air missile will be launched first and then directed to its target afterwards even though it is behind the launching aircraft.
Interestingly, along with the ability to carry “new” weapons, the aircraft were also given a radar upgrade that enhanced the F-22 capabilities in the realm of air interdiction and the so-called “kinetic situational awareness”: as we have often explained in previous articles, the role that the Raptor plays in the campaign is to use advanced onboard sensors, such as the AESA (Active Electronically Scanned Array) radar, to gather valuable details about the enemy targets, then share the “picture” with attack planes as the F-15E Strike Eagles.
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