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Aviation History
1997
1997 - 0956.PDF
-** ^J!TORWW3I (Inset) aw e«r/y Mikoyan 1.42 design, and the final configuration which MIG MAPO may yet unveil The original F-22 was designed to combat threats that have now been reshaped T IS NOW a foregone conclusion that the air craft the F-22 was designed to outperform will never enter service, with the West having seen the last of the big MiGs. With the fall of the Soviet Union, however, the US Air Force has begun to see potential threats to its air superiori ty in cash-starved Russia's eagerness to export the best of its combat aircraft and air-defence sys tems, and in Europe's efforts to sustain its defence industry through exports. TheMikoyan design bureau's fifth-generation fighter prototype could yet debut at the Moscow air show in August 1997-if it survives at all, how ever, it will be only as a technology demonstrator. Conceived by the old Soviet Union, the design has proved too ambitious and too expensive for a Russia wrought by economic strife. The F-22 is the embodiment of the US Air Force's desire for air supremacy, and its unwill ingness to accept parity. "Our mentality is to dominate the skies," says Maj Scott Brown of the F-22 Special Management Organization. As far as the F-22 was concerned, this meant being able to provide air supremacy against any threat that the Soviet air force would be capable of fielding from the late 1990s well into the 21st century. The philosophy underpinning development of the Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker and Mikoyan MiG- 29 was not that of providing supremacy over their US counterparts, but rather of achieving parity. In the case of the Flanker, the aim was to develop an aircraft capable of countering the McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle, while the Fulcrum was intended to provide combat equiv alence with the Lockheed Martin F-16. THE NUMBERS GAME In part, Soviet conservatism was born out of an increasing concern about its ability to best US aerospace technology, and in part by a knowledge that its air force would be numerically superior to that of the USA. The Soviets could afford to accept a low exchange-ratio in air combat, since comparative attrition rates would favour die air force with the greater numbers of aircraft. The F-22 programme was projected to pro vide the US Air Force with an air-superiority fighter capable of defeating all present and pro jected Soviet-threat aircraft beyond the turn of the century. The projected threats included not only advanced derivatives of the MiG-29 and Su- 27 Flanker, but also their successors. In looking to the next generation of fighters beyond the Fulcrum and Flanker, Soviet design ers were tasked in the early 1980s with designing aircraft capable of challenging the emerging US Advanced Tactical Fighter. Originally, the West expected the Soviet Union to develop successors to both the MiG-29 and the Su-27, which it dubbed the counter-air fighter and the air-superiority fighter. Certainly the Soviet air force, in the early 1980s, did look at both a light frontal fighter - Logkiy Frontovoi Istrebitel (LFI) - and a multi-role frontal fighter - Mnogofuntktsionalnvi Frontovoi Istrebitel (MFI). MIG MAPO is again looking at an LFI. The MFI programme is thought to have been A FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL SUPPLEMENT
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