This is largely an update to my 2018 post Overview of Russian Airports & Aircraft Construction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUMjwU26uTM
Narrow-body airliner for 211 passengers and a competitor to the Airbus 320/Boeing 727 has now made its maiden flight with the Russian-made PD-14 engines, which replaced the American Pratt & Whitney 1400G engines.
This marks the biggest step forwards in the process of technological indigenization in aircraft construction that accelerated after Western sanctions in 2014.
This makes it a different beast from the Sukhoi Superjet 100, most of which were (at least earlier) primarily built from foreign components, or for that matter Embraer aircraft such as the ERJ-190, in which pretty much all of the more technologically complex components appear to be sourced from abroad. But Brazil doesn’t have to worry about Western sanctions.
The Corona-related depression of air travel and resulting excess fleet capacity, as well as the problems with the Boeing 737 MAX, gives the MC-21-300 breathing room to ramp up production before Russian airliners need to start renewing their fleets.
There are ~300 existing orders and the aim is to produce 75 per year from 2025.
On the very same day, a new version of the Ilyushin Il-114 turboprop, also now mostly composed of Russian-made components, was also tested. There are currently ~40 orders from airlines specializing in local routes in the Arctic.
Nearly 1,000 CR929 long-range wide-body jetliners, the largest joint endeavor between China and Russia in the aviation industry, are expected to be sold globally from 2023 to 2045, said a key project leader at Commercial #Aircraft Corp of China. https://t.co/hHPc1bV77O pic.twitter.com/clU7b7Y6Zk
— China Daily (@ChinaDaily) December 11, 2020
The CRAIC CR929 is not going so well, with progress slowing down due to disputes over things like tech transfer and where the planes will be manufactured. Russian and Chinese business culture don’t sync well, so its prospects are more cloudy.
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And unlike most (all?) current-production Russian jet engines, the PD-14 is entirely post-Soviet, not sharing any sections whether cold (fan/compressor) or hot (core/turbine) with Soviet-era designs (or foreign designs, as in the case of the SSJ-100 PowerJet engines, that have French SNECMA-designed hot sections).
The PS-90 that powers the Il-96 series widebody airliners is borderline a post-Soviet design too, as it entered service around 1993, but the bulk of its development took place in the 1980’s, and it’s 30 years old anyway.
Same with the many iterations of the RD-33 and AL-31/41 military engines, that all began in the 80’s but were developed upon and reached their ultimate versions well into the 2000’s. The only entirely post-Soviet military engine for fighter jets that I’m aware of is the “article 117” in development for the Su-57 (not to be confused with the “article 117S” that has flown on the Su-35S for a while, as it is based on the AL-31/41 series, odd in-house naming conventions).
The 117 has flown, and is reportedly a brand new design in every respect, but has yet to enter production.
Anyway, the Soviets and Russians never really lagged behind in military jet engines, in fact they have been pioneers in many respects, but on the civilian side of things things have looked rather depressing until the PD-14 started being tested on an Il-76 flying laboratory several years ago.
That two of them have now been fitted and flown on a brand new jet airliner is fantastic news for Russian industry not only in terms of import substitution, but also in terms of Russia gradually weaning itself from its habit of sticking to proven but internationally inferior Soviet-era technologies, only slightly modifying and modernizing them over the years.
Yet another achievement of Western sanctions. Someone won’t get orders for this type of airplane engines ever again. Congrats to that someone!
There were many Western “glorious victories” before. To list just a few:
1. Russian agriculture flourished. Grain exports set new records every year.
2. Russia developed its own credit card Mir (to replace Visa and MC, if necessary) and its own electronic money transfer system (to replace SWIFT, if necessary).
3. Russian orders for ships and heavy industrial equipment shifted from Germany to South Korea. If Germans sincerely believe they will get that business back when the EU stops its sanctions madness, they should think again. Life is irreversible.
4. Fine French and Italian cheeses are now made in Russia by French and Italian producers. As know-how was transferred, the quality is the same as of the originals.
5. After the hullabaloo about the installation of one of Siemens turbines in Crimean power plant Russia decided to renew local turbine production that USSR had. Siemens got scared. In its eagerness to retain some business it offered to organize the production of turbines for Russia in Russia, with the transfer of know-how.
I can continue for a long time, but what’s the point? Sane people knew all this before, madmen would remain mad no matter what, as mental disorders are incurable.
PS, as always it’s too early to say anything, but when air travel starts increasing again post-COVID, it could be a golden opportunity for these aircraft as they’re bound to be cheaper to purchase and perhaps even to operate than legacy aircraft in the same pax/range class.
The SSJ was a good attempt and seemed to be rather successful at first, but a highly convoluted spare parts supply chain, exacerbated by sanctions etc complicated matters for the end customers, and eventually they were grounded en-masse, on and off. I think the ones that still fly mostly do so within Russia, and the Mexican InterJet fleet of SSJ-100s (the largest foreign civilian customer) only sees sporadic use.
You are completely right, just a small correction: Al-41F1/Al-41F1S (izdeliye 177/117S) are the engines of Su-35S and the current used in Su-57, and is a deep update of the Al-31F of the baseline Su-27. This engine is already operational for some 10 years already. The all-new engine for Su-57 (currently being tested) is the izdeliye 30. One of the Su-57 prototypes (bort 052) is currently flying with two izdeliye 30 engines. It is expected to be in service in 2023, meanwhile the first serial Su-57 will fly with Al-41F1.
“This makes it a different beast from the Sukhoi Superjet 100, most of which were (at least earlier) primarily built from foreign components”
That was a mistake from Sukhoi, but it is being corrected, and an all-Russian version is currently being developed. It will be powered by PD-8 engines, which is a smaller version of the PD-14 used in the MS-21.
Thanks, of course you’re right. I confused it all in my head and didn’t look it up before writing. So, correction: the article 30 is the brand new one that shares no components or general “heritage” with anything that can be traced to the USSR. And the 117/117S confusion stems from the fact that they put an 117S into serial production for the Su-35S, but kept the experimental derivative 117 for the T-50 prototypes, and the latter has probably changed over time (I deduce that from the fact that various variants have kept being flown on an Su-30 testbed out of LII over all these years).
That is until they re-purposed a T-50/Su-57 into a similar testbed, now for the final 30, and took it from there.
Looking forward, one sees a bi-polar world where the EurAsian-African hemisphere has its own currency system, technologies, energy supplies, philosophies, literature and arts, and formidable defense alliances.
The Western empire is a less desirable peer. Keeping wealth with them is risky, because at any moment it could evaporate.
Its bypass ratio is still below the most updated American and European designs, and the difference is not that small either.
Similar story in Iran I think, their indigenous weapons capability had dramatically been enhanced due to sanctions. For example, the HESA Kowsar is apparently 100% indigenously made, although the design is ripped from the Northrop F-5.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/HESA_Kowsar4.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eostVXltq4M
A turboprop has massive “bypass ratio”, as nearly all of the thrust comes from the cold prop/fan and not the hot turbine itself. Bypass ratio itself doesn’t mean anything, it’s just the ratio of cold vs. hot thrust, and I’m sure that ancient designs such as the Kuznetsov NK-12 pushes that particular ratio to insane levels.
Just saying.
What matters is fuel efficiency for given thrust figures, and weight (T/W), serviceability etc. And of course, noise levels.
Angara A5 rocket also flew from Plesetsk a few days ago. First launch since 2014. Looks like it will be going into serial production soon, which is good news.
While A5 is nothing special by itself (24 tons to LEO makes it a more expensive Proton replacement), KVTK block (upper stage) that’s being developed for it is pretty good. It will increase payload from 24 tons to 35-40 tons to LEO (go hydrogen!) which, when combined with Transport Energy Module (which also got 4 billion ruble contract recently) will give Russia a pretty substantial reach into deep space.
I predict Musks’ Starship will dominate the skies on low Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars, and Venus due to massive payload and refueling capabilities, but to go the asteroid belt and beyond, nuclear thermal and plasma accelerators will outclass chemical rockets.
I am talking about the Russian jet engines for the MC-21.
I would feel much safer knowing that none of the engineering of this engine was done with the help of affirmative action or engineering outsourced to India.
Sure, but bypass ratio in itself is still not a defining factor.
The aforementioned Il-76 flying laboratory that has flown the PD-14 for years also flew with the experimental NK-93 earlier. That engine had a bypass ratio that blew and still blows most things out of the water. It was basically a contained (ducted) propfan, in other words an ultra-high bypass turbine.
Doesn’t matter, it’s just ratios which doesn’t say much. Efficiency matters though, that is how much thrust can you extract from a given quantity of fuel, vs the weight of the entire contraption. And that goes beyond bypass ratios, it’s the efficiency of the hot turbine driving it all, first and foremost…
Suppose that this plane was competitive in its class and sold at a better price than comparable counterparts, how successful would it be internationally?
US will sanction global service centers for this aircraft (Irkut is already under sanctions i believe), so export success will be limited regardless of the plane’s appeal.
But domestically, and for countries already under US sanctions so they don’t care (to be fair, that will be the whole world soon lol) it will be a successful product.
…and vs the drag, of course. High bypass ratios mean bigger frontal diameters, which induce more drag. It’s a whole science (duh), and a balance act. But the hot section is what drives everything anyway, and determines how much (subsonic thrust) you can gain from bypass.
The issue with Russian engines isn’t performance though the PD 14 is likely to be a few percentage points below PW GTF and GE LEAP engines.
The problem is Operational Life,MTBO and the availability of spares and servicing.
That is basically due to the fact that Russia like France is about half a generation behind Anglo Countries (GE,PW and RR) and Germany(MTU, RR Deutschland formerly BMW Aero Engines) in terms of material science technology.
France usually decides to compromise on performance metrics (Compare Snecma M88(Rafale) specs to EJ 200(Eurofigher) or GE F414(Super Hornet) but not on operational life or serviceability.
It is remedying this handicap by tying up with Germany for its sixth gen fighter.MTU is responsible for the very hard to engineer hot section(HP Compressor and Turbine)
Russia OTOH opts for matching or even exceeding the US in raw performance but at the expense of operational life and servicability(Compare Klimov RD 33(Mig 29) with GE F404(F/A-18))
Still in Russia’s present situation it has no other choice.
Though heroic and very admirable this will inevitably make the MC 21 uncompetitive vis a vis A320 Neo and even the 737 Max which is a shame as the airframe is by far the most advanced of any narrowbody aircraft on the planet.
I don’t know much about the Iranian capacities, but I suspect that the frames are not newly built by them, they just revamp old F-5 airframes with new avionics. And also I doubt they can produce entirely new engines, so probably are also reusing old J85.
At last Russia will be able to offer an aircraft to Iran. They can’t do that with SSJ due to many Western components. They couldn’t even sell them Tu-204 because PS-90 engines had Western FADEC.
Rest assured, it wasn’t. If it were, the plane would have never taken off the ground.
The avionics of the MC 21 is still basically Rockwell Collins so no not just yet.
There is a separate project underway to replace the avionics as well so maybe in 5 years or so…
Iran has managed to send satellites into space (with admittedly comparatively low success rate but it’s still noteworthy since the list of countries that has done this is not long) and build respectably accurate cruise missiles as well as relatively efficient long endurance combat drones. I don’t see why they shouldn’t be able to make a figher jet which is technologically several decades old.
Yes, you are right. At least good thing is that Russian avionics are being developed, but still some years away.
Where will Brazil source from, when the rest of the world becomes Brazil?
They will buy engines and avionics from Russia.
at first i thought this was gonna be about the Angara A5 launch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SWWQN75mX8
about equal in ability to Delta Heavy, which puts Russia 1 to 2 generations behind ULA, and about 3 generations behind SpaceX. not that Russia necessarily needs to be at the cutting edge of spacecraft. but for sure, they are out of the nascent second space race that’s developing now. it’s between the US operators and China this time.
Do you mean anything by generation?
There’s room here for an article on Russian Juche, I believe.
Some examples of Iranian jet engines:
OWJ turbojet engine (reverse engineered General Electric J85-21, as used in F-5E)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY_mKPKu4Kc
A small, but quite modern turbofan (reverse engineered Williams FJ33)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp-u709KzQU
Unless US operators or China are building megawatt sized space based nuclear power plants right now, I don’t see how Russia is behind in space technology. Is there something Russia can’t do thats relevant to space exploration today?
Proton and Soyuz provide cargo and manned flights cheaply and effectively. Proton sent Spektr RG telescope to Lagrange point last year, they are sending Nauka module up next year. For deep space exploration, NASA Psyche mission to asteroid belt is flying on Russian plasma accelerators (SPT-140 Hall effect stationary plasma thrusters made by Fakel in Kaliningrad).
So the idea that Russia lacks something when it comes to spaceflight technology seems silly to me.
Not really. Russia imports a lot. It’s just natural selection: obedient imperial vassals stupidly lost business, countries with saner leadership gained it. Germany used to dominate Russian market for high-tech industrial equipment, but now it’s sourced from South Korea. Russia has limited shipbuilding capacity, which is now almost completely used up by building military vessels and large icebreakers. So, South Korean shipbuilding plants have Russian orders for many years of stable work, making LNG tankers and other specialized civilian ships. Funny thing is, saner Germans explain self-defeating position of their government saying that Germany is an occupied country. It sure is, but South Korea is also an occupied country, which does not prevent sensible economic policy. Overall, it’s the survival of the fittest, pure and simple: fools lose, smarter people gain. C’est la vie.
What makes the 737Max so advanced?
Isn’t it a flawed design?
I think he just looked as some numbers and came to the conclusion that Angara A5 was the first Russian rocket which is comparable to Delta Heavy which was launched for the first time in 2004. But both Russia and America has had similarly powerful rockets for half a century. Also, Proton-M which was first launched in 2001 and has smaller but overall roughly comparable payload to Delta Heavy has been launched 10 times more.
@Anatoly Karlin
What is your take on why Russia did not join RCEP? Is that a good move or not and why?
Was this to protect their industries from foreign competition?
China’s COMAC jet airliners still use Western engines.
No one expected, during the planning phase, that today an anti-Chinese cold war would erupt as seriously as the anti-Russia one that crept up from 2008 onward and then exploded in 2014. (Well, probably the Russians expected it and warned about it, but China was too laid back after a century of the USSR taking the all the blows).
Soon enough China too will have to realize that the easy way of doing things can suddenly become the impossible way of doing things.
Speaking of which, let’s place bets. When will Chinese vs Western African skirmishes begin?
What makes the airframe more advanced than the others?
The 737 Max isn’t particularly advanced it is however cheap(both upfront and in terms of operational cost) and has an extremely well developed service and support network. It also offers numerous financing/leasing options.
It also benefits from a wide pool of certified pilots and maintenance staff.
In time like previous models of the 737 it is also very likely to have a well developed secondary market for customers to offload these planes to.
Its airframe is less efficient than MC 21, A320 Neo and probably the COMAC C919(The Chinese understandably took a very conservative approach given the fact that this is their first major league design and the bad experience with their previous ARJ 21 regional jet project) however the avionics is state of the art as is the engine (737s only have the CFM Leap engine option which is good because the PW GTF engine is the option causing problems in the A320 Neo).
As for the MCAS problem.It has been rectified after considerable scrutiny so this is unlikely to cause further problems.I don’t think the airframe is fundamentally flawed (static instability in aircraft is a well understood 50+ year old design choice though it is rare in civilian jets) the problem was a flawed implementation of MCAS system and criminal concealment of information pertaining to this feature which has now been rectified.
It is a clean sheet new narrowbody design from a country very experienced in making civilian aircraft (The problems with USSR planes were almost never with the airframe which were actually pretty good)
It thus has features which cannot be retrofitted o
on an older design during a conventional upgrade cycle.The A320 first flew in the 1980s and the 737 in the 1960s.
This is the same reason the 787 airframe is inherently more advanced than the A330 neo and the A350 XWB is inherently more advanced than the 777X.
The MC 21 has an all composite single piece wing which has been aerodynamically optimized in a way not possible with conventional wings.
The MC 21 fuselage makes extensive use of composites as well as advance Aluminium Lithium alloys.
It is significantly lighter and more aerodynamic than the A320 Neo and obviously the 737 Max.
The Eurasian Union already has got a FTA with Vietnam, which will soon be expanded to all of ASEAN.
FTAs are like smartphones. Everyone & their granny got at least one. Some are more fancier than others but nothing special. Of course if you are broke and sign a 48-month payment plan, than you are stupid.
There is also the new Angara heavy rocket launch recently.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK0gC5zW8Zw
And work has begun on Nuclear Deep Space Ship.
https://ria.ru/20201211/kosmos-1588827682.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtPsGVvhUdw
From what i hear the US and Chinese nuclear space propulsion research laggs behind Russia. Hence Russia started a project for nuclear deep space ship.
Russia’s new nuclear propulsion space ship is to be used for reaching Moon, Mars and Venus too, in addition to Jupiter and probably Saturn.
Do you think Russia can compete with America regarding the commercialisation of space? It seems that most news believe that Russia is losing it’s marketshare, at a time when the sector is going to grow.
One thing that stands out to me with Russian fighters is thrust vectoring. For some reason most of the current generation Russian fighter jets has it but very few of the Western ones does, and the Western ones that has it is have fewer dimensions to it. It’s very cool for doing tricks on air shows but how useful is it? What’s the downsides?
I don’t compute. Why would that happen beyond the usual black ops stuff of supporting one’s favored leader against another?
Well, there’s nothing wrong with current Russian commercial space program such – they are launching OneWeb satellites now and there’s a Korean one thats supposed to go on Angara. SpaceX does have more launches but thats because they launch their own Starlink constellation and Russian Sphere is not there yet (Russia needs to invest more in Space Simulation chamber for payload testing and development, they are building 2500 m3 one which is better than current 1800 m3 or even European 2400 m3, but no match for destroyed USSR one at 8,000 m3 or American at 20,000 m3).
On market pricing, Russians still dominate. Proton market price is $65M/22 tons to LEO, or $2,950/kg. Reusable Falcon price is $50M/15 tons (due to fuel return requirements), or $3,330/kg. Russians are cheaper and more efficient due to more stages on Proton vs Falcon.
For space tourism, Soyuz is more reliable, has a kitchen and a toilet, and ticket price of probably $30M/seat ($80M NASA price). Russians were charging $20M per seat a decade or so ago, even with inflation and upgrades i don’t see Soyuz pricier than $30M. It is also good at orbital mechanics so its fast to ISS. Current NASA contract pays $100M/seat to SpaceX ($2.4 billion/6 launches/4 seats each). I’m sure it will be cheaper in the future, but I don’t see them beating Soyuz prices for a decade.
In the near future though, this is going to change. Starship is huge and will dominate cost per kg. At that scale, opportunity cost of return fuel will be minimized and reusability will finally make economic sense. With refueling capabilities, Starship will dominate local space, and Russia doesn’t really have anything comparable. The good news is Starship is a fairly simple construction (a flying steel grain silo) so Russia should be able to just copy it. No shame in that.
So to answer your question. Aside from marketing hype and propaganda, current Russian commercial space offerings are highly competitive with US. In the near future, when Starship will be able to deploy any satellite on any orbit in local space and keep deploying them by the 100’s and 1,000’s, Russia will not be competitive anymore. Starship is a game changer. In the far out worlds, asteroid belts etc, chemical gas burners such as Starship will hit the limits of physics and Russian nuclear electric plasma accelerators will dominate the deep space.
I like to say, this is the biggest irony on Earth. Elon Musk, electric car guy, invented the best gas burner. Russia, known as planetary gas station, invented the best electric space propulsion system. 🙂
Your praise for 737 Max does not explain its two crashes and several near-crashes. Maybe software crutches improved this cripple, but I won’t fly it even if they pay me.
I would guess it has to do with stealth requirements. As I understand, you want your geometry to be as flat as possible and you don’t want your exhaust nozzles moving all over the place bouncing radar waves. Hence aerodynamics sacrifice.
As for usefulness… well, greater agility is always nice, but what’s ‘useful’? Is stealth really useful when dropping bombs on Afghan wedding party? And even when it comes to air defense, Israeli F-16 have no stealth but can strike into Syria just fine by flying outside the air defense range.
On the other hand, if show tricks can convince an Arab sheikh to buy the plane to impress his girlfriends, thats nice and useful.
I’m a fan of long range rockets and nuking things from orbit, so I guess stealth vs agility is situational. In fake training scenario of fighter vs fighter you will want stealth, but in a real war you will want to destroy enemy fighters on the ground and send your fighters after high value targets so agility and speed will help there more than stealth I think. Stealth is useless if your F-35 is sitting in a well known maintenance hangar getting repainted.
This plane will never get off the ground outside of the usual suspects being obligated to purchase it.
That’s the reason. The US will decide China is an enemy. Then, we will hear about racist Chinese colonization in Africa 24/7. Americans will be overjoyed by this development since it will give us a break from hearing about racist white Americans. Then the guerilla wars against the Chinese colonial oppressors will start. Maybe not until Biden is out of office, though.
Then the Chinese-supported government warlords will attempt to kill the American-supported rebels, or vice versa in an rather time-honored means of dispute resolution on that continent.
Sorry to point this out, but it already did get off the ground. If some imperial lackeys are prohibited to use it, it’s their problem.
“If some imperial lackeys are prohibited to use it, it’s their problem.” – This is not just their problem. Look at history of technological advancements in France. Often France was the first and the first to implement their technological advancements on large scale but limited to France only. Bu they had no takers in the Anglo-American world or in Germany who came later with their own solutions ignoring French advancements and in the long run making them irrelevant to the point that France had to switch to German and Anglo-American solutions abandoning its own path. It has something to do with the market size and scale and the game played by big guys is dirty. If France had its way cars or planes or internet would be different and possibly in some ways better than what we have now. Autarky for Russia might be the best strategy for now but in a long run being limited with its innovation to the internal market might be not sustainable.
True enough, but the world market is a-changing. Imperial grip on its vassals or even on countries effectively occupied by the US troops (e.g., South Korea) is weakening.
Anyway, the only path forward for Russia is to produce its own (like the USSR, for the same reasons) and to work on undermining the position of the Empire and its currency in the international trade. Also playing dirty: you lose if you play an honest game with sharpers. The next 10-30 years will show whether this leads to a greater success than just protecting the country from whimsical imperial sanctions. The mills of history, like the mills of God, grind slowly.
It’s worth keeping up technical know how even if it doesn’t seem profitable for the moment. Russia gave up on development on a lot of new technology in the 90s and this has lead to high startup costs of reviving such projects.
Besides, it’s not much of a choice. The situation can’t be compared to Western countries. They don’t need to be self sufficient in all sectors. Russia on the other hand could potentially be banned from importing certain products at any time.
Thrust vectoring first of all means better STOL performance, you can operate from shorter runways because the aerodynamic lift plays less of a role when you can direct your thrust like that. The Russians always made sure their jets could operate from minimal runways, with minimal support, so the TVC you see everywhere these days is basically just a follow-up to the good old FOD panels and auxiliary intakes on the MiG-29, the Yak-130 etc. Just extremely optimized to function from a muddy field if necessary.
With proper TVC you can also easily outmaneuver anything that relies on conventional aerodynamic surfaces, so a Su-35S would kill an F-35 in a dogfight like a piece of cake. The F-35 is a silly old goose in more ways than one, but that’s a different story.
Yup. The only real question is whether all this will spawn a song better than “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner.” I’m guessing no.
The big problem with Superjet was the lack of spare parts. Planes would suffer malfunctions, and then remain grounded for a long time because there was no parts! So I hope they’ll get logistical issues sorted out for MC-21 and this isn’t merely a vanity project to impress Putin.
A jet engine can be made from the contents of a scrap yard but it won’t last very long.
Civilian jet engines need to last and to have modest maintenance costs while also being fuel efficient and low noise. None of these criteria apply to Russian military heritage. Hence the need for a new engine. Early days. The SJ100 flopped outside Russia because of a lack of (non sanctioned) spare parts in the right places fast enough as Felix says.
All of them have been returned to Russia and are to be flown by Aeroflot or its subsidiaries.
I mean figuratively, as in it will never sell well outside of the usual group of customers.
Like clock work!
https://twitter.com/CarlZha/status/1339063903746052098?s=20
https://twitter.com/CarlZha/status/1339067784869756935?s=20
https://twitter.com/CarlZha/status/1339069373978300417?s=20
https://twitter.com/CarlZha/status/1339071535340908544?s=20
https://twitter.com/CarlZha/status/1339077010396606470?s=20
Imperial grip on its vassals… – Most of the vassals are satisfied and they do not want change. I know that some Russians to ease the butthurt create analogies between the US and the USSR. The vassals of the USSR were happy to leave so the same must go for the vassals of the US. The USSR collapsed so the US will collapse. Try aloe vera for your the butthurt; it may work better. IMO megalomania is the only similarity between the US and the USSR (or now Russia). The greatest manifestation of Russian megalomania is their audacity to compare themselves to America.
I agree with the rest of your comment.
The fact that America’s vassals appear to enjoy their serfdom reflects badly on them, not us.
Congratulations to Russia. I saw a clip the other day where Putin was demanding all components for the military be locally sourced. I forget he also said such regarding commercial airliners. Looks like they are on their way.
Mostly true but that doesn’t mean they’re happy to go along with all demands. But they still follow them because sucking up has benefits.
Warsaw pact countries wanted to leave they perceived it would make them richer. If sometime in the future being loyal to America starts to seem to be more trouble than it’s worth then we’ll see vassals wanting to break off. I’m not saying it will happen but it could be feasible after an extended period of economic crisis coupled together with America being more demanding. Furthermore, if that happened then it would be easy to build some kind of mythology that those former vassals would be much more developed if they hadn’t been kept back by their former oppressor.
“I would guess it has to do with stealth requirements. As I understand, you want your geometry to be as flat as possible and you don’t want your exhaust nozzles moving all over the place bouncing radar waves.”
The F22 has it though (thrust vectoring)… But it’s not “3D” like the Russian (and now Chinese) designs.
“… it would be easy to build some kind of mythology that those former vassals would be much more developed if they hadn’t been kept back by their former oppressor.” – I think this is already happening though it is not directed at America but at the EU and Germany in particular. The myth has a foundation in some truth that in the transition from communist economy they were de-industrialized which benefited western corporations which played a very active role in the process. The re-industrialization by western companies that followed turned them into economies of subcontractors that assemble products and play no role in the development of new know-how. They resent that they are cheap labor Mexico for Germany. There is no chance that anything original and independent can be created and turned into production there. When looking at Russia developing new planes they may feel some envy and realization that their role is always to play a second fiddle whether in Soviet sphere or American sphere. It is unlikely that any of the post Soviet countries would ever become a South Korea of Europe with its own electronic, car or shipbuilding industries.
OT but related: Recently I watched on Netflix German series “A Perfect Crime.” This is about the assassination of Rohwedder who was in charge of transformation and de-industrialization of East Germany. There are three theories. The most interesting is that when the opposition to the transformation was gaining momentum in East Germany his murder helped to stop it. So it is theorized that this was a false flag operation by Germany’s deep state that engineered a culprit from Red Army Faction. He was killed during a botched attempt of arrest. All evidence from the arrest was lost including the one that was sent for an independent analysis to Zurich.
Any German who seems to not understand that these sanctions are directed even more against Germany than against Russia, regardless the nominal target is either a liar, a traitor or stupid.
Germany still being extremely rich, the short term effect of these sanctions can be lied away for years. In the long run, the sanctions will do their intended damage to Germany, unless the madness stops.
Northstream anyone?
Pitting Russia and Germany against each other has been the Anglo-imperialist goal for one and a half centuries now. As we know, they found more than enough willing accomplices in both countries.
Old story. Look at the Azimuth. Irkut basically slow down production of ssj in order to make pool of spare parts.
SSJ was dream. Dream that west would buy Russian aircraft, even if West would never consider Russian human. Russia didn’t have money to create proper service center and West was never interested in helping. SSJ is flying with Russian airlines which not all are part of Aeroflot. Anyhow, it is better that SSJ replace other models on domestic market. It will also create necessary dense service net. It would be same with mc-21. Mostly sold on domestic market, but whatever. Money would stay in Russia. Who cares, it it would have 5% less fuel efficiency if you get sweet finance deal.
We were told that we will live in Switzerland. Later we will told, that we are living better then Russians. Now, we are told that we have less crime and democracy. We will be told, that we have gay parades so it doesn’t matter that Russians or Chinese have better develop economies.
Nobody will leave US empire. Idea that US empire would be better then USSR. Yeah, Americans have better PR, but it doesn’t matter for death people.
As for Russians, they should go back from high horse. Empire is just starting with them. Biden will really drop hammer.
Agree! Won’t want to fly in a Boeing 737 max.
What is amusing is that anti-China propaganda star Adrian Zenz is a fundamentalist Evangelist, i.e. someone that would in other instances be sneered at as a reactionary Trump- loving weirdo, but since he is useful that aspect is quietly dropped.
See for instance this book:
Worthy to Escape: Why All Believers Will Not Be Raptured Before the Tribulation
https://books.google.de/books?id=TuS3ooFcpI4C&printsec=frontcover&hl=de#v=onepage&q&f=false
Adrian Zenz has been doing the anti-China thing for over a decade but seems to have had very marginal influence until recently. But now with the new cold war suddenly he becomes an important expert that is cited constantly.
Yeah the goal isn’t to necessarily be the leader in any particular field – but to prevent strangulation by Western sanctions.
There isn’t much that the US can do to Russia apart from a lot posing and huffing & puffing….if they could, they wouldn’t be making loud hysterical threats every day