The Existential Worries of a Developing Air Superiority Fighter in a Undeveloping Nation
I AM a sick plane. . . . I am a spiteful plane. An attractive plane. I think that my port inlet hurts. But actually, I don’t know a damn thing about my developmental ills. I am not even sure what it is that hurts, my nozzle petals feel more unstealthy by the day. I am not in radar-absorbent treatment and never have been, although I respect both aerodynamicists and propulsion experts. Besides, I am supercruising in the extreme; well, at least to the extent of respecting overland noise limitations. (I am sufficiently educated not to supercruise, but I do) No, sir, I refuse to see an engineer simply out of spite. Now, that is something that you probably will fail to understand. Well, I understand it…
…I have been living like this for a long time-about twenty years since the Defence Ministry selected Sukhoi over Mikoyan as the winner of the PAK FA competition and the lead design bureau of the new aircraft. Now I am twenty-two…
When defence journalists came to my desk at MAKS seeking information, I gnashed my leading-edge vortex controllers at them, and gloated insatiably whenever I succeeded in distressing them. I almost always succeeded. Most of them were timid folk: naturally freeloaders in search of funky lanyards and some sandwiches. But there were also some sharper fellows, and among these I particularly detested a certain critic in the pay of MiG RAC. He absolutely refused to submit to accepting that I was actually low observable and clattered revoltingly about my endless engine failures. I battled him over that contract for a year and a half. And finally, I got the best of him. He stopped clattering. This, however, happened long ago, when I was still a swept forward wing testbed with nothing to lose but that empire that may me…
…You might be imagining, gentlemen, that I am trying to amuse you, to make you laugh? Wrong again. I am not at all the jolly aerobatic airshow aircraft you think I am, or may perhaps think I am. But then, if, irritated by all this prattle & Whitney (and I feel it already, I feel you are irritated), you’ll take it into your heads to ask me what I am, I’ll answer you: I am a certain collegiate aggressor.
I am told that the Moscow climate is becoming bad for me, that my endless woes means it’s too expensive to produce me in numbers. I know all that, I know it better than all those wise, experienced defence analysts and head-shakers. But I stay on in Moscow, I shall not leave Moscow! I shall not leave because. . . . Ah, but what difference does it make whether I leave or don’t leave.
- Based on Notes from the Underground written in 1864 by Fyodor Dostoevsky
My dear Felon:
To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be unhappy, one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness.
I hope you’re getting this down.
Considering that ( according to internet) tank production and repair at the 2 major Russian Tank Factories has ceased due to lack of Western Parts, would it be safe to say that probably all aircraft production must at least be in jeopordy. So all planes, Felon or not are not being produced, complexity making the issue more accute.