Discipline! Did you notice something interesting?
Saw this pic today and it's the first one I've ever seen with exposed insignias, but not sure if the flag & roundel or even camo are photo shopped or not. Still, if just ignites the pain again of the shame that this happened. They were scheduled to all be delivered by the end of this year which is just over a month from now.
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The more this gets rehashed the more frustrating it is to know that possibly half the $2.5 billion was paid, and for 28 or 30 aircraft how many pilots would've been trained? Double the number of aircraft so two per? So let's say 60 pilots were most likely fully trained or close to it. Then you have possibly 4 or 6 crewman per aircraft, and they might not train that many at first because that would be a huge number of people so maybe train half and that group trains the rest once the aircraft are delivered in country. So we can take 3 per aircraft just to be safe that makes 90 crewmen trained extensively to maintain those huge engines and TVC nozzles which is a whole technology sector of its own. Then there's all the mechanical and avionics and such items I actually think the crewmen go through more required learning material than the pilots. They own the planes more than the pilots do. Then there are also all sorts of other personnel such as the lower-level maintenance guys, the ones who have to learn proper storage of dangerous materials such as the fuel, the oil, the grease lubricants, the electrical cables, oh I almost forgot - training for fire suppression. That is a whole other dedicated field that requires A LOT of training and learning of procedures & materials. Safety procedures are a major element in this field that requires A LOT of dedicated learning and training.
Speaking of fuel, in case anyone didn't notice or doesn't know, the Su-35 does not carry any fuel tanks. That's because it's such a large aircraft that they designed it specifically to hold a huge amount of internal fuel so it never really would need to carry wet bags (as they say) and with in-flight refueling capability also makes the tanks not needed. So how does it hold that much fuel? Well, according to published material from Sukhoi:
The Su-35 has a total fuel capacity of 14,350 liters of fuel. This is much more than the previous Flanker models such as the Su-30 which has a fuel capacity of 9,640 liters. The Su-35S has additional tailfin and fin-root tanks to increase its range and endurance. The fuel tanks are made are packed with polyurethane foam which holds the fuel better and keeps it from moving around with the jet's maneuvering and the polyurethane foam is contained inside the fuel tanks which are made of aluminum lithium and are located in the wings, fuselage and the twin tailfins.
So think about the maintenance of that type of fuel storage within the aircraft and the amount of fuel needed at all times with the safety procedures that need to be taught & followed.
All the yellow frame ribbing in this diagram is where the fuel is filled into fuel cells that contain the baffle polyurethane foam that is placed in the fuel cells fitted within that framing ribbing. This is the SU-35BM which is simply the prototype to the Su-35S.
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The storing and loading of the weapons. The missiles and bombs and we all know what the Su-35S can carry and there's all the special vehicles to move all the weapons around from storage depots to the aircraft and connecting them and disarming or arming and then removing after a training mission I could probably write a book on what it could require to run and field just one squadron of Su-35S let alone 2+. And if you think about it, all this stuff never really gets mentioned or talked about but it's a HUGE part of this whole order that was stopped because the US wants to hurt Russia any way it can. We might not have a choice anymore and just go full Chinese if the French don't give us the MICA NG & the meteor. It will be time to move on after this super painful experience.
I look at this amazing image and just can't imagine such a thing happened! It's truly unbelievable. And now we're stuck with all those 60+ trained pilots, 90+ trained crewmen, another 50 for fire/safety/weapons/moving equipment and the loss of $1.25 billion. And like a pathetic bleeding heart, I admit I am still holding onto a glimmer of hope that somehow, someway Sisi will deal with the Americans and fulfill this order before it's too late. These aircraft can only sit around for so long. Russia is not going to let them rot and if it can't find a client, it'll refit them for the VKS. Oh and that also reminded me that these were all customized to work with Egyptian air defense network. So they are tailor fit for the EAF and its particular air defense and early warning system.
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