-Caveat Lector- I mean: If you're going to go 'stealthy', may as well go all the way ... or none of the way ... or does 'all' mean 'none' ? This modern language -- so confusing. >From Int'l Herald Tribune Paris, Saturday, January 23, 1999 Russia's 'Stealth' Bluff: Rollout of Fighter That Hasn't Been Built ------------------------------------------------------------------------ By David Hoffman Washington Post Service ------------------------------------------------------------------------ MOSCOW - With much fanfare on a snowy tarmac at the Zhukovsky test field last week, Russia rolled out its long-awaited fifth-generation ''stealth'' fighter jet in front of dignitaries that included the minister of defense, Igor Sergeyev. The plane, with the number 01 on the fuselage, was hailed by Mr. Sergeyev as a ''revolution in the Russian Air Force.'' Mikhail Korzhuyev, director of the MiG company, which designed the plane, boasted: ''If this plane was used to beat off the British-American air raids on Iraq, 90 percent of all the launched guided weapons, including cruise missiles, would be shot down before they reached targets on the territory of Iraq.'' But there was just one problem. The plane on the tarmac was not the plane they were talking about. In fact, the plane they were talking about does not exist, except on the drawing board, and may never be built. Instead, the Russian designers substituted a more ordinary jet fighter, which itself has never flown, and was built for testing engines. It is not clear exactly why the Russians staged the event, but disclosure that they faked what they described as a fighter for the 21st century has stirred heated exchanges in recent days. Alexander Zhilin, a journalist for the newspaper Moscow News, who had once been an aerospace magazine correspondent, was invited to the roll-out by Yevgeni Shaposhnikov, one-time Soviet defense minister and now adviser on aviation to President Boris Yeltsin. Rumors had circulated for years about Russia's top-secret stealth fighter. Some specialists had been quoted as saying the program had run out of money. But the ceremony offered a tantalizing look at the plane and suggested the program was still alive. Mr. Zhilin recalled when he saw the plane at the Jan. 12 event: ''I was taken aback.'' It was not the long-rumored stealth interceptor. It was something else. At first, Mr. Zhilin said in an interview, he thought perhaps the Russian secret services had staged an elaborate deception, to fool foreign intelligence services. But, he said, ''the plane was too roughly made'' to even qualify as a decoy. The plane on the tarmac, he noticed, lacked radar-evading stealth characteristics. For example, he knew that stealth technology required hiding the air-intakes, to achieve the smooth edges that evade radar. But the plane on the tarmac had large, angled air intakes that could easily show up on radar. It did not have other stealth characteristics; for example, it lacked a special radar-absorbing coating, or hidden places for the weapons. A Western expert who saw the pictures of the plane on the tarmac said, ''The visible structure was not new.'' In fact, according to Mr. Zhilin and others, the plane on the runway was built years ago to test the prototype engines for a new fighter. It was a flying laboratory for the engines alone, not a combat plane, Mr. Zhilin said. On the Russian television news that evening, there were no questions asked about the great advance in Russian military aviation. The news reports, showing the plane on the tarmac, told of the first glimpse of the MFI, the Russian acronym for multifunction, front-line fighter. ''According to experts, it can attack up to 20 targets simultaneously,'' the Itar-Tass news agency reported. Mr. Sergeyev was quoted by Interfax as saying that the new fighter was better than anything in the Russian Air Force and was ''not inferior to the most advanced Western models.'' ''BLUFF'' was the headline over Mr. Zhilin's article saying that the whole ceremony had been for a plane that does not yet exist. The Western expert agreed, saying it was ''industry hype.'' In fact, the Soviet Union did begin a fifth-generation stealth fighter project in the early 1980s. It was given the code name Project 1/42, and planned to be a 30-ton, twin-engine, single-seat plane capable of flying more than twice the speed of sound. On the drawing board, at least, the $70 million fighter was to have thrust-vector ring engines allowing it to make tight turns at any speed. But Project 1/42 ran into financial trouble. It was frozen in 1994, and supposedly terminated in 1997. Some mock-ups and parts of the plane reportedly exist at the design bureaus that worked on it. Russian officials have hinted at air shows that Project 1/42 was never fully canceled. But Mr. Zhilin said, ''The program has stopped.'' He said his sources were workers on the real stealth plane who were angry about the ceremony. To test the supersonic engines, Russian designers built a test plane designated Project 1/44. It was the one that was rolled out on the tarmac, Mr. Zhilin said, recalling that he had seen the same airplane two years ago in a hangar. Mr. Zhilin speculated that what he called the ''bluff'' had been carried out to cover up financial misdealings in the aerospace industry. He said some officials were questioning whether government money for Project 1/42 had disappeared. The MiG company has been stung by the disclosures. In response to questions, a spokesman, Sergei Samatov, said Mr. Zhilin's claims ''are not true to reality, to put it mildly.'' He added the fighter ''is not a bluff and it is practically ready for the first flight that will happen in March 1999.'' But another official acknowledged that the plane that was rolled out on the runway was in fact the engine-testing model, a far cry from the stealth version. Anatoli Kvochur, deputy head of the Gromov flight-test institute, said that the test plane was ''roughly speaking the first flying model'' of the stealth. ''Naturally,'' he said, ''the plane will be different, it will have a different wing, but it will happen after a certain stage of flying tests.'' ''This country needs such a plane,'' he said. ''Whether our budget can afford such a plane is a different thing.'' ~~~~~~~~~~~~ A<>E<>R The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
