KHAI'S COMBAT AIRCRAFT PAGE!
Hey katz and kittenz, here you'll find another one of my fave things...jets!! Enjoy!
This is the F-22 Raptor. This awesome machine was kept under strict wraps until it debuted in the early 1990's. It is America's first fully functional multirole STEALTH fighter. Talk about state of the art...the Raptor is one of the most maneuverable planes in service today, as well as one of the easiest to fly. Its avionics are the most advanced yet, giving the pilot total control over his environment The '22 is powered by two Pratt & Whitney F119-PW-100 thrust vectored engines, the most powerful engines yet..Its weapons are carried internally to reduce radar signature and include the standard M-61A2 gatling cannon, the AIM-9 series Sidewinder, and the AIM-120 AMRAAM. I know what I want for Xmas!!
F-22 Raptor
These two monsters may look the same, but they are quite different. The MiG- 25 (right) was built as the Soviet Union's answer to the American B-70 Valkyrie (which never went beyond the test stage). Planned in the 1960's by the Soviet Designer MiG (Mikoyan i Guryevich), this behemoth was thought to be the fastest and highest flying aircraft ever built, supposedly reaching speeds as high as Mach 3, at 80,000 feet! But the myth was shattered when a Soviet Lieutenant name Viktor I. Belenko defected to Hakodate, Japan on September 6, 1976. The MiG-25 was plated with steel, and the engines used a steel core. The radar used vacuum tubes, but was so powerful it could "burn" through countermeasures, and it was actually a crime to turn it on while on the ground. The main weapons were huge 20-foot long missiles, but they had limited range. All in all the MiG-25 wasn't much of a threat, but it shows that you can build anything if you put your mind to it...
The MiG-31 was the Soviet answer to the new generation of Western fighters. Much lighter and more manageable than the '25, the Foxhound proved to be a much more capable adversary. The radar is a Phased Planar Array radar, and doesn't use a slow moving dish to move the radar beam, but rather tiny mirrors to shift the beam instantly from one part of the sky to the other. It can even track 10 targets at once, pick the four most hostile, and automatically fire missles, which puts the F-14 to shame... almost. The '31 also carries a six barrel 23mm gun pod, the feared GSh-6-01 cannon.
MiG-25 Foxbat
MiG-31 Foxhound
The Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker (left) is another Russian rocker that could blow the doors (and canopies) off of any plane in the air today. The Flanker was introduced as a counter to the U.S. F-15 Eagle in the early 1970s. It turned out to be much bigger than an F-15...and far more maneuverable. The Su-27 can do maneuvers that no other plane can do, like Pugachev's Cobra. In this move, the plane starts at level flight, then pitches up to stand on its tail, then back to level flight. All without stalling the engines! For its size (72 ft long by a 48.3 ft wingspan) the Flanker can outturn and outburn most modern American aircraft. It can carry ten missiles, and has a GSh-30-1 30mm cannon. Shweeet!
Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker
This fifth-generation powerhouse is the Sukhoi S-37 Berkut (Eagle). This is one of the most advanced planes to date, due to its forward-swept wing design. This design enhances lift and maneuverability. By placing a swept wing backwards, the natural reaction is for it to right itself, and if you can control this reaction through computer controls, you have yourself one monkey of a fighter jet. Without its sophisticated flight computers, the Berkut would fly like a dart thrown backwards. Still in the test stage, the S-37 has fourteen hardpoints to accomodate the most up to date missiles in the Russian arsenal. Note the Red Stars on the surfaces of the Berkut; is the cold war really over?
Sukhoi S-37 Berkut
UH, OH! SOMEONE HAD BETTER WATCH OUT FOR THIS HUNTER OF THE SKY!
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