The Beutiful Bird making a very very low pass

I was playing football with my friends in the school ground when I heard the loud roar of an approaching jet. In that moment everyone just froze and looked upwards to watch a beautiful bird fly over their heads and then ascend into the sky with such apparent ease as though it was not governed by the law of gravitational pull. Within seconds it grew smaller and merged with the blue of the sky. While everyone was still staring above trying to zoom in just to watch the jet just a little longer, someone uttered the words, “It was a Su 30″.  It was a Su 30 indeed and what a plane it was. This awe of the plane intrigued me to read up more about it and other jets. For this post, I will share some features of the majestic Su 30 with you.

Just the sight of the aircraft will tell you that it is a twin engine fighter plane. However what you won’t know is that each of those engines is a Saturn AL – 31FP powerhouse, each providing the aircraft a thrust of 137 kilo Newtons. That is the kind of force that pushes a body of mass 1000kg at an acceleration of 137 metres/second squared. For those strangers to elementary physics it means the kind of force that would see a body of 1000 kg go from standstill to 137 metres/sec in 1 second and to 274 metres/sec in the other!  And now imagine what two such engines could do. I once heard someone say that a single Su 30 produces enough power to provide electricity to a town of 3000-4000 people. A powerhouse, quite literally!

What good is such raw power if it cannot be translated to assist the notorious maneuverability of the 4th generation fighter jet? To answer that question, the Sukhoi Corporation has added thrust vectoring nozzles to enable the aircraft to move in ways that seem magical to even the grey haired veterans of the air. Two maneuvers are inevitably mentioned in every discussion of the Su 30 – Pugachev’s Cobra and the Tailslide. Both these maneuvers are the result of fusion of thrust vectoring, aerodynamic configuration and digital fly-by-wire technologies.

The Pugachev’s Cobra is a clincher in a dog fight. In this maneuver, the Sukhoi flying at a very high speed while being chased by another fighter suddenly loses all of its speed while raising its body in a vertical position. The enemy aircraft, unable to lose speed as rapidly, overshoots the Sukhoi and subsequently becomes vulnerable to attack. This move is named after Soviet test pilot Viktor Pugachev who first performed this maneuver at an airshow in France.

The Pugachev's Cobra



The tailslide also serves a purpose similar to that of the Cobra maneuver but in a more challenging and obviously a visually pleasing way. The aircraft starts to ascend vertically until it comes to a standstill. At this point the nose starts to dip till it points downwards and then just as the jets starts to move the nose is pulled back to point in the horizontal plane again. I’m just beginning to wonder the kind of g-forces the pilot must be savouring!

The aerobatics are used to tackle hostile aircraft over domestic airspace and in attack missions over foreign airspace as well. Even if the enemy airspace is far from base, the fuselage affords enough space for 5000 kms worth of fuel which is almost equivalent to 4.5 hrs of combat mission time. And if the enemy is even further away, really far away, the Sukhoi 30 is capable of refueling mid-air using its in-flight refueling probe, taking its range up to 8000 kms. You can run, but you can’t hide!

So if the Su 30 is all about air to air combat, why call it a multi-role jet? That is because not only is it a superiority fighter against other aircraft but also because it is equally adept at taking out ground and sea based targets. Apart from air-to-air missiles it is engineered to carry anti-ship missiles, anti-radar missiles, cruise missiles, rocket pods, guns and laser guided and other bombs. The Su 30 MKI version developed for the Indian Air Force is capable of delivering the nuclear capable Brahmos missile.

Whether the Su 30’s mission is to destroy air based or ground based targets, the principal electronic component which gives the jet its pin point accuracy is the NIIP N011M Bars PESA (Passive Electronically Scanned Array) Radar. Among its many startling functionalities are its abilities to engage in air-to-air and air-to-land or air-to-sea mode simultaneously, to track 15 targets simultaneously while locking on to 4. The targets can even be fast moving objects like a cruise missile! The radar transmits all the information to the cockpit which is home to multiple LCD screens and some target related information is directly transmitted to the helmet mounted display of the skilled Su 30 pilots.

When I first saw the Sukhoi fly over my school ground I was simply awestruck by its speed and sound. And now after having read about its prowess I dream to be in its cockpit someday and be able to perform a simple sommersault, if not a Cobra.