Russia’s PAK DA New Bomber, Reveals Details of a Flying Wing Design, Official Models or an Artwork.?

 

Russia’s long-in-development Tupolev PAK DA bomber. Work on the long-range subsonic bomber, ultimately planned to replace the Tupolev Tu-95MS and Tu-160 Blackjack, has been ongoing since at least 2007, so far, there have been no confirmed official models or artworks? Indicating how it might actually look, although it has been widely believe it should be flying wing design.

The PAK DA, or Perspektivnyi Aviatsionnyi Kompleks Dalney Aviatsii, which translates as Future Air Complex of Long-Range Aviation. Tupolev selected and awarded a three-year contract for conceptual design work in 2009. In early 2013 the Russian Ministry of Defense approved Tupolev’s PAK DA proposal and a contract was awarded to Tupolev at the end of the same year for preliminary technical design work.

By 2014, Russian Air Force officials were confidently predicting the first flight of a prototype PAK DA in 2019, and initial service entry in 2023, but since then the program has moved in fits and starts. However, by late 2017, work had resumed on the PAK DA, with Tupolev receiving another ministry of defense contract, covering research and development, including completing and evaluating an undisclosed number of test aircraft, then a PAK DA prototype could take to the air in 2024 or 2025. 

The drawings in question originate from a patent that was granted to Tupolev earlier this year and which concerns details of an aircraft engine intake. The intake is shown from the front, top, and side. The flying-wing design illustrated very loosely similar to the U.S. Air Force’s B-2 Spirit, with the same sharp ‘beak,’ forward-set cockpit, and with engine intakes on the upper surfaces of the wing.

Based on this drawing, however, there appear to be some major differences with the B-2, at least at this stage. Where the Spirit is essentially a 35-degree angle flying wing fuselage with a ‘serrated’ trailing edge, this apparent PAK DA design depicts an aircraft with a similarly angled nose but with a pronounced cranked wing. Compared to the B-2.

Russian aviation expert Piotr Butowski, in a recent article for Aviation Week, claims that the final aircraft will likely have a constant leading-edge angle, like that of the B-2 and likely also the B-21 Raider. The PAK DA was always expected to be a twin-engine design, based on the available artwork, the engine exhausts simply exit the trailing edge, with no sign of a more exotic platypus or shelf-type exhaust design. This would suggest, in this form at least, that the design is not anywhere as stealthy as the B-2, the intake and exhaust designs are some of the hardest to master in terms of low observability.

Surprisingly, the PAK DA, quite a lot of information has already been released about the bomber’s supposed characteristics. As long ago as 2014, Russian Air Force officials confirmed it would be a subsonic flying wing able to fly a distance of 15,000 kilometers — around 9,300 miles — without refueling. Other, slightly less reliable sources have disclosed a planned takeoff weight of 160 tons and a weapons load of 33 tons. Weapons are expected to include new-generation standoff missiles carried on a pair of rotary launchers in internal weapons bays. The PAK DA’s engines are expected to be derived from the NK-32-02 used in the Tu-160M. 

Whatever the relationship between the aircraft design in the patent and the finalized PAK DA configuration, this appears to be the latest turn in the saga of the enigmatic aircraft, designed to replace Russia’s current manned bomber fleet.