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Mi-28 crashed in Russia, with casualties:
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/12/ ... ash-a68577

The story is hotly debated on Russian aviation forums, as something is fishy with the situation. Briefly:
1) the crew reported difficulties landing at their home airfield, due to poor visibility, and landed on an unprepared patch (apparently in a field) 12 km from their airfield
2) a more senior crew, along with some other personnel, arrived at the landing site by car
3) more senior crew took over the helicopter, took off and soon disappeared from radars
4) wreckage was found

Hypotheses and versions are flying wide and high.

Needless hurry + bad weather = bad outcome?

AirlineCritic wrote:

Needless hurry + bad weather = bad outcome?

Quite possible.
But the only bad weather reported that day was fog. By the way, that particular area is reportedly fog-prone.

What I find fascinating -- this is presumably a brand-new helicopter, fresh from the factory. It's an attack helicopter, crammed with expensive vision and targeting stuff, electronics galore, all that.
The original crew (two people) had a major as pilot in command. They were returning to home base, also crammed with electronics, radars, all that.
A major is a lot of officer in those parts. In Soviet Army, plenty of officers retired as major after 25 years of service.

Here, a major in a (presumably) state-of-the art helicopter cannot land at his (presumably) well-equipped base, because... visibility is poor?

If they cannot fly in fog in fog-prone areas, then probably they are not very useful for defense. (Not that it's a requirement, as Russia practices only aggression as a way of defense in last decades. And an aggressor can chose the time and weather for invasion.)

Let's not make this political. Whoever the crew is, were following orders during their service in the military. The problem with fog is not that the helicopter doesn't have electronics to get back to base. From what I understand, it's the terrain obstacles. Imagine flying low and not knowing where exactly you will run into a tree or power lines. Yes, the electronics guide you back to the base, but then landing it requires some minimal visibility to not run into stuff.

sovietjet wrote:

Let's not make this political. Whoever the crew is, were following orders during their service in the military. The problem with fog is not that the helicopter doesn't have electronics to get back to base. From what I understand, it's the terrain obstacles. Imagine flying low and not knowing where exactly you will run into a tree or power lines. Yes, the electronics guide you back to the base, but then landing it requires some minimal visibility to not run into stuff.

Somebody killed my answer. Probably Kremlin brigade didn't like it.
anyway, the question remains -- how is it that a Mil Mi-28N Night Hunter is unable to fly and land at home base in the dark? Night vision equipment, radars, ILS -- nothing beats poor visibility anymore?

And another today, TU-22M engine failure/fire resulting in an “emergency landing” in a field. https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/231504

Phosphorus wrote:

sovietjet wrote:

Let's not make this political. Whoever the crew is, were following orders during their service in the military. The problem with fog is not that the helicopter doesn't have electronics to get back to base. From what I understand, it's the terrain obstacles. Imagine flying low and not knowing where exactly you will run into a tree or power lines. Yes, the electronics guide you back to the base, but then landing it requires some minimal visibility to not run into stuff.

Somebody killed my answer. Probably Kremlin brigade didn't like it.
anyway, the question remains -- how is it that a Mil Mi-28N Night Hunter is unable to fly and land at home base in the dark? Night vision equipment, radars, ILS -- nothing beats poor visibility anymore?

I had written an answer to you and there was a link to a document about the abilities and limits of imaging infrared in fog. No idea why it was deleted. ??

Phosphorus wrote:

sovietjet wrote:

Let's not make this political. Whoever the crew is, were following orders during their service in the military. The problem with fog is not that the helicopter doesn't have electronics to get back to base. From what I understand, it's the terrain obstacles. Imagine flying low and not knowing where exactly you will run into a tree or power lines. Yes, the electronics guide you back to the base, but then landing it requires some minimal visibility to not run into stuff.

Somebody killed my answer. Probably Kremlin brigade didn't like it.
anyway, the question remains -- how is it that a Mil Mi-28N Night Hunter is unable to fly and land at home base in the dark? Night vision equipment, radars, ILS -- nothing beats poor visibility anymore?

I think the problem was fog, not darkness. Also the crashed helicopter was a training version, Mi-28UB and not a Mi-28N.

Phosphorus wrote:

What I find fascinating -- this is presumably a brand-new helicopter, fresh from the factory. It's an attack helicopter, crammed with expensive vision and targeting stuff, electronics galore, all that.
The original crew (two people) had a major as pilot in command. They were returning to home base, also crammed with electronics, radars, all that.
A major is a lot of officer in those parts. In Soviet Army, plenty of officers retired as major after 25 years of service.

Here, a major in a (presumably) state-of-the art helicopter cannot land at his (presumably) well-equipped base, because... visibility is poor?

Much more experienced pilots have put much more capable aircraft into the ground during much better conditions. Flying is a dangerous business... I'm sure the fog didn't help but who says it wasn't a CRM (or lack of it) issue? Experience can be detrimental if you let complacency take over.

But we need more information before saying what happened. Jumping to conclusions, like it is implied is going on in the Russian forums, is how conspiracy theories form.

The crash could be something very simple and not at all nefarious

Unfortunately a SU-57 has gone done near the Manufacturer's Base at Komsolmolsk-na-Amure in Eastern Russia. Thankfully the Pilot ejected safely.

Certainly a setback for the program but far from unprecedented when a new Fighter is being developed.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/ne ... 952151.cms

So they lost half their operational fleet

Love the article wording that "there was no damage on the ground"... not sure how a pilotless aircraft other than a drone can accomplish this.. but then again it may just be American English vs. British English.

Su-57, manufacturer-owned, down in Russia. No casualties.

kanban wrote:

Love the article wording that "there was no damage on the ground"... not sure how a pilotless aircraft other than a drone can accomplish this.. but then again it may just be American English vs. British English.

Because it probably came down in an open field or similar area, and didn't hit any structures on the ground. Yes, there was probably some "damage" to the field it crashed in, but that's not usually reported as damage on the ground.

something like the Cornfield Bomber?

Phosphorus wrote:

Su-57, manufacturer-owned, down in Russia. No casualties.

This article has a good top view pic of the SU-57,

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/ ... est-flight

I would be interested to know if the aircraft that crashed had the new engine installed.

This certainly is good news. Kind of odd though that China hasn't had one go down. I guess the benefits of stealing data means you wont make the same mistakes.

426Shadow wrote:

This certainly is good news. Kind of odd though that China hasn't had one go down. I guess the benefits of stealing data means you wont make the same mistakes.

What do you mean? China hasn't had any Su-57 delivered, so in that sense, you are absolutely right, they haven't had any Su-57 crashes to date. And perhaps good to mention that New Zealand also hasn't had any Su-57 crashes.

426Shadow wrote:

This certainly is good news. Kind of odd though that China hasn't had one go down. I guess the benefits of stealing data means you wont make the same mistakes.

What makes you think it would actually be disclosed if they did have one of their new aircraft go down ? Unless it happened at an air show, what hasn't been seen by the international media hasn't happened.

Actually surprised that the Russians made this accident public.

Dutchy wrote:

426Shadow wrote:

This certainly is good news. Kind of odd though that China hasn't had one go down. I guess the benefits of stealing data means you wont make the same mistakes.

What do you mean? China hasn't had any Su-57 delivered, so in that sense, you are absolutely right, they haven't had any Su-57 crashes to date. And perhaps good to mention that New Zealand also hasn't had any Su-57 crashes.

Referring to the J-21 and J-31

This thread got filled with the usual pathetic useless super stupids pretty predictably quick.

yes, I suggest it to be locked, because it went off-topic.

I know that it is only one data point but this points a very bad picture of Russian build quality.

I personally think the SU-57 is no threat at all and is much lower quality. It would be no better than the YF-22 demonstrator that flew 29 years ago. Avionics would be on par with what the west had 15 years ago e.g first gen Rafale, Eurofighter, Superhornet. I wouldn't call placing radar contacts on a GPS moving map sensor fusion. The huge diameter of the radar fitted to Russian fighters is a typical way they get acceptable performance from a lower tech solution.

The pilot ejecting rules out high G blackout or oxygen issues.

Not to defend the SU-57 or modern day Russian aerospace engineering in general, but top of the line Western planes crash too. I don't think, this alone, is much of a useful data point

Glad the pilot made it out

DeltaMD90 wrote:

Not to defend the SU-57 or modern day Russian aerospace engineering in general, but top of the line Western planes crash too. I don't think, this alone, is much of a useful data point

Glad the pilot made it out

Such as?

The Eurofighter and Rafale had clocked up over 200,000 flight hours before the first crash and we had two mid air collisions and an airshow routine. Nothing maintenance or design flaw related.

The YF-22 crash landing during testing was software related and 29 years ago making a mistake with software would be an acceptable excuse.

The F-35 engine blowing up on the ground hardly counts. The SU-57 has had similar incidents.

I doubt the SU-57 has clocked up over 2000 flight hours. It could fly another 100,000 hours without a crash and end up matching the rate of a western aircraft but it is highly doubtful.

There have been 2 F-35 crashes, Japanese one was due to pilot spatial disorientation. 450 produced. Quite acceptable.

As there are only a dozen SU-57, this brings up reliability questions.

The S-400 seems state of the art, so the SU-57 might have a lot of capability. The production numbers will limit its impact.

RJMAZ wrote:

JayinKitsap wrote:

And why did the SU-57 crash? Was it due to the aircraft itself or another factor similar to the other crashes you mention?

For the record, I will NOT at all be surprised if it was due to inferior design or engineering, not in the least. But I don't think we can say much with certainty

Interesting way of combining those events in a single thread. Maybe we can start a similar one to combine those for other air forces too.

"US Military Crashes Discussion Thread - Part 1"

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/21/poli ... index.html

https://www.af.mil/News/Tag/67/crash/

https://www.airforcemag.com/f-16-damage ... san-crash/

Seems very efficient.

JayinKitsap wrote:

Phosphorus wrote:

Su-57, manufacturer-owned, down in Russia. No casualties.

This article has a good top view pic of the SU-57,

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/ ... est-flight

Any further word on what caused it to go down?

I guess with it being a very new plane type these things can happen.