One pilot has three fighters at his disposal, which is indeed rare in the conditions of modern warfare.

As for pilots and fighters, unlike the simple and cheap fighters of a few decades ago, the production cost and man-hour consumption of modern fighters have increased rapidly, and the output can no longer reach the level of tens of thousands of predecessors such as the Me-109 and MiG-21; In contrast, although pilot training is difficult and the number is equally limited, in general, a fighter pilot is assigned to one aircraft.

This is true in peacetime, but what about in times of war?

In the face of a large-scale all-out war, under the condition that the belligerents have entered the wartime system and expanded their weapons production capacity on a large scale, the output of fighter aircraft will naturally increase greatly, but the corresponding combat losses will also be more terrible, and under normal circumstances, there will not be too many fighter stocks in war.

And on the other hand, as long as the logistics can keep up, a fighter plane can make two or three sorties a day, but the pilots will be very tired when they go out once or twice a day, so sometimes several pilots share the same plane.

Of course, the so-called sortie capabilities of pilots do not apply at all to Viktor Rezenov himself.

I don't know if it's because of the top technology, or because of the abundant physical fitness, as long as the air situation and the enemy situation allow, this guy can't wait to fight in the sky all day long; However, fighter planes must replenish fuel, compressed gas, and other consumption once they take off into the air for combat, and they also have to do some necessary maintenance and ammunition mounting, and at this time they often become pilots and other aircraft, which is naturally very unfavorable to fully exerting the combat effectiveness of the "Caucasian Reaper."

In order to avoid such a situation, the 237 fighter aviation regiment has long been assigned to him two Su-27S. Now the total number has been increased to three all at once.

Stayed in the hangar for a while. And the commander of the regiment Samsonov confirmed the issue of the distribution of fighters. Long Yun reluctantly said goodbye to the Red Seventeen Su-27S, knowing that tomorrow the fighter would be towed to other hangars to make room for the upcoming new Su-27M.

After some communication with the regiment commander, it was confirmed that the new fighter would arrive in a few days, but at the moment he still only had one white No. 20 Su-27S in his hands that could be used, Long Yun remembered the modification plan he had just proposed to Kirilenko - he originally wanted to modify the landline as much as possible in order to take off to find an opportunity to fight with the "shark", but now there is only one fighter available in his hand, and he is worried about dismantling the radar, EOS and fire control system of the white No. 20 at once. will make him inactive in the next large-scale air battles.

However, thinking about it from another angle, since the "anti-radiation operation" is already on the line, and he does not plan to implement a traditional air combat from BVR to combat at the moment, Long Yun still patted the engineer on the shoulder:

"Let's go! Igor, let's go and study the plan. ”

made up his mind to modify the landline, although it was already late at night, Long Yun, who did not want to delay the launch of the battle for a moment, still did not rest, but came to the maintenance workshop with Igor Kirilenko, who was used to staying up late, and seriously discussed the equipment disassembly of the fighter against a simple Su-27 fighter user manual and a small number of maintenance technical materials.

A plan was proposed to Long Yun to "disassemble radar and other electronic equipment". Without much understanding of the realities of air warfare, Kirilenko did not question how he would control the fire in this way. Rather, it asks the other side of the question:

"Victor, if you want to pursue the lightweight of the fighter to improve the thrust-to-weight ratio and maneuverability, isn't this idea very similar to the previous 'P-42'? However, I probably know a little bit about the situation of that plane, and it is really a huge amount of work to change, and we can't do that kind of process at our current level. ”

"Oh! That's for sure, huh. ”

Hearing Kirilenko mention "P-42" again, Long Yun thought that his request was not so exaggerated, and he smiled and waved his hand to the engineer in front of him.

When it comes to the "P-42", it may not be as well-known as many models of the Su-27 family, but in fact it is a special edition Su-27 single-seat model that has been specially modified to compete for aviation flight records. Although it is a member of the Su-27 huge family, in order to achieve the goal of greatly reducing weight and improving the thrust-to-weight ratio, the aircraft has done everything, not only removing almost all the electronic equipment, replacing the aluminum alloy nose cone shell, but also making certain modifications to the appearance, including cutting the lower hanging tail, canceling the pelvic fin and tail vertebrae, changing the main wing tips to streamlined, and then scraping all the paint, even most of the pneumatic control rudder surface was directly locked, and a series of related control mechanisms were removed.

After such a toss, compared with the Su-27S, which is overweight and has an average thrust-to-weight ratio, the empty weight of the "P-42" has suddenly been reduced to an incredible 13 tons, which is almost four tons lighter than the 16.8 tons of the Su-27S, and with two improved AL-31F, that is, R-32 engines that sacrifice life in exchange for thrust improvement, the thrust-to-weight ratio is almost close to the rare 2.0 in the aircraft, so the performance is also very exaggerated, and since 1986, it has successively been exported from the "Striped Eagle" of the United States Hands recaptured most of the aviation flight records.

Of course, Long Yun longed for such an exaggerated weight loss behavior of the "P-42", but he knew very well that this method was neither feasible nor feasible for him to apply.

Leaving aside other measures for the time being, it is unacceptable to scrape off all the fuselage paint alone -- if the fighter removes the paint, it will be left with a yellowed aluminum skin oxide layer, which looks really bright and eye-catching, and if you go to the battlefield to fight an air battle with such a "naked run" appearance, isn't it because you are afraid that the enemy will not be able to see your position clearly?

Therefore, Long Yun's current plan is much more conservative than the "P-42" of the year, according to his idea, he can remove the electronic equipment, ventral fins and wingtip missile slides, reduce the empty weight of the Su-27S to more than 15 tons, and then carry out combat patrols with less fuel and more reliance on air refueling.

All in all, in the face of the "shark", it is enough to maintain a thrust-to-weight ratio of about 1.3!

Deciding on such a course of action, Long Yun also looked through some technical materials in front of the workbench, in fact, he had seen these materials more than once in the real world before, and now it is just to verify and confirm and ensure that the basic structure of the Su-27 in the parallel world is the same as the real world, so his plan has more guarantees.

However, unlike Long Yun, who was confident, hearing his plan, he intuitively felt that this matter was very risky, but Kirilenko asked with a suspicious face:

"I said, Victor, I know the weight loss plan for the 'P-42', but can we really copy it like this?

After all, you have to think clearly, that perverted model is just used to set a lot of climbing records, and the onboard equipment is so dismantled that not only can it not be used to perform combat missions at all, but it can't even fly out of many basic actions.

And, well...... Although I am quite an amateur in this area, but if you disassemble and make changes to the appearance, do you have to rewrite all the flight control code, or at least make some key changes? We can't do this here, if we invite a few experts from the Sukhoi Bureau from Moscow, it's pretty much the same, but you have to fly a fighter plane into the air right away, and you won't be able to catch up with it all of a sudden? ”

"Ah—yes, that's the problem."

Although he knew the series of changes to be made, after hearing Kirilenko's words, Long Yun nodded in agreement.

For a fighter with a stereotyped design, disassembling the onboard equipment and changing the aerodynamic shape is not a joke at all, and it is not the same thing as a car modification family making a fuss about the car.

First of all, in order to reduce the empty weight of the Su-27S, dismantling a complete set of electronic equipment designed around the N001 radar can reduce the weight by about a ton, and this is not counting the weight reduction benefits of replacing the radome with an aluminum alloy head cone, which seems to be a very cost-effective deal. But the problem now is that the removal of the nose equipment weighing up to one ton will greatly change the position of the center of gravity of the entire aircraft, and then there will be two additional effects - on the good side, the flight envelope of the Su-27S can be extended on a certain distance, and the overload ceiling will be slightly increased at certain altitudes and speeds; On the downside, it is the static dìng that allows the fighter to enter a deeper range, and the difficulty of maneuvering will increase exponentially.

And in addition, Long Yun also plans to make some changes to the aerodynamic shape of the Su-27S, such as removing the two pelvic fins at the rear of the fuselage, and removing the antenna structure at the top of the vertical tail. In this way, coupled with the change of center of gravity caused by the disassembly of the equipment, the course stability of the Su-27S will be further deteriorated, to put it bluntly, it cannot fly too fast, otherwise the aircraft will "hit horizontally" and it is easy to cause flight accidents.

Finally, out of consideration in terms of empty weight, Long Yun also does not plan to keep the wingtip missile launch slide on the fighter, which will make the Su-27's already "soft" wing more prone to tremors, which will also limit the flight range of the fighter.

All in all, the so-called "there is no free lunch in the world", in order to greatly reduce the weight without changing the overall structure of the aircraft, these measures can only be a temporary emergency measure.

However, Long Yun is not too worried about the problems that may arise in this process, he has already verified it in the real world with simulation software that is beyond this era, and he is basically familiar with how to control a Su-27 with a backward center of gravity and a strange temper.

With these conditions as a backing, Long Yun confidently answered what Kirilenko said about "rewriting the flight control code":

"Igor, you have a point.

Some of the changes we plan to implement will have a significant impact on the aircraft's flight qualities and handling characteristics; According to the general way of processing, it is definitely necessary to rewrite all the flight control code. But you see, now that the war situation in the Caucasus is tight, is it too slow to wait for the people of the Sukhoi Bureau to clarify our modification intentions, and then give specific modification suggestions, and after the modification is completed, test flights again and again, and complete the project acceptance? (To be continued......)