Eminent pragmatists, Soviet & Russian armaments developers design with a holistic battle context in mind. Marked by the trauma of the most intensive combined-arms mechanised conflict in history, their fighter aircraft creations are assessed first and foremost on their realistic ability to contribute in the hideously complex contexts of such contests. They are not expected to go up in isolated cinematic duels against industry rival platforms, nor are they assessed on their competitiveness on the basis of isolated performance characteristics. Though they may compete secondarily on international arms markets, and may indeed find themselves in duels in real-life combat, fighter aircraft are expected to perform critical assigned tasks in prospective armed conflicts. We begin by assessing various scenarios for these contests, operating contexts.
Typified by the present-conflict in Syria. This scenario demands a great deal in terms of target-acquisition, platform-data fusion, intelligence collation for real-time prioritisation and designation of targtets. It demands relatively little in terms of defensive considerations on the airbase, and the operating aircraft mostly needs to defend against man-portable SAMs. The airbase is not expected to come under significant attack threats, though infiltration/sabotage/suicide attacks will demand great efforts from perimeter security provider infantry units. There is not much of interest here, as the demands of this type of conflict does not push the envelope of tactical aircraft design. Indeed, if this were the only tier of conflict scenario in a plausible future, no 4++ or 5th generation fighter aircraft would be built for the RuAF, Su-25s, augmented perhaps by Su-24s, outfitted with modern precision weapons plus compatible avionics, would more than suffice.
Aircraft like the MiG-35, MiG-29, Su-27, Su-34, & Su-57, and western analogues, only exist because of the plausible contingency of a Tier-1 scenario, a high-intensity, peer-level, combined-arms conflict potentially escalating into a general theatre nuclear exchange. Professional war planners are not at liberty to assume that the contest becomes moot in the event of tactical nuclear exchange; they must consider as very likely under such a scenario that the stakes are jackpot, and design accordingly. The fact that F-35s may be used to bomb Hezbolla militias shouldn't tempt one to the fallacy that this was the adversary that guided its design. It's used because it's the tool available, it's the tool available because war planners are obliged to design for the most technically challenging significant plausible threat, which is this Tier-1 contest under consideration, understanding that the less challenging scenario requirements are generally covered by overkill dynamic, and addressing these requirements as secondary design considerations guarantees fulfillment.
How to characterise Tier-1 scenario field of possibility is a good scope for a professional level book. Here we abbreviate:
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In this epoch, offensive strike prevails over defensive countermeasures. 1.
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All assets, at all echelons, in all theatres, are held at risk of strike, from precision conventional or tailored nuclear strike.
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Expect losses and gains to be cataclysmic, expect armaments attrition evaporate missile stocks in hours or days under conditions of high-intensity missile duels across the front.
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Tier-1 scenarios are intrinsically global conflicts. In principle, there is no rear area, although prior to full escalation there may be some mutual restraint in hitting homeland targets. Airbases will be priority targets, and also defensive priorities. In practice, the further to the rear, that is to say, in areas covered by greater concentration of defensive missile assets, critical assets are more survivable. The so-called frontal aviation bases, e.g. helicopter bases close to the front, marshalling areas, probably much less so, in spite of concentration of defensive assets at the front, because beyond the front are only enemy platforms, whereas in the rear is an area covered on all sides for significant distance by friendly defensive platforms.
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Therefore commanders should plan for scenarios that entail losing high percentages of combat platforms/assets, and still be able to prevail, for two reasons. (1) Adversary formations are likewise subject to high percentage losses rate, and (2) surviving platforms are highly lethal.
To emphasise and make the second point concrete, consider the following scenario: an Apache Longbow cavalry squadron operating in an sector facing adversary mechanised/armored unit at brigade strength attempting breakthrough over significantly degraded friendly defensive infantry positions. In our scenario the sqaudron initial strength is 16 helos, but adversary's advance strikes have eliminated 13 helos leaving only 3 surviving. Catastrophic losses in classical terms, but in modern terms we must consider that each of the 3 surviving Apaches may carry per-sortie 16 tank-killing Hellfire missiles, each capable of killing any modern tank 2.. Upshot: per joint-sortie, this tiny remnant of surviving Apaches is capable of annhilating an armored battalion totally, and within 3 sorties is capable of destroying the vehicle assets of a mechanised/armored brigade/regiment. Plan for catastrophic losses whilst planning to prevail. Of course the same principle applies equallybe carried out by drones. Et cetera.
to the adversary, and his units. A single surviving Pantsir platform could destroy those 3 Apaches in a quarter-minute. Amidst the chaos, fog, death, who sees who first, whose sensors survive the electromagnetic onslaughts, and has the disposition to carry out his task will prevail. This is the nature of the Tier-1 scenarios: high lethality, low survivability, fast climax action. And this emphasises why the imperative for commanders to plan to prevail under conditions of extreme attrition is not edge-case coverage, it's the default scenario.
So, where does the MiG-35, a particular industrial technological manifestation of modern man fit into all of this dire muse ?
In the last several weeks, Daesh has been getting slaughtered in the thousands by RuAF airpower. I don't need to review the history to assert that air-superiority conferring uncontested air-strike on ground units has been decisive, and has only gotten more decisive with the optimisation of sensors, data-links, and precision munitions.
Tier-1 conflicts in the context of the aerial contest are typified by:
- A prioritised duel of jockeying for air-superiority, with potentially no decisive winner. If there is a decisive winner, that one will prevail in the general conflict, given their ability to rain precision death upon opposing ground formations. Just as likely however, is the scenario in which there will be no clear winner in the contest for air-superiority, but there will be localised ebbs and flows of relative air-superiority in a given sector at a given time, whilst both sides suffer greatly from rear-echelon strikes targeting support infrastructure like bases, and indeed, aircraft on the ground.
In general, air-superiority is a means to an end. The end, in this context, is the destruction of enemy units on the ground, transport platforms, and airborne sensor platforms. Strike activities occur at various scales, close frontal strike by helicopters and Su-25s, distant rear-echelon strike by Su-34s, Iskanders, etc. Air-superiority activities also occur at different scales, manifested in the Cold War era USAF "Hi-Lo" concept. While some interpret this to refer to high quality (F-15?) versus low quality (F-16?), (and their interpretation may be correct), I interpret this to mean that the F-15s operated at higher scales on the spectrum from frontline/tactical to theatre/more-strategic levels, generally at longer ran[1]: aeou satuhge, from further behind the lines, at higher altitude, whereas the F-16 was intended to mix it up closer to the front and engage in more of the dirty close in stuff. The Soviet analogue was manifested in the Su-27 and MiG-29 respectively. Certainly the F-15s were initially more expensive than the F-16s, but I'm not sure about quality overall-- moot contention anyhow... The important point is to get a sense of this spectrum of air-operations in the context of high-intensity combined-arms contest, and how the MiG-29 then and now the MiG-35 is conceived to fit into that. While the longer range Su-27 would operate at higher altitude in the high-end, more purely air-superiority contest, whilst also conducting interdiction strike roles, the MiG-29 would operate closer to the front, at generally lower altitudes, conducting air-superiority operations at the finer grain of resolution, at smaller scales, at more particularly defined areas of operation, over particular battlefields, or at least closer to that scale. If we consider roughly a spectrum with attack helos on one end directly supporting particular frontline units, and high-end wide-scale fighters like the F-15/Su-27 at the other end, the F-16/MiG-29 fit right in between the high end and the CAS aircraft like the A-10/Su-25, which themselves operate at a contiguous scale with the attack helos.
How does this affect their designs ? Typical combat scenario for a MiG-29 would feature conditions of heavy interdiction activity by the adversary, and highly fluid fronts. Destroyed airbases under conditions of repair entailed designing an aircraft that could operate in "unimproved" conditions. Survivability under conditions of heavy inderdiction activity drove the Swedish Viggen designs to the ability to operate from rural highways, with minimal support staff. The MiG-29 was designed with similar considerations in mind, ground-use air-intakes resist foreign-object intake under dirty runway conditions; I do not know if the MiG-35 has this feature or not. Under conditions where all known and identified targets can expect to take lethal fire, there is strong incentive to disperse and conceal air assets close to the front. It seems the MiG-29 was designed, like the Viggen, with this in mind; I don't know about the MiG-35, but it seems sensible to do so. Higher end platforms like the F-15/F-22/Su-27/Su-57 have less advantage to gain by design sacrifices for dispersal, concealment, and robustness under unimproved airstrip conditions, yet they too may have such considerations at the forefront of their operational profile.
We are finally in a position to characterise the MiG-35 use-case under Tier-1 conflict conditions. In the end it's pretty simple.
While Su-35/Su-57 mix provides high cover, broad scale air-superiority support overwatch (and along with Su-34 providing deep interdiction/strike), the MiG-35 is expected to mix it up at low altitude, small scale, at the front. It's expected to locate and destroy enemy CAS assets like A-10/AH-64, troop-carrier helos like UH-60/UV-22. It's expected to destroy adversary ground assets close to the front on a priority basis, these could include command posts, critical infrastructure, mobile air-defense assets, etc. In general it would leave the more mundane ground attack tasks to the helos and Su-25s, but on a priority basis it could engage even tanks and APCs.
Under Tier-1 conflict scenario, it is to be expected that the MiG-35 would be operating dispersed and concealed, at improvised bases, possibly from roadways, with highly mobile maintenance crews. Even so, as mentioned above, planning would consider as default scenario that attrition would stand at high percentages, extreme and catastrophic attrition both on the ground and in the air has to be considered the default scenario, and prevailing under such conditions has to be considered as default.
That this can be so is inline with the example scenario above with the 3 surviving Apaches (AH-64) being capable of devouring an entire armored/mechanised brigade in a day's work, under optimistic conditions. Of a squadron of MiG-35s (12-16?), of which only 3 survived, what sort of fulcrum tipping leverage could they provide over a battlefield ?
When I first saw the demonstration MiG-35 videos last year I was struck by the two-seat configuration. Why two seats ? The MiG-29, like the F-16 defaulted to single-seaters, two-seat versions were for training purposes only. Same with the F-15/Su-27, and follow on F-22/Su-35. Why now make the design sacrifice of an additional person in cockpit, a non-negligible expense, especially in light fighter. And why would the expense come even as the automation brough by avionics hits a high pitch.
It's workload of course. At the fine-grain, close-in scale, at max resolution, close to the battle, things get "hairy", there is so much going on, that one person simply can't handle it. I don't think the workload has gotten significantly heavier under potential Tier-1 conflict conditions since the 1980s, so it would seem that Russian aircraft designers have simply changed their assessments on the relative utility of a dedicated weapons-officer versus the equivalent weight in fuel or armaments.
You will notice that all current and prospective attack helos feature two person crews, the F-15E Strike Eagle has a two person crew, as does the analogous Su-34. All current and prospective high-end air-superiority fighters F-15C/F-22, Su-27/Su-35/Su-57 have single person crew. Dedicated fence interceptors like the F-14 and MiG-25/MiG-31 family also are designed with the expectation of extreme workloads, in this case associated with a sky full of bombers and cruise missiles. (The F-35 is a strange bird, and doesn't fit into this discussion easily.) Apparently, designers across the world consider the high-end air-superiority game workload to be clean and simple enough to be handled by a single person. Are they right ? I don't know, but I'm pretty sure they are correct that the close-scale, close-to-front workload is hairy enough to demand two persons. How the single-seater configurations of the Su-25 and A-10 conform to this judgement may have something to do with the high-attrition those platforms are expected to suffer (more than attack helos) and their speed, offering quick escape from the hairball and therefore less necessity to pay full attention to all the hairball's details, in both ground and air terms. I'm speculating, and guess that this is a case of making a tough choice, and coming out on the side of more armor, gun power, etc. It may also be the expected attrition rates -- wanting to lose only one operator per airframe, but I really don't know.
Returning to my surprise at seeing the MiG-35 demonstrator with a tandem cockpit, and clues this offers as to the designers operational concept for the aircraft: under typical use-case which baselined the design imperatives, there will have already been heavy attrition at the front, on all sides. There situation would be unimaginably (to us) chaotic and messy, yet the situation is still in contest, the outcome hanging in the balance. Surviving platforms would likely be operating alone or in ad-hoc formations, under conditions of electromagnetic suppression of sensors and communications. Surviving MiG-35s would be up at the front, first of all trying to just make sense of the wealth of sensor data coming in. Who is dead, who is alive, what is happening, where is it happening. A two person crew could be a critical advantage under conditions of sensor overload. The MiG-35's utility under such conditions would be as much as a recconaisance platform as a weapons platform, relaying crucial data via links (when possible) to surviving friendly units. Without surviving frontal staff C4I structure, the MiG-35 as a surviving node might be considered to have charge as a redundant, autonomous node in a survivable, resilient, self-reconstituting C4I structure. In a similar sense that a single surviving Apache is capable of devouring an entire tank company in one-sortie, a single surviving MiG-35 could potentially be conceived as capable of reconstituting autonomously a comprehensive C4I structure over a given battlespace, as a communications node, as a surveillance node with its AESA radar and EO sensors, as a EW node. If there is no commander to relay this info to, there would still likely be sibling platforms, ground and air, to relay info to, and simply in and of its own strike capabilities, with two operators on board, the MiG-35 would be well positioned to make some snap-prioritisation decisions (perhaps ML enhanced/assisted), and perform such prioritised strikes. Priorities would include localised air-superiority, i.e. downing enemy helos (such as the aforementioned surviving Apaches), SEAD, and even combat tanks / critically positioned infantry.
TL;DR :: Hairball management The MiG-35 is expected to be an autonomous, redundant node in a system that expects to take heavy losses and prevail. Just like its adversaries. "Fulcrum" was an apt appelation, as the word indicates a single point commanding the broad outcome via localised leverage.
War planners must always consider the possibility that they are planning for the wrong war. In times of accelerating technological advances, this danger only increases. Therefore intelligent defense establishments (of which I consider the Russians to be paradigmatic) hedge extensively. Looking at the procurement numbers for the MiG-35, which are not so high, one may speculate that perhaps the platform is judged to be largely moot, obsolete. Perhaps it is so that any conceivable strike mission it could be sent on could more cheaply, reliably be conducted with anything from Iskanders to more close-range analogues. It could be judged that its surveillance, communications facilities could more survivably, reliably be carried out by drones. Et cetera.
It could also be considered that the entire scenario under consideration is simply not plausible, for, as mentioned in the Background discussion above, there is no rear in such a Tier-1 conflict, it is intrinsically a global contest from the getgo, and it simply goes strategic escalatory almost immediately, and all military assets of any importance are likely to be destroyed by Iskander/Tomahawk/Kalibr/Yars/Trident warheads in close order.
They will hedge, and assessments will be continually revised, as the professionals daydream their way through infinite combinations of scenarios.
Notes
Recent events show high-volume procurements of the two-seater Su-30 variants (at least several hundreds iirc (I read this somewhere last week, no idea if accurate)), while procurements of the Mig-35 remain low. Therefore it could seem that indeed modern doctrinal developments favor two-seater aircraft for all but the most dedicated air-superiority roles (Su-35,57); i.e., the above conjecture was apt -- high-intensity conflict workload is expected to be so high that even with first tier avionics, dedicated systems operator is ideal. On the other hand, the efficiency of the larger platform (Su-30 vs Mig-35) is greater, no surprise, and presumably forward operations from unimproved facilities are not significantly degraded by the larger airframe, also no particular surprise.