Plane elements in Tactical Surface Fighters; Su-37 Terminator

The Flanker series of Sukhoi fighters have always been competent fighters. In Muv-Luv Alternative’s BETAverse, the base Su-37 most likely exists somewhere, but is never seen anywhere, not even on the TSF tech trees. As such, this comparison will be a bit weird in that I am using a base version of Su-37 to Su-37m2. This is the single seat variant that Fikatsia “Mama Bear” Latrova and 221 Batal’on Zhar used in Total Eclipse. The TSF Su-37’s don’t have outside differences par painting scheme, so either could’ve been used. If this bothers you, too bad.

A modified version of Su-27 with canards first flew in 1985 and was the prototype from which the Su-35 would be based on. The first true Su-35, called Su-27M at the time, flew in June 1988. It was a single seat fighter with moving canards, improved engines, digital fly-by-wire system that had quadruple redundancy to prevent mishaps. The prototype was made to be an aggressive fighter with great control. Because of the redundancy systems, Su-37M could fight and take hits without losing control. Probably. The Su-35 was a beast on paper, but Su-37 would improve the fighter further.

Su-37  was an experimental fighter with many names. NATO calls it Flanker-F, Sukhoi themselves calls it the Terminator. A loved child has many names. For a multi-role fighter first flown in 1996, the Su-37 was super maneuverable and able to utilise two dimensional thrust vectoring with its moving nozzles. All things considered, it had  great weight-to-thrust ratio with its Lyulka AL-37FU engines providing 12 500kg thrust to a fighter weighting 17 000kg empty. 2500km/h is nothing to scoff at either, especially for its time. With fly-by-wire, the Su-37 could do very impressive vertical acrobatics that impressed attendants at airshows in 1996 and 1997.

For its armaments, the Su-37 had one 30mm cannon and 14 hardpoints to carry a range of missiles and bombs up to 6000kg. The maximum take-off weight for the fighter was 34 000kg. Later Lyulka-Saturn developed AL-31Fp thrust control engines that were able to move in both horizontally and vertically. Some Su-37 were installed with these for tests and were named Super Flankers, but the engine is more associated with Su-30 Multi-Role Flanker. In December 2002, a Su-37 crashed during a ferry flight, ending the program. The plane series never entered production, and it seems Russian air forces are emphasizing Sukhoi PAK FA as a sort of response to US’ F-22A and F-35 Lighting II.

In Muv-Luv Alternative Su-37 saw larger production and was one of the main stepping stone towards Soviet Union’s 3rd Generation TSFs, namely the Su-47 Berkut.

Had to use these models, never found a good coloured back image

The Terminator, as its known here, is a single-seat front line TSF. It has a brother version in Su-37UB, which was used by the Scarlet Twins Inia Sestina and Cryska Barchenowa. Anyway, the Terminator was a 2.5th generation TSF with an emphasize on Close-Combat. Sure, it carrier the usual A-97 Assault Gun, but much like its little brother, the Terminator carries Arm Blade Motors ie. Chainsaws in its arms and basically has enough Spike and Blade Vanes to give a modeller bleeding hands. It lacks proper knives to do the Knife Dance, sadly.

One thing that needs to be separately mentioned is that both Su-37 and Su-47 are very similar to each other. There are clear differences for sure, but designers at âge clearly intend to reflect the fact that Su-47 used the same tandem-tripple layout with canards and tailplanes that Su-37 would use. This leads to other interesting things like the Jump Units having two tailpods instead of one found on the real plane. Furthermore, the torsos between the two are extremely similar if not identical, which harkens back to the fact that Su-47 was originally knows as Su-37. Russians have a tendency to re-use definitions with their fighters, which honestly has caused me more than a little headache when it comes to writing this entry. While Su-47 came first in the real world, it’s very clear that Su-37 came first in BETAverse. The Terminator also is a bit poor example of fighter elements in TSFs.

One interesting thing with the Terminator is that its skirt armour has forwards pointing thrusters, which most likely adds to its maneuverability. While the Terminator was not all that impressive in Total Eclipse VN or the television series, it’s safe to say that for its time it reflects the real world counterpart in how agile beast it is. The differences between 3rd and 2.5th generation TSFs is not all that big, so it would be safe to say that the Terminator could give early 3rd gen TSFs run for their money. That is, if the US surface pilots aren’t dicks and stay in stealth mode, shooting from miles away.

I also need to revise these charts at one point from ground up.