Russia has issued a statement claiming their new MiG-41 will be able to reach space and even potentially operate without a pilot, according to the CEO of the MiG corporation working on the project. The new fighter will, the company say, be a spiritual successor of MiG-31, MiG Corporation CEO Ilya Tarasenko stated, shedding some light on the interceptor under development.
“The development is at the stage of finalizing the image of the plane. It will be a gradual transition from MiG-31 to PAK DA” Tarasenko said in an interview on Russian TV.
The jet, he said, will not be just a modernisation of MiG-31, it will be an entirely new machine, having “the ability to operate in space, new weapons, new speeds, new operational range” Tarasenko told Zvezda TV channel on Tuesday. “It will be an entirely new plane, where entirely new technologies to operate in the Arctic zone will be utilised. This plane will safeguard the whole border of our homeland. Later, the project will become unmanned.” Not much information is available apart from the statement that such an aircraft is planned for development, no official data is available as to the planes capabilities. It is speculated that it will not enter service until at least mid-2020s. As an interceptor, its primary mission is rumoured to offset future reconnaissance aircraft currently being developed by the United States of America and China. To achieve the high speeds rumoured for the aircraft, the aircraft would need to be equipped with ramjet engines.
“We’re shaping our technical offer, so that the customer would make a decision on the need to develop the plane. … According to our internal estimates, we should make it to the serial development in 2025,” Tarasenko told RT.
To meet expectations, the new plane should be able to fly at speeds at least four times faster than the speed of sound, Russian media earlier reported, citing renowned test pilot Anatoly Kvochur. If the plane would be able to reach such speeds, it would be likely packed, to some degree, with artificial intelligence control systems, to help human pilots to cope with the extreme flight conditions, aviation expert Fabrizio Poli said.
“It will have certain elements of artificial intelligence built into the jet, because, obviously, flying at those speeds, the human brain is not capable of thinking that fast,” Poli told RT. “There are a lot of new technologies going to be put into this aircraft, for sure.”
The plane might be also equipped with laser weapons, as Russia possesses prototypes of such arms, according to Vladimir Mikheev, an aide to the Radio-Electronic Technologies Concern Deputy CEO, who believes, however, that such systems will belong to the sixth-generation fighters.
“The laser weapons will allow this interceptor aircraft to intercept enemy missiles and disengage the targets,” Poli said.