Chad Irby wrote:

In article ,
(Smartace11) wrote:

The Soviets/Russians have always made disposable fighter engines from what I
know. Run'em hot, burn'em up, then salvage/overhaul them. Eliminates most of
the logistics tail

...up until week two or three, when you're out of engines, and your
depots are all smoking ruins...

The Soviet idea was that combat a/c in a major war weren't going to last that long
in any case, so the engines had to have enough remaining TBO in them (on average,
50% of their total TBO) when the ballon went up, enough to to last until they were
lost. Replace the whole jet with reserve a/c. In peacetime, it made more sense for
them, given their economy and infrastructure, to concentrate the highly-skilled
techs at the factories rather than disperse them out to the units.

Sukhoi, MiG and others have been pushing the engine companies to to improve the
engine TBOs, so that western and western-oriented airforces will be more willing to
buy them. Many of the joint venture commercial transports have been offered with
western engines, for the same reason. They've still got a ways to go, as ISTR the
F100 has a TBO of 4,000 hours now, and IIRC the most modern engines are intended to
have only on-condition maintenance between overhauls, but I'll leave it to others
with more knowledge and experience to confirm or deny that.

Guy