History of Soviet Cold War Military Aircraft

I was around in the 1980s and I remember the hype around VSTOL fighters like the Harrier and also the caustic negative crap directed at the Yak-38... like suggesting it could not perform a rolling takeoff severely limiting its payload potential.

The fact of the matter is that all VSTOL fighters of the time were terrible, the Sea Harrier had an excellent radar and in the falklands campaign got the best model Sidewinders from HATO stocks, but if Argentina had anything better than a MiG-21 they would have been in serious trouble.

A MiG-23 would have made the invasion impossible... they could operate from rough airstrips on the island and no Vulcan attack would have succeeded in the face of MiG-23s operating as air defence.

Against Harriers I would say the best weapon the MiG could have used would have been the R-23T IR guided missiles which were all aspect and would have been even more effective against the Harrier because of its fuselage side mounted engine nozzles that increased their IR signature from all angles except dead in front.

The MiG-23 is fast enough to leave combat when it wants to against a Harrier and it has excellent flight range.

In comparison the Yak-38 lacks a radar and agility and speed and is a rather ordinary fighter.

The Su-25 is not a great dog fighter either but it is a strike aircraft so that is not such a problem, it is more optimised for speed than it appears.

The Swing wing was complex but was also a good solution to the problem... it added weight to the design, but it was useful weight because it allowed customising life and drag in the entire flight envelope, whereas lift jets are dead weight except landing and taking off, but it is much more than that.

VSTOL aircraft like the harrier had swivelling engine nozzles but they were not 3D nozzles like we see on the MiG-29OVT... they were fixed... so there was high pressure piping of gas from the hot parts of the engine to the wing tips and the nose and the tail for puffer thrusters to help balance the aircraft in the hover and very very low flight speed mode where the airflow over the wings and tails was not sufficient to allow the control surfaces to have any effect.

This makes the VSTOL aircraft heavier and also very vulnerable to damage and with two engine nozzles down each side of the Harrier, or two rear side mounted main engine nozzles and two lift jets in the front the Yak-38 would be easy targets for MANPADS.... even the crappy oldest ones like the SA-7 Grail and the US equivalent Redeye... which normally needed to be fired at the engine end of a target in full AB to get a hit.

A key soluton for VSTOL would be engines with TVC nozzles so they don't need an internal piping system for puffer jets to control the aircraft at low speed, but also engines that balance the thrust front and back but can also be used in forward flight so they are not dead weight.

The problem is that any future VSTOL design will be handicapped with the demand to be supersonic and also 5th generation which is all going to add up to make it rather too difficult to be affordable.

Perhaps with new technology electric jet engines that engines on the wing tips that can rotate... with forward swept wings to move the wingtip engines ahead of the centre of gravity and have the main engines in the conventional place moved a bit forward closer to the centre of gravity too so they balance might create an opportunity to get something that works.

Another fundamental problem with aircraft like the Yak-38 and Yak-141 was that the lift jet engines just behind the cockpit blew hot air with much of the oxygen already burned up and in the form of CO (carbon monoxide) so if that hot air went in the front mounted engine intake for the main engine it would choke because there would not be enough oxygen to burn its fuel to generate heat and thrust and it would suddenly lose power which is the last thing you want when the lift engines are running because you are likely in a hover either landing or taking off so your main engine is keeping you airborne.

Engines way out on your wing tips that are electric so they exhaust is oxygen rich and presumably cold air should not effect the intakes for the main engines... more importantly the wing tip engines can be angled to say 95 or 100 degrees (ie 5-10 degrees forward) in the hover so the rear engine nozzles can be angled 85 to 80 degrees backwards so the hot oxygen depleted air being sucked through those engines will go backwards and away from the belly of your aircraft so you can have belly mounted weapon bays and centreline fuel tanks if you want.

Even more radical.... how about five engines... two side by side at the rear like the MiG-35, but with a serious forward swept wing with electric engines... due to the forward sweep of the wing they could be level with the cockpit, so two engines on the wing tips that can be rotated down or horizontally for forward flight, plus a dorsal fifth engine that does not vector... four engines for takeoff and landing and the fifth pointing forward... perhaps a simple ramjet to boost acceleration speeds....

GarryB wrote:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8jdt-bCf8JpiEMS57ILEjnG-IpW8fhJ6

This is the wings of Russia play list... they are not in order... there are 18 programmes...

BTW I should add that I use Mozila Firefox as my web browser and I have the "Easy Youtube Video Downloader Express", which is free and adds a download button to Youtube pages where you can click on it and choose to download the video.

Means I can download the Wings of Russia videos and watch them any time I like.

I can also download music videos and other videos of interest.

Occasionally Youtube will update their system and it will stop working but the guy who runs the addon usually gets it working again within a few days.

I use the free version but there is a paid version too...

Note: MiG-31 post moved to MiG-31 thread... https://www.russiadefence.net/t1812p875-mig-31bm-interceptor-attack-aircraft-news

Really great story told by an english speaking Russian with all that wonderful Russian sarcasm. When Russia decided to put a BFG on a small ground attack jet.

They paid the ultimate price for their lack of respect for a sovereign country's airspace, giving the EAF the first MiG-21 kill!

The problem of course is that this was in the middle of the cold war and the CIA and US intelligence and western intelligence in general would use businessmen all the time for their nafarious purposes...

The fact that it briefly turned towards a high security area suggests something...

Of course during the cold war there was the official story that it was an error or it was not a spy plane at all... it was a weather balloon... but the number of western aircraft shot down over the soviet union just after WWII and before they got decent anti aircraft systems working is surprising... many of which flew to support nazi opposition to the commies in the Ukraine... the west will help the devil himself if it suits them...

MiG-15.

A reasonable western video on the aircraft.

Yak-28

The F-5 was a low cost fighter based on the T-38 jet fighter training aircraft... not sure what was notorious about it.

It was the plane the US sold you to keep you quiet about not getting F-16s or something like an F-4.

It was the plane they sold if they didn't trust you or they didn't think you needed anything better or in the case of Taiwan, they wanted to arm you but didn't want to antagonise your enemy whom they were also trying to be friendly with to turn them into their bitch against the Soviet Union.

It was a cheap and simple fighter... The F-5 and the A-4 were their cheap simple fighters for poor or weak countries or countries that didn't need anything better.

Mir wrote:
The French on the other hand had fairly good relations with the Soviets and the made several exchange visits where various military hardware was on 'open" display during the good old days.

The interesting part is that the SU had long-lasting and rather neutral relations with a lot of NATO/west countries back then.
Denying that is a part of antiSU/Russia propaganda spin.
Those thongs are constructed to hit&spoil weaker minds, knowing those are - unfortunately - the majority.
When I had a discussion with my friends a while ago, the dispute was about "sending Polish goods to the SU".
None of them was aware, that this "sending goods" was a barter repayment of debts and profits.
Of the loans that SU granted to the PRoP in pure gold.
Because just after the war, this was the sole currency that was accepted by the west, to pay for reconstruction.
And yes, mutuat economic activity was being carried all those years. With the mutual benefits.
When I was asking once how a wagon of coal corresponds to a box of gold slabs - nobody understood the question.
And those are not some dumb arses, all of them have some sort of a master degree.