Tu-28/Tu-128 "Fiddler"

It was built at a time when only a light bomber could carry the electronics and radar and missiles needed to bring down a bomber and cover the enormous distances of the Soviet Union.



I always though that with new more powerful, more fuel efficient engines that it could have been used for a wider variety of roles... the AESA radar it could carry would be huge...

A few more:

I have a book that mentions the long winged high altitude recon version and it was rather interesting... because it had turbojet engines with a high idle speed they often had to lower landing gear to slow down above 11km altitude because the high thrust in the idle setting caused them to keep climbing.

Sadly there is not a lot of information about older Soviet types like this and many others...

Long winged version was called Yak-25RV. A second version of the plane was designed as a target drone for the air defence.

"Yakovlev Yak-25/-26/-27/-28 - Yakovlev´s Tactical Twinjets" by Yefim Gordon. All you need to now.

From memory most of the bomber Yak twins were actually bombers with both convention but likely more often nuclear bombs.

The interceptors tended to have AA-3 Anab type AAMs, which is directly related to a range of air to ground missiles like the Kh-66 and Kh-25 family of missiles for air to ground use but I don't ever remember seeing a Yak with such weapons fitted... only interceptor models with Anabs.

But it was never really widely covered.... much like the Su-9/11/15 Sukhois were not heavily over exposed either... it was mostly Su-7/17 and MiG-21/23/25 that really seemed to get the most attention in the west.