How Aleksandr Yakovlev's Rivalry with Pavel Sukhoi Did Him In

Aleksandr Yakovlev

The 1950s and 1960s in Russian combat aircraft development were marked by intense rivalries between the various design bureau (OKBs) heads. Nowhere else was this seen than with the rivalries between the respective OKBs of Artem Mikoyan, Pavel Sukhoi, and Aleksandr Yakovlev. During the Second World War, Yakovlev's OKB was one of the dominant forces in Russian aviation, having built thousands of fighters for the Soviet air forces. OKB MiG (Mikoyan and his partner, Mikhail Gurevich) was rapidly rising to prominence during the war. OKB Sukhoi really didn't start to establish itself until well after the war (some say that Stalin had a dislike of Pavel Sukhoi as one reason). As the jet age dawned, Yakovlev took a conservative approach that saw the first Yak jet fighters as jet derivatives of his wartime piston engined designs whereas MiG and Sukhoi were willing to push the envelope and advance the state of the art. A rivalry between Sukhoi and Mikoyan developed with Mikoyan gaining the upper hand against both Yakovlev and Sukhoi with the MiG-15, MiG-17, and MiG-19 fighter designs which outclassed comparable aircraft from Yakovlev. When in the 1950s the Soviet military command wanted a supersonic interceptor, it was Sukhoi's delta winged Su-9 (NATO code name Fishpot) that edged out Mikoyan's design based on an enlarged MiG-21 fighter. First flying in October 1957, the Fishpot was certainly fast, but it was handicapped by the poor reliability of its Lyulka AL-7F turbojet. In those days, it was rare for an AL-7F engine to last beyond 200 flight hours- and that's not time between overhauls, the reliability of the engine was so poor that few engine units lasted past 200 flight hours, an abysmal figure. The radar set in the conical shock cone of the nose inlet was limited as well. 

Sukhoi Su-9 "Fishpot"

Of course, having the Su-9 having much in common with the Su-7 (NATO code name Fitter) tactical fighter did make selecting the Su-9 for production much easier. But the Sukhoi OKB knew that the Soviet Air Defense Forces (PVO) was not pleased with the performance of the Su-9 and with only 924 examples built, an upgraded Su-11 was introduced. But it would be built in very limited numbers. At the time, the Soviet leadership had decreed that the "missile age" had made many aircraft designs obsolete, and like the infamous Duncan Sandys Defence White Paper in the UK that mortally wounded the British aerospace industry, numerous aircraft and engine projects were canceled and only those designs that were developments of existing designs were allowed to continue to develop. As the Yakovlev OKB had already in production the Yak-25/26 interceptor (NATO code name Flashlight) and attack variants, it proceeded with a supersonic design in the Yak-28 (the interceptor variant having the NATO code name Firebar and attack version being the Brewer). Three features made the Yak-28 more attactive than the Su-9/Su-11 family- first, it used the Tumansky R-11 turbojet was showing itself in the MiG-21 to be much more reliable and durable than the Lyulka AL-7F, secondly it had two engines which gave in a perception of safety over the single-engined Su-9/Su-11 family, and thirdly, having a nose free for a larger radar set than what was possible with the nose intake arrangement of the Sukhoi design meant that production was switched over to the Yak-28 instead, the interceptor version being the Yak-28P. 

Yakovlev Yak-28P "Firebar"

Sukhoi wasn't going to be one-upped by Yakovlev, though. Taking as a baseline the limitations of the Su-9/Su-11 family. OKB Sukhoi set about to create a vastly improved interceptor in the shape of of the Su-15 (NATO code name Flagon). The Su-15 was designed from the outset to be superior to the Yak-28P- it used two of the same Tumansky R-11 engines and used lateral box intakes to leave the nose section free for the same large radar set used on the Yak-28P, the Oryol-D radar. Being a development of the Su-9/Su-11 family, though, it managed to avoid cancellation like so many other projects in the 1958-1959 timeframe in the Soviet Union. Interestingly, the Yak-28P and the Su-15 were produced in the same factory- in the Soviet Union, the OKBs only did design and flight test work with workshops for building prototypes. The designs were then handed off to independent factories for production.  At the time, the Novosibirsk aircraft factory No. 153 was responsible for the Yak-28P production and it was assigned production of the Su-15 once it had passed its State acceptance trials in 1962. Given that both the Yak-28P and the Su-15 used the same powerplant and radar, producing both at the same plant made logistical sense. And there was irony in the decision as the same plant built the Su-9/Su-11 interceptors that were replaced in production at that very plant by the Yak-28P. And now the plant was gearing up to produce more Su-15s with the intent of replacing the Yak-28P with the PVO. 

The sole Yakovlev Yak-28-64 prototype

Not willing to lose out to Pavel Sukhoi, Aleksandr Yakovlev dispatched one of his sons to the Novosibirsk plant to learn as much as he could about the Su-15 design (Yakovlev had two sons who worked for him- one would end up designing the Yak-40/42 airliners and the other would be responsible for the Yak-52 trainer). Seeing the threat posed by the Sukhoi design to the Yak-28P, Yakovlev set about designing an upgraded version provisionally designated the Yak-28-64 (due to work on it beginning in 1964). Many of the features of the Su-15 were incorporated into the Yak-28-64, primarily in moving the Tumansky R-11 engines to the rear of the fuselage from the wings. One of the criticisms of the Yak-28P was that having wing-mounted engines gave the aircraft a poor rate of roll and adverse handing characteristics in an single engine-out situation. Moving the engines to the fuselage resolved these concerns. The tail unit and the wings remained close to that of the Yak-28 and the unique bicycle landing gear was retained. The single ventral fin of the Yak-28P was changed over to a twin ventral fin arrangement for stability. Given that OKB Yakovlev had little experience with fuselage-mounted lateral intakes, Yakovlev incorporated a copy of the Su-15's lateral box intake design on the Yak-28-64. 

Yak-28-64

The prototype Yak-28-64 was rolled out in 1966 and it proved in flight tests right off hand to be a dog. In fact, the Yak-28-64's performance was even worse than that of the Yak-28P, the very aircraft that was being superseded by the Su-15. Numerous unpleasant handling characteristics were also uncovered and some of the landing issues present in the Yak-28P thought to be cured in the Yak-28-64 persisted (such as aileron reversal at high speeds). It didn't take long to realize that the Yak-28-64 was a dead end and the project was abandoned by Yakovlev. 

Sukhoi Su-15 Flagon

A look at some of the production figures during this rivalry is telling. Just over 900 Sukhoi Su-9s were built at the Novosibirsk factory. Less than 100 Su-11s were built. Replaced in production at the factory by the Yakovlev Yak-28P, over 400 examples were built before it was completely supplanted by production of the Su-15, of which over 1,200 were built. The attack versions of the Yak-28 had to be continually upgraded with no less than 10 versions, each in relatively small production batches around 200 or so. Having been topped by Sukhoi in the interceptor arena with the Su-15, the Soviet air forces replaced the attack versions of the Yak-28 with another Sukhoi design, the Su-17/Su-22 family (NATO code name Fitter) which proved more reliable and versatile operationally. 

The Yak-28-64 and the rivalry with Pavel Sukhoi damaged OKB Yakovlev for good. His designs were considered by the Soviet air forces to be unreliable and obsolete, at the worst, limited in performance at best. For years no other Yakovlev combat aircraft design was taken seriously by the Soviet military high command and even the VTOL Yak-36 design was supremely limited in its utility. Even Yakovlev's submissions to the  competition that resulted in the MiG-29 Fulcrum and the Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker (Yak-45 and Yak-47, respectively) were decidedly archaic in appearance and failed to use some of the latest advances in aerodynamics. Most Yakovlev designs following the abandonment of the Yak-28-64 were either light aircraft or airliners, areas that were more heavily influenced by his sons than by Aleksandr Yakovlev himself. 

Source: OKB Yakovlev: A History of the Design Bureau and its Aircraft by Yefim Gordon. Midland/Ian Allan Publishing, 2005, p215-230. Additional material from Paul Martell-Mead at the Secret Projects forum. 

Soviet Wild Weasels: Part Two (Aircraft)

Yakovlev Yak-28PP "Brewer-E"

Last night we took a look at the nuts and bolts of Soviet suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) doctrine and tactics. Tonight we'll continue along that them with a look at the aircraft that filled the role of  "Wild Weasels" in the Soviet air forces. Like the United States, the Russians had put into service several specialized aircraft that were used to knock out and/or jam enemy radars and surface-to-air missile sites. These aircraft were based upon established production types much in the same way the USAF Wild Weasels were adaptations of production fighter aircraft. The first aircraft to fill this role was the Yakovlev Yak-28N, an experimental adaptation of the Yak-28 "Brewer" attack aircraft. This version of the Brewer was the first Russian development for a Wild Weasel-class aircraft; work began by OKB Yakovlev in 1964-1965 with a production Yak-28I being set aside in 1965 for conversion to the -28N configuration. The attack Yak-28I had the "I" suffix as it was equipped with the Initsiativa-2 ground-mapping/bombing radar in a ventral radome aft of the nose gear. On the Yak-28N, the Initsiativa-2 radar was replaced by radar pulse detection unit that would seek out and locate enemy radar emissions and provide targeting data to Raduga Kh-28 (NATO code name AS-9 "Kyle") missiles, one each under the outer wings. The Kh-28, which I'll discuss in a subsequent post, was the first Russian anti-radiation missile to be fielded with the first operational examples coming out in 1964. 

By the time operational testing of the Yak-28N was completed around 1972, it had been far outclassed by contemporary Russian and American designs and the project was canceled. However, the work that had been put into the Yak-28N wasn't wasted as the Soviet air forces still needed a battlefield electronic warfare aircraft that better performance and was more flexible than the existing design in use, the Tupolev Tu-16PP Badger which clearly by 1972 was too big and too slow to survive in hostile airspace. The Yak-28 was again used as the basis for the Yak-28PP electronic warfare aircraft that crammed the jamming equipment of the Tu-16PP into a much smaller airframe. All of the armament provisions of the Yak-28 were deleted and four different jamming systems were installed in the Yak-28PP, which was marked by a number of dielectric bulges and blisters on the fuselage. The jamming systems generated so much heat that two heat exchangers were installed in the lower aft fuselage ahead of the aft bicycle gear to help cool the avionics. The outer wing pylons were fitted with rocket pods that fired chaff ahead of the aircraft to help sow chaff corridors to protect inbound strike packages. Below each engine nacelle of the Yak-28PP was a system for deploying bundles of fiberglass-based chaff strips in mass quantities. The role of the Yak-28PP was to accompany inbound strike packages with three of the ECM -28PPs sowing a chaff corridor on each side of the strike aircraft formation as well as using its powerful jamming equipment to blind NATO air defense radars. The first Yak-28PPs completed their State acceptance testing just as the Yak-28N was canceled. Most of the Yak-28PPs that were built (NATO code name "Brewer-E") were based with the Soviet forces in East Germany. 

MiG-25BM armed with Kh-58 missiles

The cancellation of the Yak-28N in 1972 came about due to the arrival of an aircraft with significantly higher performance that would become the first Russian production Wild Weasel-class aircraft, the Mikoyan MiG-25BM "Foxbat-F" based on the production interceptor version. It was recognized early on in the Foxbat's flight test program that a high-flying, high-speed aircraft would make an ideal SEAD aircraft- as it was proved itself immune to interception during operations over the Sinai prior to the Yom Kippur War, a SEAD Foxbat could out-fly defending fighters, fire its anti-radiation missiles, and streak back with impunity. While early anti-radiation missiles like the Kh-28 mentioned already were heavy, the newer generation of anti-radar missiles like the Raduga Kh-58 (NATO code name AS-11 "Kilter") were much lighter and imposed little performance penalty on the Foxbat. 

Mikoyan MiG-25BM Foxbat-F in East Germany

At first the MiG-25BM was to be a dual-role reconnaissance/SEAD aircraft, the concept being that it would use its SEAD capability to allow it to penetrate deep into NATO airspace to complete its reconnaissance mission. By 1977 both the Soviet air forces and Mikoyan realized that the aircraft would be compromised in both roles and different Foxbat variants were developed for each role, with the MiG-25BM being the definitive SEAD variant. The MiG-25BM featured an integrated avionics package called Yaguar (Jaguar) that not only detected and located enemy radars, but it also networked with the Yaguar systems of other MiG-25BMs to allow a "wolf pack" of SEAD Foxbats to operate deep into NATO territory and share data and targeting information with other members of the wolf pack. The Yaguar system included target designation functions that cued the seeker heads of the four Kh-58 missiles that the MiG-25BM carried. In addition to the missiles, nuclear warheads could also be delivered to either knock out SAM missile sites or generate an EMP to short out communications and electronic systems. Several internal active ECM jammers were also carried which not only protected the MiG-25BM from air defense radars but could also counter fighter radars as well. The Foxbat-F was in production from 1982 to 1985, but the complex systems of the aircraft meant that only 40 examples were built. Nearly most were assigned to units stationed in East Germany and were unusual in being the only Foxbats to wear camouflage as the reconnaissance and interceptor variants were gray in color. Despite production ending in 1985, continued technical problems that had to be resolved meant that the first MiG-25BMs weren't operational in East Germany until 1988 with the Group of Soviet Forces Germany (GSFG), which ultimately withdrew from German soil in 1994. 

Kh-58 missile on an Su-24M, Fantasmagoria pod below it

The last SEAD aircraft developed for the Soviet air forces was the Sukhoi Su-24M "Fencer-D", but by this time the Fencer-D was less an dedicated SEAD asset and more an attack aircraft that had SEAD capabilities. Unlike the Yak-28N and the MiG-25BM that housed a large amount of equipment internally, technological advances meant that the Fencer-D could carry most of the radar detection and location equipment in a pod mounted on the centerline underfuselage which was called Fantasmagoria, with -A, -B, and possible -C version depending on the internal configuration of the pod. This was similar to the USAF where the Lockheed Martin F-16CJ replaced the specialized F-4G Phantom Wild Weasel. The F-16CJ had a small pod called the HARM Targeting System (HTS) that performed the same role as the Russian Fantasmagoria pod. The Su-24M could carry two kinds of anti-radiation missile, either the Kh-58 as was used by the MiG-25BM or the newer Kh-31 (NATO code name AS-17 "Krypton") missile. 

Sukhoi Su-24M Fencer-D, note the Fantasmagoria pod

The closest that Russian SEAD aircraft came to being committed to action came during the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan fron 1979 to 1988. During the war, Tupolev Tu-16 Badgers were used to bomb Mujaheddin positions, but were often tracked by Pakistani air defense and early warning radars. It was proposed to use the Su-24Ms to knock out the Pakistani radars which were providing warning information to Mujaheddin forces, but it was realized that it represented a significant escalation of the conflict and only limited cross-border raids were conducted with SEAD protection. During the Russian-Georgian War of 2008, it is believed that Su-24Ms were used against Georgian air defense positions, but poor tactical coordination resulted in the Georgians shooting down two Fencers. 

The last installment of this series will take a closer look at the anti-radar missiles that the Russians fielded for their SEAD assets. Stay tuned!

Source: Wild Weasel Fighter Attack: The Story of the Suppression of Enemy Air Defences by Thomas Withington. Pen and Sword Aviation, 2008, p100-102. 

The legendary Russian rocket designer Sergei Korolev and his special design bureau (designated OKB-1) were given responsibility in the early 1950s to develop a practical tactical ballistic missile designated the R-11 that would better be known by its NATO code name, SS-1 "Scud". The first Scud-A/R-11 missiles were accepted for operational use by the Soviet Army in July 1955 but the early versions were cumbersome to set up and fire, requiring multiple vehicles for support and despite advances in technology was little more practical than the German V-2 rocket. As a result, few operational batteries of the early versions of the Scud-A/R-11 missiles were fielded in the 1950s.

Subsequent developments of the early Scud-A/R-11 missile led to the development of the Scud-B/R-17 which featured a whole host of improvements in design and use. A new tracked TEL (transporter-erector-launcher) vehicle simplified operational deployment and advances in construction and propulsion extended the Scud-B/R-17's range over the Scud-A/R-11 missile. In addition, the Scud-B/R-17 was nuclear-tipped along with the options for conventional or chemical warheads. Soviet Army formations that fielded the nuclear-tipped versions of the Scud-B/R-17 usually had one chemical warhead for every 25 nuclear warheads. To simplify the ballistics and guidance, each of the possible warhead options for the missile was standardized at 1 metric ton. The first Scud-B/R-17 missiles become operational in 1962.

Despite the improvements from the Scud-A/R-11 to the Scud-B/R-17, the missile remained relatively inaccurate which was more problematic when using a conventional or chemical warhead which required more precise targeting than a nuclear warhead. The Scud-A/R-11 had a CEP (circular error probable- a circle in which the warhead was expected to land 50% of the time) of 4 kilometers. The first Scud-B/R-17s cut the CEP down to 2 kilometers, eventually attaining a 1 kilometer CEP. But with a conventional warhead, a 1-km CEP was nearly unacceptable. With a move in the 1960s by both the United States and the Soviet Union towards a more "flexible" response in a nuclear crisis, the Soviet military leadership saw that there would be times that a non-nuclear/non-chemical Scud missile warhead would be more desirable to use.

In 1967 the Central Scientific Research Institute for Automation and Hydraulics in Moscow was tasked to develop a top-secret precision-guided version of the Scud-B/R-17. It was originally designated R-17VTO Aerofon and the Institute decided upon a very prescient form of guidance, optical comparison in which the missile would hit its target by comparing an image of the target with an image stored in its memory. In the late-1960s the development of the guidance proved impractical and the Aerofon project was reorganized in 1974 to take advantage of advances in digital computing. The new system relied on digital images and a computer library could be kept of possible targets. The first Aerofon optical guidance prototype was completed in 1975 and successfully tested pod-mounted under a Sukhoi Su-17 strike fighter.

In the United States we had a similar guidance system under development called "digital scene matching area correlation" (DSMAC). The idea in the US system was that DSMAC would be used on cruise missiles on the final run-in on the target after using TERCOM (terrain contour-matching) on the flight into the target vicinity. It's likely that the first Aerofon guidance package was similar to the first analog version of DSMAC tested here in the United States- a stored photographic negative of the target was compared with a photograph taken of the target area. It was a cumbersome system as tested with DSMAC and the first tests were performed with a Tomahawk cruise missile in 1978.

The Aerofon optical guidance system was air-tested in 1975 and flight tested on an actual Scud-B/R-17 missile in late 1979, the Aerofon hitting only a few meters from the designated target. This represented a massive leap in improvement over the 1-km CEP of the Scud-B/R-17 standard missile. The planned operational Aerofon would have had a CEP on the order of 20 meters.

Unlike the other variants of the Scud missile family where the whole missile impacted the target, the Aerofon variant had a warhead section that separated from the main body of the missile (the first Aerofon missiles, though, did not have a detachable warhead section). At the base of this warhead section were lattice-section steering vanes that folded out into the air stream, providing maneuvering capability to the Aerofon warhead. In the base of the warhead section was the batteries for the power supply and its associated electronics. The nose section was tipped with an optical seeker that updated the inertial guidance and accessed the onboard computer for optical comparison of the target. In between the guidance section at the nose and the power/steering section at the base was the warhead which took up the majority of the space.

The production version of the Aerofon was ready for deployment by 1989 but it never went into large scale production as it was superseded by two more advanced battlefield ballistic missiles- the OTR-21 Tochka (NATO code name SS-21 "Scarab") and the OTR-23 Oka (NATO code name SS-23 "Spider"). However, in the 1990s, the Aerofon was offered for export to existing customers of the Scud missile.

Source: Scud Ballistic Missile and Launch Systems 1955-2005, New Vanguard #120 by Steven J. Zaloga. Osprey Publishing, 2006, p1-19.

While most nations that had used assault gliders operationally in the Second World War had already abandoned the concept with the end of the war, development continued in the Soviet Union on gliders not only for combat assault, but also for use internally for the delivery of cargo to inaccessible areas of the country. In 1947, the Soviet Air Force issued a specification for an assault glider for use by the Aviation of the Airborne Troops that could transport over 3.5 tons of cargo. Both OKB Yakovlev and OKB Ilyushin were selected to build prototypes- Ilyushin instructed to develop an all-metal design (the Il-32 and was generally unsatisfactory) and Yakovlev's design was to be all-wood and became the second use of the designation Yak-14 (the first Yak-14 was the original designation of the Yak-10 light liason aircraft and was one of the reasons the NATO code name system was created to avoid confusion).

The Yak-14 had a wooden structure with fabric skinning with a hinged nose section as well as a hinged tail section, both of which could be swung to one side to allow straight-through loading and unloading to a square-section cabin with a floor strong enough to carry tracked vehicles. The cockpit was curiously offset to one side and was above the cabin and the high-mounted wing. Up to 35 fully-equipped troops could be carried.

Flight testing of the Yak-14 began in 1948 with the planned tow aircraft either a Tupolev Tu-2 light bomber or a Ilyushin Il-14 transport. In March 1954 four Yak-14s were used to deliver heavy equipment to a research station on an ice floe in the Arctic Ocean, becoming the first glider to overfly the North Pole in the process.

With the arrival of twin- and four-turboprop transports from Antonov in the late 1950s, the Yak-14s were phased out as the last assault gliders in operational use. Approximately 413 were constructed and assigned the NATO code name "Mare".

Source: Air Enthusiast, Volume Two, Gordon Swanborough, editor. Pilot Press Ltd, p134, 163, and 252-253.

On his very first combat mission in 1915 flying a two-seat FBA flying boat to attack German gunboats, the young Alexander de Seversky would lose his right leg. After recuperation, he was assigned as the chief naval aircraft inspector for the Russian Imperial Navy's Petrograd district which gave him an appreciation for the design and production of aircraft. He worked closely with Dimitry Grigorivich on a series of flying boats that resulted in the M-9, the first Russian-designed naval aircraft to go into production during the First World War. Seversky encouraged Grigorivich to incorporate a machine gun mount as well as armor plating for the crew on the M-9.

Despite losing his flying status due to his injury, Seversky managed to perform an aerobatic display in the M-9 that enraged his superiors but won him the admiration of Czar Nicholas II, who ordered Seversky placed back on flying duty. Fitted with a wooden prosthesis and flying the plodding M-9 flying boat (it only had a maximum speed of 69 mph), he managed to score four kills against German aircraft. In 1917 he started flying a Nieuport 21 biplane and scored his fifth and sixth kills by single-handedly downing a German bomber and its fighter escort, bringing him to ace status.

In 1918 his status won him assignment to Washington D.C. as the Russian military attache with the embassy, but the Bolshevik Revolution that year resulted in him staying in the United States for good. He served as an assistant to Brigadier General Billy Mitchell in Mitchell's crusade to advance the cause for air power and Seversky would eventually establish his own aircraft manufacturing firm, Seversky Aviation, in Long Island, New York. In 1939 amidst a corporate reorganization Seversky was voted off the board by his own company which was renamed Republic Aviation. Another Russian emigre who worked for Seversky, Alexander Kartvelli, would take one of Seversky's designs, the P-35A fighter, and develop it further along a series of subsequent designs that culminated in the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt.

When he died in 1974, Seversky would hold 100 aviation-related patents and had received the Exceptional Service Medal for his advisory work for the U.S. Air Force in the 1960s.

Source: Aviation History, March 2010. "The Making of a War Hero" by James K. Libbey, p54-59.

Similar to the trends in the 1950s in the United States, when the first Russian air-to-air missiles were deployed, the Soviet defense industry shifted towards the development of weapons systems that comprised of not just the interceptor aircraft but also beam-riding radar-guided missiles and the fire control radar. While several design bureaus (OKBs) in the 1950s were working on weapon systems, it was OKB Lavochkin that was the first to propose the weapons system concept with what became the La-250 "Anaconda" in 1953.

The idea behind a weapons system was the each component would be optimized for each other, resulting in a more effective supersonic interceptor. Lavochkin proposed what would be designated the K-15 system which comprised of the La-250 aircraft, the K-15U radar system, the izdeliye ("article") 275 semi-active radar homing air-to-air missile as well as associated GCI equipment. The K-15 weapons system involved 11 manufacturing divisions of the Soviet aerospace industry, six other OKBs, and the Central Aerodynamics and Hydrodynamics Institute (TsAGI), all supervised and integrated by OKB Lavochkin.

Another of the Lavochkin La-250's firsts was the use of an analogue "iron bird" simulator to test the flight control system on the ground before the first flights of the aircraft. The simulator would prove to be instrumental in determining that the loss of the prototype aircraft could have been prevented with a better flight control system. Ultimately, the loss of the first La-250 prototype was only the beginning of problems with the K-15 weapons system that ultimately led to the cancellation of the entire program in July 1959 as the requirements proved to not match the technology of the day.

The La-250 was the last aircraft to be produced by OKB Lavochkin but the effort wasn't in vain- it was the first time in the Soviet Union that research institutes like the legendary TsAGI worked in close cooperation with the design bureaus and manufacturing complexes and it proved the feasibility of such a comprehensive approach. Lavochkin's expertise benefitted OKB Tupolev which introduced the large Tu-128 "Fiddler" interceptor in 1961 which remained in operational service for many years.

Source: Wings of Fame, Volume 19. AIRtime Publishing, 2000, "Beyond the Frontiers: The Lavochkin La-250 Anaconda" by Yefim Gordon, p150-157.

In the 1980s as a response to the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), the Russians began work on a spaceborne laser system of their own under the name Polyus-Skif. "Polyus" was Russian for "pole" and "Skif" referred to the Scythians, an ancient tribe of warriors from Central Asia. As the work continued, Polyus-Skif would evolve into a spaceborne weapon to attack the American SDI satellites instead of American ICBMs. As the challenges in sending a megawatt-class laser into orbit mounted, the Russian scientists developed the Skif-D (for demonstrator) to test key technologies in orbit. Originally intended for the Proton rocket, the Skif-D was simply too large and would be launched by the larger Energia launcher.

The Skif-D was bigger than Skylab- it was 131 feet long, over 13 feet in diameter and weighed in at 210,000 pounds. It consisted of two sections- the "purposeful" module carried the carbon dioxide tanks and two turbogenerators for the laser as well as a turret for pointing the laser beam. The other section was the "functional block" which carried small rocket engines, the power generation system, solar panels and other control systems.

Though an interim flight test article designated Skif-DM that was launched on 15 May 1987 failed to reach orbit and Gorbachev eventually canceled the program, elements of the Polyus-Skif are alleged to live on in orbit today on the International Space Station.

According to a recent Air & Space article on the Polyus-Skif, the first component of the ISS, the Russian control module Zarya (meaning "dawn") and also called the Functional Cargo Block, was built under contract to NASA in the mid-1990s by the Khrunichev bureau, the same organization that was responsible for the Polyus-Skif. The engineers produced Zarya on time and on budget at a time when the Russian aerospace industry was in crisis. The role of the Zarya is the same as the functional block on the Polyus-Skif- to supply electrical power and for in-orbit stationkeeping. Some spacewatchers have indicated that the Zarya may even be more than just based on the Polyus functional block, it may have even started as a Polyus flight spare- if true, then today's ISS has as its heart a legacy of the Soviet space laser program from the Cold War!

Source: Air & Space Smithsonian, January 2010. "Soviet Star Wars- When the world was on the brink of laser weapons in space" by Dwayne A. Day and Robert G. Kennedy III, p55-60.

With the shortest routes to attack American targets laying across the North Pole, Russian research efforts in the Arctic which began in the 1930s took on strategic urgency with the start of the Cold War. Work began in earnest on 23 April 1948 when the first Soviet expedition, designated SP-2, was airlifted to the North Pole. An even larger expedition followed using assets of the Soviet Polar Aviation (a civil aviation agency in the USSR that supported Arctic research) and that of Long-Range Aviation (DA, or Dalyniya Aviatsiya, the Russian version of the Strategic Air Command). Two Tupolev Tu-4 "Bull" bombers from the DA were seconded to Polar Aviation and used as cargo transports with supplies carried in the bomber's spacious bomb bays. Other aircraft were part of the early expeditions and even used at one point an ex-Luftwaffe Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor. Also accompanying the bombers and transports were Lavochkin fighters to assess the feasibility of fighter operations in the Arctic.

By the early 1950s a network of deployment airfields large enough to take heavy bombers of the DA like the Tu-95 "Bear" and the Myasishchev M-4 "Bison" had been built across the Russian Arctic along with a chain of radio navigation beacons. However, the DA general staff recognized the vulnerability of these forward bomber bases and in 1956 began investigating operating jet bombers off the polar ice pack itself. By 1958 a special unit of DA Tupolev Tu-16 "Badger" twin jet bombers was created to test the feasibility of operating off ice runways on the polar ice pack.

On 26 April 1958 Colonel Anton Alekhnovich landed a Tu-16 bomber at the SP-6 research station's ice runway. However, on takeoff, the port main gear hit an area of ice that wasn't fully frozen and the bomber veered off the runway and hit an Ilyushin Il-14 transport. Attempts to repair the bomber were unsuccesful and due to fears that the SP-6 ice floe was moving too close to the United States, the Tu-16 was destroyed. Due to the variable nature of ice stability on the polar ice pack, further DA bomber operations were conducted from land bases built in the tundra.

Source: Soviet Strategic Aviation in the Cold War by Yefim Gordon. Hikoki Publications, 2009, p75-82.

One of the unique features of the Mikoyan MiG-23/27 Flogger fighter aircraft is that compressed air for the pneumatic systems is stored inside the main undercarriage legs and axles. The main pneumatic system fed off a 12.1 liter "bottle" inside the right undercarriage leg to operate the cabin pressurization, canopy operation, moving the sliding panels that cover the gaps on the variable-geometry wings, the main wheel brakes, main fuel valve, braking parachute deployment, activating the emergency drive for hydraulic system and closing the air vents in the avionics bays. A smaller 1.75 liter "bottle" inside the right wheel axle supplied compressed air to the radar bay and avionics heat exchanger which used fuel as coolant.

A 12.1 liter "bottle" in the left main undercarriage leg supplied compressed air for emergency lowering of the landing gear, folding of the ventral fin and operation of the brakes. A smaller 1.75 liter "bottle" in the left wheel axle supplemented the emergency systems on the Flogger. The main valve to fill the compressed air circuits in both main landing gears was located in the left main wheel well.

Source: MiG-23/27 Flogger- Soviet Swing Wing Fighter/Strike Aircraft by Yefim Gordon and Keith Dexter. Midland Publishing/Aerofax, 2005, p52.

Russian airline Transaero boasts many firsts for the Russian airline industry:

First Russian carrier to introduce business class on domestic routes;
First Russian carrier to prohibit smoking inflight;
First Russian carrier with a frequent flyer program;
First Russian carrier to have e-ticketing and online check-in.

In 2001, Transaero appointed Olga Pleshakova as its General Director, making her first airline head in Russia. She has worked for Transaero since 1992 and is the wife of Alexander Pleshakov, the airline's chairman of the board.

Source: Airliner World, March 2009. "From Russia With Love: Transaero Airlines" by Richard Maslen, p93.

Moscow's Domodedovo Airport is the first facility in Russia to attain approval for New Large Aircraft operations (NLA) that include the Airbus A380. This approval indicates that the dimensions of its runways and pavement strength meet Category F ICAO standards as well as Airbus' own recommendations. The construction work began back in 2003.

Source: Aviation Week & Space Technology, March 9, 2009. "Airline Outlook", p14.