There is a saying that the best is the enemy of the good. It should have been made the slogan of ordering structures of the Ministry of Defense. It makes sense, however, to consider this principle using a negative example from Soviet practice.
Continuing the topic raised earlier in the article "Aircraft-carrying cruisers and Yak-38: retrospective analysis and lessons"Let us consider what the ignorance of this principle led to in the development of Soviet carrier-based aviation. Of course, "good" here was very relative, if not worse. Nevertheless, the principle worked. Let's learn this lesson from the past too.
Yak-38: prospects and realities
From the very beginning, the same decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, on the basis of which the Yak-36M (future Yak-38) was created, provided for the creation in the future of a training two-seat version of this aircraft, and, in addition, a fighter.
Naturally, the fighter would be, as they say, the one else. The basis on which aircraft the future "vertical" fighter would be created clearly showed that its capabilities would be reduced to simple interceptions with some chances to evade an enemy-launched missile, if there was one. This vehicle would never have been able to conduct a maneuverable battle with the Phantoms, as the base attack aircraft Yak-38 could not. But such an aircraft would have had chances of aiming a missile according to the radar data.
This car could not be called useless. And we will come back to this later.
The Yakovlevtsy began designing the fighter in 1979.
This machine was supposed to have a radar. Presumably Н019, similar to the radar station of the MiG-29 fighter. The aerodynamic configuration is "high-wing", with a significantly higher (than the Yak-38) wing located. Longer wing, possibly with more weapon attachments. And, as some sources indicate, a 30 mm cannon. The rest of the aircraft should have been widely unified with the modification of the Yak-38M attack aircraft being developed at the same time. So, the engines had to be the same. Today this vehicle is known as the Yak-39.
How far have you been working on the 39th car?
In 1985, we were already talking about the construction. That is, the main design work has been completed. There is no doubt that sometime by the end of 1986 it would have been possible to at least retrain the first of the naval air regiments for a new machine, if we worked hard.
Today we know what was done instead.
From the Yak-38 family, only the base attack aircraft Yak-38, its "correction of errors" Yak-38M and the training Yak-38U were included in the series.
It was decided not to build the Yak-39, but to focus on the more advanced supersonic Yak-41 (later, after the collapse of the USSR - 141). Today it is customary to say that it was an advanced aircraft ahead of its time, and now - have enough time for us …
Yes, the plane was forward. And in terms of its performance characteristics, it was utterly superior to the hypothetical Yak-39, and as a percussion vehicle - the Yak-38M.
But the creation of this aircraft, however, was a mistake.
And that's why.
Miscalculation
First of all, let us voice a simple idea - a ship (deck) aircraft and its carrier ship do not exist separately from each other. They de facto form a single complex. This also applied to "verticals". And some of the nuances of how the complex from the TAVKR project 1143 and its planes looked, and how it would have had to fight, were sorted out in the last article.
Let us now look at the Soviet plans for the ships.
First and foremost, at the time of the start of the assembly of the planned Yak-39, it was already obvious that the USSR had turned to aircraft carriers with normal aircraft. The future Kuznetsov was already under construction. The laying of the second Soviet aircraft carrier, which today serves in the Chinese Navy as Liaoning, would be several months away.
On the other hand, work on the future Yak-41 was going well behind schedule. It was supposed to take off back in 1982, but it didn't.
At this point, the military leadership had to do a very simple analysis.
The Yak-38 was created for a long time. Just to repeat the quote from the last article (commentary at the time of the Yak-38M's adoption, in 1985):
25 years have passed since the creation of the project of the first "vertical" design bureau of the Yakovlev Design Bureau until the adoption of the Yak-38M. Since the first flight of the Yak-36M / 38 - 15 years. Since the adoption of the Yak-38 into service - 8 years.
This is the time frame for such aircraft being created and brought to a combat-ready state.
In a normally operating aviation industry, there are practically no “effective managers”, no organized crime groups seeking to “straddle” financial flows in the defense industry, with minimal restrictions on money and resources. With the simplest radio-electronic equipment of the "Stone Age", if you call a spade a spade.
A reason to think about all lovers of "vertical".
The Yak-41 has also been in development for a long time. And while the results are not obvious.
The first research and development work on a supersonic "vertical" began back in 1973. 12 years before that moment. Eight years have passed since the day of the decree on the creation of the "41st".
Everything indicated that a more high-tech and complex supersonic VTOL aircraft would be created in no way less than a simple Yak-38. In this case, insurance is required in the form of a Yak-39.
But the main thing is that as long as there are "dances" with VTOL aircraft, there will be no decent number of new carriers for it.
We look at the service life of the existing TAVKRs.
"Kiev" - in operation for 10 years. If we start from the analogy with the Yak-38, then when the Yak-41 reaches combat readiness in the mid-nineties and will be supplied to the naval aviation, the ship will be at least 20 years old (if not more).
"Minsk" - everything is the same, but with a shift of three years. When the rearmament of the next air regiment begins, "Minsk" will already be in service for 17 years. When the new planes arrive at Minsk itself, it will be 18-19.
"Novorossiysk" - most likely, the first Yak-41 "would see" at the age of 16-17, in the second half of the 90s. And by the time this ship went into first combat service with these aircraft, the service life of the first "corps" of Project 1143 ("Kiev") would have already exceeded 25 years. "Minsk" - 22 years old.
"Baku" (now "Vikramaditya" in the Indian Navy) was still under construction. Actually, it was the only ship that by the time the estimated date of completion of the Yak-41 tests (which in 1985 could have been predicted quite well, albeit approximately) could still be called the word "new". And it was planned as last in the Navy, the carrier "vertical".
It is clear that in reality the sequence of rearmament of regiments would be such that new aircraft would start flying from new ships. And, apparently, the 41st would have started flying from "Baku".
But then it was difficult to predict. But it would be quite possible to correlate the residual service life of the ships with the plans to build a series of already tested and combat-ready Yak-41. And then it was already possible to predict problems with the repairs of TAVKRs. After all, the country could not cope with the repair of ships even then. And this meant that the service life of the TAVKRs would be lower than the designated one.
And so then it began to come out. The same "Kiev" was put on a joke long before the collapse of the USSR.
Wasn't it too bold to make a fundamentally new aircraft for ships, some of which (in fact, half) would have to be written off before the new "verticals" would take off their resource?
Was the Yak-41 superior to the old subsonic vertical?
Well, yes. But he could not have won the "junkyard" "Phantom" or later "Hornet".
Roughly speaking, it would have very few advantages over the Yak-39 in aerial combat. Simply because the gap between its flight performance and the performance characteristics of enemy aircraft still remained critical, although it was smaller. The Yak-41, as a percussion vehicle, also surpassed the Yak-38M, and disproportionately. A hypothetical strike version of the Yak-39 with a radar, it would be superior, but much less.
Moreover, it was significantly more expensive.
And most importantly, the naval aviation never received it. Generally. Did not make it.
"Tit", lost from the hands
Consider what would have happened if resources had not been spent on the 41st aircraft at all.
Firstly, work on the Yak-39 would not have gone "on a leftover principle." Large resources would be concentrated on them. And this, with a high degree of probability, means a faster, than in reality, work progress.
That is, we can make the assumption that if it were not for the 41st, then the Yak-39 could be launched into production at the same time as the Yak-38M actually went into production. That is, since 1985. It was then that the Yak-39 could begin to enter combat units.
Further, simple logic - the new aircraft would have radar and improved flight characteristics (wing). And this would inevitably force to raise the question of "bringing" the attack aircraft in line with the capabilities of the new machine.
For example, during training attacks, Yak-39 fighters would obviously carry out the tasks of escorting the Yak-38M and additional reconnaissance of targets. Simply because their radar would allow it, whereas the 38 pilots needed to detect targets visually.
Further, the question would arise of how to hit the target at a greater distance than the 7-10 km available with the Kh-23 missile launcher. Inevitably, the enumeration of missile options, in terms of their weight and size characteristics, capable of being used with the Yak-38, would lead to the Kh-25MP anti-radar missile with a maximum launch range of 40 kilometers. But 40 kilometers is the range at which the Americans used their "Harpoons" from aircraft in real military operations! X-25MP by the mid-80s would already have been.
But a bunch of Yak-39, capable of at least disrupting a coordinated attack of enemy interceptors on our attack aircraft (even at the cost of their large losses), and Yak-38M attack aircraft with the Kh-25MP anti-radar missile would be much higher in their effectiveness in attacking surface targets. than just a Yaki with an X-23 and a launch range of no more than 10 km. Yes, we would still be inferior to the Americans, but the chances of getting them would now be completely different. And all this would have been under the USSR.
You can also fantasize about a hypothetical attack aircraft with a radar. Such an aircraft could be created in just a couple of years. And the idea of creating a strike machine was already on the basis of the Yak-39.
Would make them in the presence of slightly old Yak-38 and 38M - an open question. But if they had not, then the modernization of the already built "vertical units" would have been completely carried out.
And I wonder if the Yak-39 would have gone along the path of evolution of a multipurpose aircraft capable of working both on ships and in the air? And obviously it would not have been without attempts to use this aircraft to obtain initial data for targeting missile weapons from ships - and not only TAVKRs. And this, in general, would open a new page in naval tactics …
There is one more nuance. The Yaki-38s were characterized by extremely low reliability. At some point, the OKB im. Yakovleva, who "invested" in the Yak-41, simply threw this work on its own. As a result, the Yak-41 still failed. But the low reliability and high accident rate of the 38s became one of the reasons for their rapid write-off. Even before the official decommissioning.
And the last - yes, yes, it became one of the reasons for the quick withdrawal to the reserve. And then from the combat strength of aircraft-carrying cruisers.
And if the Navy had a serial, combat-capable and brought to more or less satisfactory reliability all-weather and all-day aircraft (Yak-39), then who knows, maybe it would not be the Nakhimov that would go into long-term restructuring, for example, the Novorossiysk? And "Kiev" and "Minsk" would have been used for him as donors of spare parts (suppose that "Baku-Gorshkov" would have left for India as the newest of the ships).
And then the 39th could get a new engine. And it would not be much worse than the English "Harrier 2" and its American "brother" AV-8B. And in some ways, perhaps better. Moreover, the fact that the OKB them. Yakovleva would have been forced to continue working on the 38–39 line, giving chances for progress in improving reliability.
Although everything could have turned out as in reality. And it is likely that in the chaos of the 90s, the TAVKRs would also have been decommissioned. But at the same time, even before Kuznetsov, we would have had experience in operating fighter aircraft from decks and night flights. And purely psychologically, we would know that the height called "carrier-based fighter" was really taken by us back then, in the mid-80s. A trifle, but nice …
What happened instead?
The USSR Navy did not receive a ship-based fighter for its aircraft-carrying cruisers at all. He did not acquire the ability to fly and carry out combat missions at night, which seriously weakened the political importance of the fleet as an instrument to resist American pressure at sea during the last exacerbation of the Cold War - the 1980s. This means that the USSR has weakened in general, in principle.
The Navy did not acquire a means of at least some kind of long-range interception of air targets. I didn't have the prospect of creating a multipurpose ship aircraft. And he did not use even a weak excuse to defend at least one aircraft-carrying cruiser - citing the presence in the ranks of existing aircraft with more or less acceptable combat value (especially against not the most powerful enemy). Aircraft, which, unlike the Yak-41 (then already 141), did not need to continue to be tested or produced. Who had donors of spare parts (Yak-38). Such an argument, of course, promised nothing. But his absence absolutely guaranteed something …
The concentration of efforts on the Yak-41 ultimately turned out to be harmful for naval aviation.
And it remains only to regret that the political leadership of the USSR did not show sufficient political will to force the Yakovlev Design Bureau to fulfill its obligations.
But the Yak-41 did not have time to make.
Moreover, already, when the fate of the TAVKRs was decided (de facto), this program was quickly financed by the Americans. It was they who received, as a result of its results, a lot of ready-made and good scientific and technical data. By the way, to which in any other case, they would have to come themselves. And for completely different money.
For us today from the Yak-141 "not hot and not cold."
Creation of new "vertical units" does not matter, as well as ships for them. This work turned out to be literally a “thing in itself” for us. And useful only to our enemies. And if the collapse of the USSR and cooperation with the United States in the 80s could not be predicted, then the timing of the creation of such a new aircraft was easily predicted even then.
This is what led to the temptation to get a supersonic VTOL aircraft with outstanding performance.
However, perhaps everything is much simpler.
Not so long ago, one high-ranking officer, who is still involved in getting new ships of the Navy "tickets to life," said this somewhat cynical phrase:
“State awards were not given for the modernization of old aircraft. And for the new - they gave."
But the result is important in the end.
Conclusions for the future
As with shipbuilding, in aviation it is sometimes worth avoiding unnecessary technical risks. This does not mean that it is not worth working on the creation of new aircraft. On the contrary, in aviation, as nowhere else, progress should be ahead of a potential enemy.
But investing in "perspective" must be deliberate. Progress does not exist for its own sake, but for the sake of increasing combat effectiveness. Moreover, in the case of such an organizational and complex system as "aircraft-ship" - to increase the efficiency of the entire system. And within a reasonable time frame.
And it is absolutely certain that if the development of one of the components of such a system is recognized as a dead end (TAVKRs in the 80s), then the investment of resources in its other component ("verticals") should be minimal. It is necessary to squeeze out some kind of combat effectiveness from the existing equipment so that the ships serve with a non-zero value to the end. And that's enough.
So, the MiG-29K is enough for today. And at the start of work on a new ejection carrier instead of Kuznetsov, it is in the part of combat aircraft that the modification of the MiG-29K with a modified airframe will be sufficient. And with the ability to update it onboard avionics in the future. And only after the air groups of new aircraft are formed, one can already think about some kind of aircraft of the future. And, slowly, start doing it.
The example from the Yak-141 shows us that some bugs can look very promising and attractive.
We must learn to abstain from them even when tempted.
