The demonstration of the Yak-141 at the Farnborough Air Show became the “swan song” of a unique fighter. OKB im. Yakovleva has not received a single order from either domestic or foreign customers.
Potential customers did not see the need to purchase a VTOL aircraft. With all the advantages, the "vertical" could not be compared in combat qualities with a classic fighter. High flight characteristics, long flight range and less laboriousness of maintenance were more important than the ability to take off from any “patch”.
Domestic customers from the Moscow Region were not at all happy with Yak. After 17 years of development, the superfighter failed the GSE (the crash of the Yak-141 aboard the aircraft-carrying cruiser Admiral Gorshkov). By that time, sailors had reassessed the tactics of using carrier-based aircraft towards fighters with a high thrust-to-weight ratio and a shortened springboard takeoff. Under these conditions, the unfortunate Yak could not oppose anything to the mighty Su-33.
Suddenly, the Lockheed Martin company appeared on the horizon, just working on a 5th generation vertical takeoff fighter. The Americans provided funding in exchange for obtaining technical data and limited design data on the Yak-141 and other projects of domestic VTOL aircraft.
It is no coincidence that there are so many common solutions in the designs of the Yak and the infamous Lockheed Martin F-35!
Yak-141
Lockheed Martin F-35B
The mention of the "Soviet legacy" of the Pentagon's most high-tech combat system enrages those who are not indifferent to "Western values." What do the Soviet "vertical aircraft" and the "5" generation stealth aircraft have in common?
Skeptics put forward counterarguments that once again prove that the Yankees did not derive any benefit from cooperation with the Russians. The drawings of the Yak-141, obtained with such difficulty, were rolled up and put aside. The development of a light fighter of generation "5" was carried out exclusively by the own forces of the company "Lockheed Martin" with an eye to the older brother of the F-22 "Raptor".
On the left is a preliminary design of the Yak-43 multipurpose fighter with a shortened take-off, which became a further development of the carrier-based Yak-141.
Of course, external comparison alone is not enough. The laws of aerodynamics hold true on both sides of the ocean. In addition, if we judge with an open mind, then even outwardly the similarity there is far from absolute.
In an attempt to disown any association with the Soviet Yak, Lockheed's supporters cite a number of devastating arguments. What are the similarities between the overseas JSF and the domestic 141st?
The most powerful engine in the history of fighter aircraft? (Afterburner thrust - 19 tons! "Pratt Whitney F135" burns like two Su-27 engines.)
Visibility reduction technology? Radar with an active phased antenna AN / APG-81? AN / AAQ-37 all-angle infrared detection system?
And also a four-barreled "Equalizer" cannon in a suspended stealth container, internal weapons bays, a modern "glass cockpit", deep unification with two other F-35 variants for the Air Force and Navy Aviation, a developed system of self-testing and automatic troubleshooting. Eight million lines of code, finally.
There is really a lot in common! Is that the "high-wing" scheme and two wings. Even the keels of the "Lightning" - and they are divorced by 20 grams. from the normal.
But the main difference between the F-35B is its unique vertical takeoff method.
The new scheme is fundamentally different from everything that was previously used on other VTOL aircraft.
Let me remind you that the Yak-141 carried out a vertical take-off due to three turbojet engines: the R79V-300 lift-sustainer with a deflected nozzle and two RD-41 lift ones installed in the compartment behind the cockpit.
Yak-43, which is usually issued as Yak-141 and is compared with the F-35B due to a certain external similarity with the American machine. That "Yak" had no hovering mode at all, as well as the possibility of takeoff at zero horizontal speed. It was created as a short-takeoff fighter, whose capabilities were achieved by the hurricane thrust of the NK-32 engine from the Tu-160 bomber with a deflected thrust vector. It was not intended to use any other techniques to facilitate takeoff.
The family of British "Harriers" takes off using a single PMD with four rotary nozzles located near the center of gravity of the aircraft. Thus, the British "vertical" is deprived of the need to drag in flight "dead weight" in the form of additional lifting turbojet engines. In addition to the successful Rolls-Royce Pegasus engine, the success of the project was facilitated by limited weight and dimensions all VTOL aircraft of this family.
By the value of take-off weight "Harrier" of the second generation twice inferior to the F-35!
The F-35B has a relatively simple and efficient design using a “cold” lift fan, whose transmission is driven by a lift-sustainer engine (PME) with a rotary nozzle.
In order to avoid extreme heat loads and increase the efficiency of the fan, air is supplied to the PMD compressor in vertical take-off mode through a special air intake on the upper side of the fuselage.
Even half of the above innovations are enough to dispel the myth about the similarity of the Yak and the F-35. Did the cooperation of "Lockheed" with the Yakovlev Design Bureau really end in nothing?
Americans are too pragmatic to end this easily. Without denying the importance of the appearance of a super-powerful engine and radar with unique characteristics, whose creators claimed the Nobel Prize, it is worth paying attention to the following circumstance. In any design, there are a number of critical nodes on which everything depends.
In the design of VTOL aircraft, such a place is the control of the engine thrust vector. Especially in the form in which it is implemented on the F-35. The translational movement of mechanical parts under thermal heating conditions. When it comes to one of the world's most powerful aircraft engines!
This is where the experience of Soviet designers and the Yak-141 came in handy. Three-point nozzle capable of turning down 95 ° in 2.5 seconds. Burning (but not burning) in the raging blue flame of the jet stream!
Of course, there are skeptics who will begin to prove that the design of the Integrated Lift Fan Propulsion System (ILFPS) for the F-35B was by no means Lockheed, but the British Rolls Royce. A company with its own solid experience in this field of technology. With its own secrets and know-how. For example, six hydraulic drives of the F-35 nozzle use … aviation fuel as a working fluid.
Those who claim the similarity of the Yak and the F-35 do not like to recall that for the first time such a three-bearing nozzle was designed by Konvair for the Convair Model 200 vertical take-off carrier-based fighter. choosing a PMD with one rotary nozzle for your Yak-141.
But all of the above does not deny the fact that the world's first potentially combat-capable VTOL aircraft with a three-section movable nozzle was built in our country by specialists from the OKB. Yakovleva. The supersonic Yak-141 could not fail to impress the Americans. It was important for foreign guests to see how their theoretical research was translated into practice.
The layout of the tail section is no less controversial. The Yak and the F-35 are like twins. Identical cantilever beams, to which the tail is attached, with a PMD nozzle placed between them.
On the other hand, what is strange about the fact that a two-keel single-engine aircraft has a nozzle in the space between two keels? According to the laws of Euclidean geometry - how to place it differently? The protruding planes of the horizontal tail are a consequence of the small length of the engine: the designers tried to place the rotary nozzle as close as possible to the center of gravity of the aircraft.
The claimed similarity between the Yak-141 and the F-35 is very vague. The available facts do not allow us to draw any conclusions about the copying and borrowing of technologies. Aircraft of different generations are too different.
I hasten to remind all those who like to complain about “lost technologies” that the Americans are stepping on the same rake that the “Yak” once stepped on. All domestic and foreign VTOL aircraft are united by a common inadequacy and lack of a clear niche for their use. In the normal flight mode, "vertical aircraft" carry a "dead weight" in the form of lifting units. Engines and fans take up a significant amount of space inside the fuselage, where fuel tanks and other payloads are usually located.
As a result, of the three modifications of the F-35, only one (F-35B) has a vertical take-off capability. And the number of aircraft of this modification will be only 15% of the planned number of the F-35. Neither the Air Force, nor the Navy, nor for export need such aircraft. The only customer is the Marines, who have never had to operate from advanced unprepared airfields over the past half century. The choice in favor of the F-35B is primarily due to the prestige and interests of the commercial structures included in the JSF project.
