In January 1971, when signing an order to start work on another aircraft project, Pavel Osipovich Sukhoi, one of the best Soviet aircraft designers, hardly knew about the scale of fame and recognition that the new aircraft of his design bureau would receive. And if he did, he did not give out this guess.
The new project, developed as part of the PFI program (promising front-line fighter), received the "proprietary" index T-10. Its history began two years earlier, when the USSR thought about responding to the American program FX (Fighter eXperimental), within the framework of which one of the best American fighters, the F-15 Eagle, was created.
Definition of appearance
The Soviet General Staff determined the requirements for a promising front-line fighter: it must have a long flight range, takeoff and landing characteristics that allow the use of short / damaged runways, maneuverability that ensures superiority in close air combat, a traditional "dog dump", and equipment for long-range missile combat beyond visual visibility.
It is worth dwelling on maneuverability in a little more detail. After in the 1950s, guided missiles firmly entered the arsenal of fighters, the USSR and the United States decided that the era of maneuverable air battles was over - now all battles would take place at long distances, using missile weapons. The Vietnam War showed the fallacy of this point of view: the subsonic MiG-17, devoid of guided weapons, but equipped with a powerful cannon weapon, successfully fought air battles with supersonic fighters, significantly surpassing them in maneuverability. At the same time, the speed of supersonic machines did not always guarantee them the opportunity to leave. The more modern MiG-21s also demonstrated excellent abilities - these machines were much lighter than the main American aircraft and combined supersonic speed with high maneuverability.
As a result, the United States began developing an aircraft that, on the one hand, would not be inferior to their then main fighter F-4 Phantom II in terms of combat load and flight range, and on the other hand, it was able to withstand a maneuverable air battle with the MiG-17 and MiG-21.
The fact that it is too early to write off guns and close combat was soon proved by the conflicts in the Middle East, where MiGs and Mirages converged in maneuverable battles.
The Indian-Pakistani battles added fuel to the fire, where both sides had both relatively outdated machines of the first generations (British Hunters in the Indian Air Force against the American Sabers off Pakistan) and modern supersonic vehicles.
The designers came to practically the same conclusions: both in the USSR and in the USA, increased attention was paid to the maneuverability of new machines. At the same time, there was a modernization of the third generation aircraft, which was supposed to increase their ability to close air combat. Both sides adopted the same concept of manning fighter aircraft: both in the USA and in the USSR, light and heavy fighters of a new generation were simultaneously created. At the same time, the "heavy" machines were not supposed to be inferior to the light ones in maneuverability.
Difficult childbirth
High requirements immediately made the development of the future Su-27 a non-trivial task - not only the design bureau worked on the layout of the future fighter. Specialists from leading aviation research institutes, primarily from the Moscow Region TsAGI and the Novosibirsk SibNIA, made a huge contribution to its creation.
By the way, it is SibNIA that should be thanked for the fact that the Su-27 took place in the form in which we know it. Back in the early 1970s, at the "paper" stage of development, the specialists of this research institute argued that the adopted layout of the T-10 would not allow fulfilling the tactical and technical requirements of the Ministry of Defense and surpassing the F-15 in terms of characteristics. This disappointing diagnosis was confirmed in 1977, when flight tests of the new machine began.
We should pay tribute to the courage of the KB leadership, which by that time was headed by Evgeny Alekseevich Ivanov, who was not afraid to admit the shortcomings of the created machine and insist on its revision. The KB's position was adopted by the Ministry of Defense and the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Central Committee of the CPSU. Work on the T-10 continued.
In 1981, an updated machine, the T-10S, was lifted into the air. The future Su-27 has taken on its shape. Tests have confirmed the superiority of the newest Soviet fighter over the F-15. In 1984, the Su-27 went into production. From that moment to the present day, production plants in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Irkutsk and Novosibirsk have already produced more than 1, 3 thousand Su-27 aircraft and its modifications - Su-30, Su-33, Su-34, Su-35 …
World glory
The main advantage of the Su-27 is its combination of high maneuverability with equally high capabilities for long-range combat. This makes the Sukhoi Design Bureau a formidable enemy at all distances.
Another plus that determined the aircraft's long-term commercial success is its modernization potential: the platform of the 70s of the last century with the installation of modern equipment and weapons received a second wind and can still compete with the best aircraft in the world.
Having entered the market in the early 1990s, the fighter gained popularity, it is used by the air forces of 17 countries, it is deservedly considered one of the best aircraft of its generation. A variety of modifications allows you to find an acceptable option for a wide variety of buyers - from relatively poor countries in Africa, in need of modern and not very expensive aircraft, to India, which is ready to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for ultra-modern machines, saturated with a variety of high-tech equipment and weapons. The Su-27 and its modifications became the best-selling aircraft of the 2000s. Apparently, they will maintain this position in the coming years, especially given the constant slowdown in the development of the new "all-Western" F-35 fighter.
The technological barrier that has faced aircraft developers in the past 20 years and economic difficulties have slowed down the adoption of new generation machines. And in these conditions, it is not surprising that the T-10 platform, like its overseas opponents, continues to develop - plans for the modernization of this machine in a number of countries are designed for the period up to the 2040s and, apparently, this is not the last frontier - serial production aircraft of the T-10 family continues.
