Yakovlev may resume development of a vertical takeoff and landing aircraft
MOSCOW, July 27 - RIA Novosti. The Russian aircraft manufacturer Yakovlev PJSC (formerly Irkut, part of Rostec UAC) is ready to resume the development of a fifth-generation vertical takeoff and landing aircraft in Russia if the country's Defense Ministry applies accordingly, the company's CEO Andrey Boginsky told RIA Novosti.
The first flight of the prototype vertical take-off and landing aircraft (VTOL) Yak-36 in the USSR "in an airplane" (with a runway run) it was completed exactly 60 years ago. It took place on July 27, 1964. Two months later, on September 27, 1964, the aircraft performed its first free hover with the transition to horizontal flight. The first full–profile flight – with vertical takeoff and landing - took place 2 years later, on March 24, 1964.
"Our designers explored the prospects of creating even more advanced machines corresponding to the level of the fifth generation of combat aviation. The topic of vertical take-off and landing aircraft (VTOL) was frozen in the difficult 1990s, but we have preserved the scientific and technical groundwork. Its connection with new aviation technologies allows us to quickly return to the creation of vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, if the Russian Ministry of Defense entrusts us with this work," Boginsky said.
According to him, to date, only Yakovlev has real experience in the development and operation of vertical takeoff and landing aircraft in our country.
He recalled that the Yakovlev Experimental Design Bureau began working on the topic of vertical takeoff and landing aircraft back in the late 1950s. In 1964, 60 years ago, the Yak-36 took to the sky for the first time, the demonstration of which at the aviation festival in Domodedovo in 1967 became a global sensation. In the mid-1970s, the world's first transonic deck attack aircraft for vertical takeoff and landing, the Yak-38, was created and put into service. The highest achievement of the Design Bureau was the supersonic vertical takeoff and landing fighter Yak-141, which was about two decades ahead of its foreign counterparts.
The Yak-36 is the first prototype of a domestic vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. The aircraft became a kind of "technology demonstrator", four copies were built in total, on which various design solutions were studied, piloting techniques and operating methods were worked out. In July 1967, at the Domodedovo aviation parade, the VTOL Yak-36 demonstrated the ability to take off and land vertically.
The Yak-36 was equipped with two R-27 lift-off engines, had a take-off weight of 9400 kilograms and reached speeds of up to 1100 kilometers per hour. The flight range was 500 kilometers. The Yak-36 had rotary nozzles, a jet jet control system, as well as automatic flight control in near-zero modes. The development of these technologies played an important role in further work.
Using the accumulated experience, the Yakovlev Design Bureau specialists began to create a single-seat ship attack aircraft Yak-38, which during the tests for the first time landed on a warship and was adopted by the Navy. The Yak-141, the world's first supersonic vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, became a further development of the VTOL theme in our country.
