1.
Aeroprakt A-22 Foxbat
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The Aeroprakt A-22 Foxbat is a Ukrainian two-seat, high-wing, tricycle gear ultralight aircraft that was designed by Yuri Yakovlev and is manufactured by Aeroprakt. In the United States the A-22 is referred to as the Valor, while in the UK and it has also been marketed as the Vision. The Aeroprakt A-22 is supplied either as ready-to-fly factory built aircraft, or as a kit, the kit can be built in about 500 man-hours. The A-22 meets the definition of an FAI microlight, Aeroprakt of Kiev began design of the A-22 in February 1990, with the first prototype making its maiden flight on 21 October 1996, and a German-certified version entering production in 1999. The A-22s structure is almost completely all-metal with only the engine cowling, wing fillets, the wings and control surfaces are fabric covered. The aircraft has excellent visibility, due to the amount of glazing, including convex doors. The A-22 uses a 3-axis control system, giving the full control over the aircraft. The A-22 uses flaperons in place of ailerons and flaps, giving a speed of 52 km/h with the flaperons fully down. The kit comes with either the 80 hp Rotax 912UL or optionally the 100 hp Rotax 912ULS, the 85 hp Jabiru 2200 can also be fitted. Originally the A-22 came fitted with a 40-litre inboard fuel tank behind the seats although later models have wing tanks holding 37.5 litres per side, the propeller is a 3-blade composite ground adjustable KievProp. Dual controls are standard, using a single central Y yoke or optionally twin yoke control system, a-22L2 Version built in the Ukraine with a higher gross weight of 600 kg for the landplane and 650 kg for the seaplane. A-22LS Light-sport version for the American market with a gross weight of 600 kg for the landplane and 650 kg for the seaplane. Janes All The Worlds Aircraft 2003–2004
2.
Interceptor aircraft
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An interceptor aircraft, or simply interceptor, is a type of fighter aircraft designed specifically to prevent successful missions by enemy aircraft, particularly bombers and reconnaissance aircraft. For daytime operations, conventional fighters normally fill the interceptor role, few aircraft can be considered dedicated daytime interceptors. Night fighters and bomber destroyers are, by definition, interceptors of the heavy type, examples of classic interceptors of this era include the F-106 Delta Dart, Sukhoi Su-15 and English Electric Lightning. Dedicated interceptor designs became rare, with the widely used examples designed after the 1960s being the Tornado F3, Mikoyan MiG-25 Foxbat. The first dedicated interceptor squadrons were formed up during World War I in order to defend London against attacks by Zeppelins, early units generally used aircraft withdrawn from front-line service, notably the Sopwith Pup. They were told about their targets prior to take-off from a centralized command center in the Horse Guards building. The Pup proved to have too low performance to intercept the Gotha G. IV bombers. Before Second World War started, offensive bomber speeds had improved so much that it appeared that the mission would be effectively impossible. The visual and acoustic detection had a range on the order of a few miles. This could be addressed by a cover of aircraft. The conclusion at the time was that the bomber will always get through, the introduction of radar upset this equation. Radar was able to detect aircraft at long range, on the order of 100 miles even for early systems and this provided enough time for fighters to start up, climb to altitude and chase down their targets. The introduction of jet power increased speeds from perhaps 200 miles per hour to 600 miles per hour in a single step, although radars also improved in performance, the gap between offense and defense was dramatically reduced. Large attacks could so confuse the defenses ability to communicate information to the pilots that the method of manual ground controlled interception was increasingly seen as inadequate. In the United States, this led to the introduction of the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment to computerize this task. In the 1950s, during the Cold War, an interceptor force was crucial for the great powers. Hence for a period of time they faced rapid development. Thus, the doctrine of mutually assured destruction replaced the trend of defense strengthening and their utility waned as the role became blurred into the role of the heavy air superiority fighters dominant in military thinking at the time
3.
Reconnaissance aircraft
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A reconnaissance aircraft is a manned or unmanned military aircraft designed, or adapted, to carry out aerial reconnaissance. Their roles are to collect intelligence, signals intelligence, and measurement. During the Napoleonic Wars and Franco-Prussian War, balloons were used for reconnaissance by the French. In World War I, aircraft were deployed during the phases in reconnaissance roles to aid ground forces. Aerial reconnaissance was carried out by versions of standard fighters and bombers equipped with cameras. Today, much of the role has passed over to satellites. This was proven by the use by Israel and by the Desert Storm operation by the United States. King Hawes, Lt Col, USAF Bonnier Corporation, army-Lockheed YO-3A Silent Airplane in Vietnam
4.
Russian Aircraft Corporation MiG
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Russian Aircraft Corporation MiG, or RSK MiG, is a Russian aerospace joint stock company. Formerly Mikoyan-and-Gurevich Design Bureau, then simply Mikoyan, it is an aircraft design bureau. Its head office is in Begovoy District, Northern Administrative Okrug and it was formerly a Soviet design bureau, and was founded by Artyom Mikoyan and Mikhail Gurevich as Mikoyan and Gurevich, with the bureau prefix MiG. Upon Gurevichs death in 1976, Gurevichs name was dropped from the name of the bureau, the firm also operates several machine-building and design bureaus, including the Kamov helicopter plant. MiG aircraft are a staple of the Soviet and Russian air forces, and they have been used by the militaries of China, North Korea, and North Vietnam in aerial confrontations with American and allied forces, and form part of the air forces of many Arab nations. In 2006, the Russian government merged 100% of Mikoyan shares with Ilyushin, Irkut, Sukhoi, Tupolev, specifically, Mikoyan and Sukhoi were placed within the same operating unit. MiG-1 -1940 MiG-3 -1941 MiG-9 -1946, MiGs first jet MiG-15 -1949 MiG-17 -1952 MiG-19 -1955, miG-21 -1956, multirole fighter that would be widely exported and become the backbone of dozens of air forces. MiG-23 -1967 MiG-25 -1965, interceptor fighter and recon/strike aircraft, miG-27 -1970, a ground-attack aircraft derived from the MiG-23. MiG-29 -1977, a multirole/air superiority fighter, miG-29K -1988, multirole/air superiority fighter and the naval variant of the MiG-29M. MiG-31 -1975, interceptor. 44/1.42, 1986–2000 MiG LFI project MiG-105 Spiral,1965 MiG-33 Mikoyan LMFS MiG Skat MiGs follow the convention of using odd numbers for fighter aircraft. However, this convention is maintained not directly by MiG. The original designations for MiG aircraft are 2- or 3-digit numbers,1.44 or 1.42 is an example of original naming. Although the MiG-8 and MiG-110 exist, they are not fighters, the MiG-105 Spiral was designed as an orbital interceptor, contemporaneous with the U. S. Air Forces cancelled X-20 Dyna-Soar. Aircraft industry of Russia List of military aircraft of the Soviet Union and the CIS Migavia. ru – official site of MiG OKB successor enterprise Russian Aviation Museum, MiG Pages
5.
Soviet Air Defence Forces
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The Soviet Air Defence Forces was the air defence branch of the Soviet Armed Forces. It continued being a branch of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation from 1991 to 1998. Unlike Western air defence forces, V-PVO was a branch of the military itself, separate from the Soviet Air Force. During the Soviet period it was ranked third in importance of the Soviet services, behind the Strategic Rocket Forces. Preparations for creation of the air forces started in 1932. At the outbreak of war, air forces were in the midst of rearmament. Anti-aircraft artillery teams had few of the latest 37 mm automatic and 85 mm guns, moreover, the troops were deficient in Yak-1 s and MiG-3s, 46% of the fleet were obsolete aircraft. Increased rates of production were initiated to provide the new equipment. To this end, the formation of parts of the IA, IN, anti-aircraft machine gun, a classic example of a major political organization of defence and industrial center was the defence of Moscow. It was carried out by the 1st Air Defence Corps and the 6th Fighter Aviation Corps PVO, the presence of such large forces, skillful management organisation foiled enemy attempts to inflict massive air strikes. Only 2. 6% of the number of Axis aircraft flew in the outskirts of Moscow as a result of their efforts. Air defence forces defending Moscow destroyed 738 enemy aircraft, in addition, assaults by the 6th Fighter Aviation Corps inflicted heavy blows, destroyed 567 enemy aircraft on the ground. Overall, the Air Defence Forces destroyed 1,305 aircraft, on November 9,1941, the post of the Commander of the Air Defence Forces was created, and Major General Mikhail Gromadin was appointed. In January 1942, to improve the interaction of forces and air defence systems, in April 1942, the Moscow Air Defence Front was founded, and the Leningrad and Baku Air Defence Armies were later raised. There were the first operational formations of the Air Defence Forces, in June 1943, the Office of the Commander of Air Defence Forces of the country was disbanded. In the Far East in March 1945, three air armies were established, Maritime, Amur and Baikal. In carrying out its tasks, the PVO destroyed 7,313 German aircraft, of which 4,168 and 3,145 were targeted by the IA antiaircraft artillery, machine guns, during the war PVO formations were organised as Air Defence Fronts and Air Defence Armies. PVO Fronts normally covered airspace over several ground Army Fronts, these should not be confused with each other, in May 1954, it was established as equal to the other branches of the Soviet Armed Forces, receiving its first commander-in-chief, Marshal of the Soviet Union Leonid Govorov
6.
Indian Air Force
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The Indian Air Force is the air arm of the Indian armed forces. It is the fourth largest air force in terms of both personnel and aircraft. Its primary responsibility is to secure Indian airspace and to conduct aerial warfare during a conflict and it was officially established on 8 October 1932 as an auxiliary air force of the British Empire and the prefix Royal was added in 1945 in recognition of its services during World War II. After India became independent from the United Kingdom in 1947, the Royal Indian Air Force served the Dominion of India, since independence, the IAF has been involved in four wars with neighbouring Pakistan and one with the Peoples Republic of China. Other major operations undertaken by the IAF include Operation Vijay, Operation Meghdoot, Operation Cactus, apart from conflicts, the IAF has been an active participant in United Nations peacekeeping missions. The President of India serves as Supreme Commander of the IAF, the Chief of Air Staff, an air chief marshal, is a four-star officer and commands the Air Force. There is never more than one serving ACM at any time in the IAF. The IAF provides close air support to the Indian Army troops in the battlefield and also provides strategic, IAF also provides infantry and artillery transportations or secondary Airlift for the Indian Army. The IAF provided extensive assistance to relief operations during natural calamities such as the Gujarat cyclone in 1998, the IAF also provides assistance to other countries during relief activities such as Operation Rainbow in Sri Lanka. On 1 April 1933, the IAF commissioned its first squadron, No.1 Squadron, with four Westland Wapiti biplanes, the Indian pilots were led by RAF Commanding officer Flight Lieutenant Cecil Bouchier. During World War II, the IAF played a role in blocking the advance of the Japanese army in Burma. It also carried out missions against the Japanese airbases at Mae Hong Son, Chiang Mai. The IAF was mainly involved in Strike, Close Air Support, Aerial reconnaissance, Bomber Escort, RAF Pilots were embedded in IAF units and vice versa to gain combat experience. IAF pilots participated in air operations in Europe as part of the RAF, during the war, the IAF went through a phase of steady expansion. New aircraft, including the US built Vultee Vengeance, Douglas DC-3, in recognition of the services rendered by the IAF, King George VI conferred the prefix Royal in 1945. Thereafter the IAF was referred to as the Royal Indian Air Force, in 1950, when India became a republic, the prefix was dropped and it reverted to being the Indian Air Force. After it became independent from the British Empire in 1947, British India was partitioned into the new states of the Dominion of India, along the lines of the geographical partition, the assets of the air force were divided between the new countries. The RIAF Roundel was changed to an interim Chakra roundel derived from the Ashoka Chakra, around the same time, conflict broke out between them over the control of the princely state of Jammu & Kashmir
7.
Algerian Air Force
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The Algerian Air Force, is the aerial arm of the Algerian Peoples Military. Algerian military aviation was created to aid the fight of the People National Army against the French occupying forces. During this period, the French colonial army had started the lines of Challe and Morrice used to isolate the ALN fighters inside the country and to stop coming from Tunisia. Then came the idea to train transport and helicopter pilots to ensure supplying the national liberation army, training was one of the major preoccupations of the ALN/FLN leaders. Military aviation had a core of pilots and ASDFDASF technicians after independence, the Direction of Air was born and the first air units of independent Algeria were set up i. e. a flight of helicopters that was acquired during the revolution, and a flight of combat aircraft. The Algerians authorities sent trainees to friendly countries such Egypt, Syria, Iraq, China and USSR, during this first decade, immediately after independence, the Algerian Air Force acquired planes from the USSR, mainly MiG-15UTI and MiG-17, and some donated by Egypt. When border clashes with Morocco occurred in 1963, the Algerian government decided to reinforce the capacities of the army, MiG-17F light bomber, MiG-21 F13 interceptor, Su-7BMK fighter/bomber and some An-12 airlifters were purchased from the USSR. Mi-1 and Mi-4 helicopters were also deployed, during the Yom Kippur War, the Algerian Air Force participated in the conflict under the unified Egyptian military commandement. MiG-21F-13s and newer MiG-21PFs were mainly used to protect the Cairo region, MiG-17F and Su-7BMK aircraft also participated in the war, mostly in strafing and bombing missions. In October 1973 two Su-7BMK, one MiG-21 and a number of MiG-17Fs were lost, in 1976, Algerian Air Force planes returned from Egypt to their home bases in Algeria. The High Command dissociated the Air Defense of the territory from the Department of the Air Force, the organization is made of the following structures, A central command assisted by a general staff and an inspectorate, an arms division, a department of support and specialized offices. Air commands in the military regions, Air bases, schools, training centers, support institutions, equipment renovation enterprises and defense and control units. During this period few changes occurred in the aircraft inventory of the Algerian Air Force. Ten Su-24MK were received from the USSR and the MiG-17F was phased out, the Air Force purchased a large number of MiG-29S from Belarus and Ukraine from 1999 to 2003. At least 25 Su-24MK were also received in the same period, after the large military deal concluded with Russia during March 2006, Algeria ordered 28 Su-30MKA,16 Yak-130A and 34 MiG-29SMT. In 2008 the MiG-29 SMT contract was cancelled and the planes delivered were returned to Russia, while the current front-line fleet primarily consists of Russian-origin aircraft such as the Sukhoi Su-30 and the MiG-29, Algeria has expressed an interest in acquiring aircraft from China. Algeria has been seen as an operator of the Chinese 4th-Generation JF-17 Thunder fighter Project. The air force has two regiments of Fusiliers Commandos de lAir, primarily base defence troops but which have taken part int anti-terrorism operations
8.
Mikoyan MiG-31
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The Mikoyan MiG-31 is a supersonic interceptor aircraft developed for use by the Soviet Air Forces. The aircraft was designed by the Mikoyan design bureau as a replacement for the earlier MiG-25 Foxbat, the MiG-31 is based on, the MiG-31 has the distinction of being one of the fastest combat jets in the world. It continues to be operated by the Russian Air Force and the Kazakhstan Air Force following the end of the Cold War, the Russian Defence Ministry expects the MiG-31 to remain in service until at least 2030. The MiG-25 made substantial design sacrifices in order to achieve speed, altitude. It lacks maneuverability at speeds and is difficult to fly at low altitudes. The MiG-25s speed is limited to Mach 2.83 but it could reach a speed of Mach 3.2 or more with the risk of engine damage. Development of the MiG-25s replacement began with the Ye-155MP prototype which first flew on 16 September 1975, although it bore a superficial resemblance to the MiG-25, it had a longer fuselage to accommodate the radar operators cockpit and was in many respects a new design. An important development was the radar, capable of both look-up and look-down/shoot-down engagement, as well as multiple target tracking. This gave the Soviet Union an interceptor able to engage the most likely Western intruders at long range, like its MiG-25 predecessor, the introduction of the MiG-31 was surrounded by early speculation and misinformation concerning its design and abilities. The West learned of the new interceptor from Lieutenant Viktor Belenko, Belenko described an upcoming Super Foxbat with two seats and an ability to intercept cruise missiles. According to his testimony, the new interceptor was to have air intakes similar to the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-23, serial production of the MiG-31 began in 1979. The MiG-31 is able to combat effectiveness despite the potential use of active and passive radar jammers. A total of 519 MiG-31s was produced of which 349 baseline models were produced at the Sokol plant between 1976 and 1988, the second production batch of 101 MiG-31DZs was produced between 1989 and 1991. The final batch of 69 aircraft was produced between 1990 and 1994, of this final batch,50 were retained by the Kazakhstan Air Force after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Of the baseline models,40 airframes were upgraded to MiG-31BS standard, a project to upgrade the Russian MiG-31 fleet to the MiG-31BM standard began in 2010,100 aircraft are to be upgraded to MiG-31BM standard by 2020. Russian Federation Defence Ministry chief Colonel Yuri Balyko has claimed that the upgrade will increase the effectiveness of the aircraft several times over. 18 MIG-31BMs were delivered in 2014, the Russian military will receive more than 130 upgraded MiG-31BMs, and the first 24 aircraft have already been delivered, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borisov told reporters on 9 April 2015. Russia plans to start development of a replacement for the MiG-31 by 2019, the aircraft will be called PAK-DP
9.
Russian language
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Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi
10.
Supersonic aircraft
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A supersonic aircraft is an aircraft able to fly faster than the speed of sound. Supersonic aircraft were developed in the half of the twentieth century and have been used almost entirely for research. Only two, Concorde and the Tupolev Tu-144, ever entered service for use as airliners. Fighter jets are the most common example of supersonic aircraft, the aerodynamics of supersonic flight is called compressible flow because of the compression associated with the shock waves or sonic boom created by any object travelling faster than sound. Aircraft flying at speeds above Mach 5 are often referred to as hypersonic aircraft, the first aircraft to fly supersonically in level flight was the American Bell X-1 experimental plane which was powered by a 6000-lb thrust rocket powered by liquid oxygen and ethyl alcohol. The majority of aircraft have been military or experimental aircraft. In the 1960s and 70s, many design studies for supersonic airliners were done, however political, environmental and economic obstacles and one fatal Concorde crash prevented them from being used to their full commercial potential and these aircraft are no longer flying. Supersonic flight brings with it substantial technical challenges, as the aerodynamics of flight are dramatically different from those of subsonic flight. In particular, aerodynamic drag rises sharply as the passes the transonic regime, requiring much greater engine power. To keep drag low, wing span must be limited, which reduces the aerodynamic efficiency when flying slowly. Since a supersonic aircraft must take off and land at a slow speed. However, swinging affects the longitudinal trim of the aircraft and the mechanism adds weight and cost. Another technique that has used is a delta-wing design, such as used on Concorde. This has the advantage that it can attain a high angle of attack at low speeds, other kinds of wings are the Short thin wing, Sweep back wing and the swept forward wing. Another problem is the heat generated by friction as the air flows over the aircraft, most supersonic designs use aluminium alloys such as Duralumin, which are cheap and easy to work but lose their strength quickly at high temperatures. This limits maximum speed to around Mach 2.2, some early supersonic aircraft, including the first, relied on rocket power to provide the necessary thrust, although rockets burn a lot of fuel and so flight times were short. Early turbojets were more fuel-efficient but did not have enough thrust, the invention of the afterburner, in which extra fuel is burned in the jet exhaust, made these mixed powerplant types obsolete. The turbofan engine passes additional cold air around the core, further increasing its fuel efficiency
11.
Flight airspeed record
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An air speed record is the highest airspeed attained by an aircraft of a particular class. The rules for all official records are defined by Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. Speed records are divided into classes with sub-divisions. There are three classes of aircraft, landplanes, seaplanes, and amphibians, then within these classes, there are still further sub-divisions for piston-engined, turbojet, turboprop, and rocket-engined aircraft. Within each of groups, records are defined for speed over a straight course. Records in gray font color are unofficial, including unconfirmed or unpublicized secrets, the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird holds the official Air Speed Record for a manned airbreathing jet aircraft with a speed of 3,530 km/h. It was capable of taking off and landing unassisted on conventional runways, the record was set on 28 July 1976 by Eldon W. Joersz and George T. Morgan Jr. near Beale Air Force Base, California, US. SR-71 pilot Brian Shul reported in The Untouchables that he flew in excess of Mach 3.5 on April 15,1986, over Libya in order to avoid a missile. Whereas these were both demilitarised, modified fighters, the fastest piston-engined aeroplane in stock condition was the German Dornier Do 335 Pfeil, with a maximum speed of 474 mph in level flight. The unofficial record for fastest piston-engined aeroplane is held by a Supermarine Spitfire Mk IXX, the last new speed record ratified before the outbreak of World War II was set on 26 April 1939 with a Me 209 V1, at 755 km/h. The chaos, and secrecy, of World War II meant that new speed breakthroughs were not publicized nor ratified, in October 1941, an unofficial speed record of 1004 km/h was secretly set by a Messerschmitt Me 163 AV4 rocket aircraft. Continued research during the war extended the secret, unofficial speed record to 1130 km/h by July 1944, the first new official record in the post-war period was achieved by a Gloster Meteor in November 1945, at 976 km/h. The first aircraft to exceed the unofficial October 1941 record of the Me 163 AV4 was the Douglas Skystreak, the July 1944 unofficial record of the Me 163B V18 was officially surpassed in November 1947, when Chuck Yeager flew the Bell X-1 to 891 mph. The official speed record for a seaplane moved by piston engine - still valid today - is 709.209 km/h, from the seaplane Macchi-Castoldi M. C.72, attained on October 23,1934, by Francesco Agello. It was equipped with the Fiat AS.6 engine developing a power of 3100 hp at 3300 rpm, the original Macchi-Castoldi MC72 MM.181 seaplane that holds the record is kept in the Air Force Museum at Vigna di Valle in Italy. The fastest manned atmospheric vehicle of all time was the Apollo Command Module, while different from most peoples idea of an aircraft, the capsule did have a lift to drag ratio of around 0.368, which was used to control the flight trajectory. Flying between any two airports allow a number of combinations, so setting a speed record is fairly easy with an ordinary aircraft. List of vehicle speed records Lockheed X-7 - Mach 4.31 in the 1950s World record Allward, modern Combat Aircraft 4, F-86 Sabre
12.
Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
13.
Mikhail Gurevich (aircraft designer)
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Mikhail Iosifovich Gurevich was a Soviet Jewish aircraft designer, a partner who co-founded the famous MiG military aviation bureau. MiG is an abbreviation of their surnames, the bureau now simply known as Mikoyan, is famous for its fighter aircraft, rapid interceptors and multi-role combat aircraft which were staples of the Soviet Air Forces throughout the Cold War. The main focus in designing the aircraft were on high speed, fast ascent, the bureau designed 170 projects of which 94 were made in series. In total 45000 aircraft of MiG brand have been manufactured domestically, over 14000 MiG fighters have been produced under licence abroad. The last plane which Gurevich personally worked on before his retirement was the Mig-25, after a year, for participation in revolutionary activities, he was expelled from the university and from the region and continued his education in Montpellier University. In the summer 1914 Gurevich was visiting his home when World War I broke out and this and later the Russian Civil War interrupted his education. In 1925 he graduated from the Aviation faculty of Kharkov Technological Institute and worked as an engineer of the state company Heat, in 1929 Gurevich moved to Moscow to pursue the career of aviation designer. Soviet design was an affair, organised in so-called OKBs or design bureaus. In 1937 Gurevich headed a team in the Polikarpov Design Bureau. In late 1939 they created the Mikoyan-Gurevich Design Bureau, with Gurevich in the position of Vice Chief Designer, and after 1957 as its Chief Designer and this is quite remarkable, considering that he never joined the Communist Party. In 1940 Mikoyan and Gurevich designed and built the high-altitude MiG-1 fighter plane, the improved MiG-3 fighter aircraft was widely used during World War II. In the years after the war, the two designed the first Soviet jet fighters, including the first supersonic models, the last model Gurevich worked on was the MiG-25 interceptor, which is among the fastest military aircraft ever to enter service. Their main focus was on speed, fast ascent. For his winning designs, Mikhail Gurevich won several major Soviet awards, five State Stalin Prizes The Order of Lenin The title of Hero of Socialist Labor Artem Mikoyan for a much more elaborate article about their common work at the MiG design bureau
14.
Mach number
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In fluid dynamics, the Mach number is a dimensionless quantity representing the ratio of flow velocity past a boundary to the local speed of sound. M = u c, where, M is the Mach number, u is the flow velocity with respect to the boundaries. By definition, Mach 1 is equal to the speed of sound, Mach 0.65 is 65% of the speed of sound, and Mach 1.35 is 35% faster than the speed of sound. The local speed of sound, and thereby the Mach number, depends on the condition of the surrounding medium, the Mach number is primarily used to determine the approximation with which a flow can be treated as an incompressible flow. The medium can be a gas or a liquid, the boundary can be the boundary of an object immersed in the medium, or of a channel such as a nozzle, diffusers or wind tunnels channeling the medium. As the Mach number is defined as the ratio of two speeds, it is a dimensionless number, if M <0. 2–0.3 and the flow is quasi-steady and isothermal, compressibility effects will be small and simplified incompressible flow equations can be used. The Mach number is named after Austrian physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach, as the Mach number is a dimensionless quantity rather than a unit of measure, with Mach, the number comes after the unit, the second Mach number is Mach 2 instead of 2 Mach. This is somewhat reminiscent of the modern ocean sounding unit mark, which was also unit-first. In the decade preceding faster-than-sound human flight, aeronautical engineers referred to the speed of sound as Machs number, never Mach 1, Mach number is useful because the fluid behaves in a similar manner at a given Mach number, regardless of other variables. As modeled in the International Standard Atmosphere, dry air at sea level, standard temperature of 15 °C. For example, the atmosphere model lapses temperature to −56.5 °C at 11,000 meters altitude. In the following table, the regimes or ranges of Mach values are referred to, generally, NASA defines high hypersonic as any Mach number from 10 to 25, and re-entry speeds as anything greater than Mach 25. Aircraft operating in this include the Space Shuttle and various space planes in development. Flight can be classified in six categories, For comparison. At transonic speeds, the field around the object includes both sub- and supersonic parts. The transonic period begins when first zones of M >1 flow appear around the object, in case of an airfoil, this typically happens above the wing. Supersonic flow can decelerate back to only in a normal shock. As the speed increases, the zone of M >1 flow increases towards both leading and trailing edges
15.
Radar
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Radar is an object-detection system that uses radio waves to determine the range, angle, or velocity of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, Radio waves from the transmitter reflect off the object and return to the receiver, giving information about the objects location and speed. Radar was developed secretly for military use by several nations in the period before, the term RADAR was coined in 1940 by the United States Navy as an acronym for RAdio Detection And Ranging or RAdio Direction And Ranging. The term radar has since entered English and other languages as a common noun, high tech radar systems are associated with digital signal processing, machine learning and are capable of extracting useful information from very high noise levels. Other systems similar to make use of other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. One example is lidar, which uses ultraviolet, visible, or near infrared light from lasers rather than radio waves, as early as 1886, German physicist Heinrich Hertz showed that radio waves could be reflected from solid objects. In 1895, Alexander Popov, an instructor at the Imperial Russian Navy school in Kronstadt. The next year, he added a spark-gap transmitter, in 1897, while testing this equipment for communicating between two ships in the Baltic Sea, he took note of an interference beat caused by the passage of a third vessel. In his report, Popov wrote that this phenomenon might be used for detecting objects, the German inventor Christian Hülsmeyer was the first to use radio waves to detect the presence of distant metallic objects. In 1904, he demonstrated the feasibility of detecting a ship in dense fog and he obtained a patent for his detection device in April 1904 and later a patent for a related amendment for estimating the distance to the ship. He also got a British patent on September 23,1904 for a radar system. It operated on a 50 cm wavelength and the radar signal was created via a spark-gap. In 1915, Robert Watson-Watt used radio technology to advance warning to airmen. Watson-Watt became an expert on the use of direction finding as part of his lightning experiments. As part of ongoing experiments, he asked the new boy, Arnold Frederic Wilkins, Wilkins made an extensive study of available units before selecting a receiver model from the General Post Office. Its instruction manual noted that there was fading when aircraft flew by, in 1922, A. Hoyt Taylor and Leo C. Taylor submitted a report, suggesting that this might be used to detect the presence of ships in low visibility, eight years later, Lawrence A. Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa followed prewar Great Britain, and Hungary had similar developments during the war. Hugon, began developing a radio apparatus, a part of which was installed on the liner Normandie in 1935
16.
Air-to-air missile
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An air-to-air missile is a missile fired from an aircraft for the purpose of destroying another aircraft. AAMs are typically powered by one or more rocket motors, usually solid fueled, ramjet engines, as used on the Meteor are emerging as propulsion that will enable future medium-range missiles to maintain higher average speed across their engagement envelope. Air-to-air missiles are broadly put in two groups, most use infrared guidance and are called heat-seeking missiles. In contrast, medium- or long-range missiles, which fall under the category of beyond visual range missiles, tend to rely upon radar guidance. Some modern ones use inertial guidance and/or mid-course updates to get the missile close enough to use an active homing sensor, the air-to-air missile grew out of the unguided air-to-air rockets used during the First World War. Le Prieur rockets were attached to the struts of biplanes and fired electrically, usually against observation balloons, by such early pilots as Albert Ball. Post-war research led the Royal Air Force to introduce Fairey Fireflash into service in 1955, the US Navy and US Air Force began equipping guided missiles in 1956, deploying the USAFs AIM-4 Falcon and the USNs AIM-7 Sparrow and AIM-9 Sidewinder. The Soviet Air Force introduced its K-5 into service in 1957, as missile systems have continued to advance, modern air warfare consists almost entirely of missile firing. The use of Beyond Visual Range combat became so pervasive in the US that early F-4 variants were armed only with missiles in the 1960s. High casualty rates during the Vietnam War caused the US to reintroduce autocannons and traditional dogfighting tactics, in the Falklands War British Harriers, using AIM-9L missiles were able to defeat faster Argentinian opponents. Since the late 20th century all-aspect heat-seeking designs can lock-on to a target from angles, not just from behind. Other types rely on radar guidance, a conventional explosive blast warhead, fragmentation warhead, or continuous rod warhead is typically used in the attempt to disable or destroy the target aircraft. Warheads are typically detonated by a proximity fuze or by an impact if it scores a direct hit. Less commonly, nuclear warheads have been mounted on a number of air-to-air missile types although these are not known to have ever been used in combat. Guided missiles operate by detecting their target, and then homing in on the target on a collision course, although the missile may use radar or infra-red guidance to home on the target, the launching aircraft may detect and track the target before launch by other means. Radar guidance is used for medium- or long-range missiles, where the infra-red signature of the target would be too faint for an infra-red detector to track. There are three types of radar-guided missile – active, semi-active, and passive. Radar-guided missiles can be countered by rapid maneuvering, deploying chaff or using electronic counter-measures, active radar -guided missiles carry their own radar system to detect and track their target
17.
Vietnam War
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It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and the government of South Vietnam. The war is considered a Cold War-era proxy war. As the war continued, the actions of the Viet Cong decreased as the role. U. S. and South Vietnamese forces relied on air superiority and overwhelming firepower to conduct search and destroy operations, involving ground forces, artillery, in the course of the war, the U. S. conducted a large-scale strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnam. The North Vietnamese government and the Viet Cong were fighting to reunify Vietnam and they viewed the conflict as a colonial war and a continuation of the First Indochina War against forces from France and later on the United States. The U. S. government viewed its involvement in the war as a way to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam and this was part the domino theory of a wider containment policy, with the stated aim of stopping the spread of communism. Beginning in 1950, American military advisors arrived in what was then French Indochina, U. S. involvement escalated in the early 1960s, with troop levels tripling in 1961 and again in 1962. Regular U. S. combat units were deployed beginning in 1965, despite the Paris Peace Accord, which was signed by all parties in January 1973, the fighting continued. In the U. S. and the Western world, a large anti-Vietnam War movement developed as part of a larger counterculture, the war changed the dynamics between the Eastern and Western Blocs, and altered North–South relations. Direct U. S. military involvement ended on 15 August 1973, the capture of Saigon by the North Vietnamese Army in April 1975 marked the end of the war, and North and South Vietnam were reunified the following year. The war exacted a huge human cost in terms of fatalities, estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed vary from 966,000 to 3.8 million. Some 240, 000–300,000 Cambodians,20, 000–62,000 Laotians, and 58,220 U. S. service members died in the conflict. Various names have applied to the conflict. Vietnam War is the most commonly used name in English and it has also been called the Second Indochina War and the Vietnam Conflict. As there have been several conflicts in Indochina, this conflict is known by the names of its primary protagonists to distinguish it from others. In Vietnamese, the war is known as Kháng chiến chống Mỹ. It is also called Chiến tranh Việt Nam, France began its conquest of Indochina in the late 1850s, and completed pacification by 1893. The 1884 Treaty of Huế formed the basis for French colonial rule in Vietnam for the seven decades
18.
Western world
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The Western world or the West is a term usually referring to different nations, depending on the context, most often including at least part of Europe. There are many accepted definitions about what they all have in common, the Western world is also known as the Occident. The concept of the Western part of the earth has its roots in Greco-Roman civilization in Europe, before the Cold War era, the traditional Western viewpoint identified Western Civilization with the Western Christian countries and culture. Its political usage was changed by the antagonism during the Cold War in the mid-to-late 20th Century. The term originally had a literal geographic meaning, Western culture was influenced by many older great civilizations of the ancient Near East, such as Phoenicia, Minoan Crete, Sumer, Babylonia, and also Ancient Egypt. It originated in the Mediterranean basin and its vicinity, Greece, over time, their associated empires grew first to the east and west to include the rest of Mediterranean and Black Sea coastal areas, conquering and absorbing. Later, they expanded to the north of the Mediterranean Sea to include Western, Central, numerous times, this expansion was accompanied by Christian missionaries, who attempted to proselytize Christianity. There is debate among some as to whether Latin America is in a category of its own, specifically, Western culture may imply, a Biblical Christian cultural influence in spiritual thinking, customs and either ethic or moral traditions, around the Post-Classical Era and after. European cultural influences concerning artistic, musical, folkloric, ethic and oral traditions, the concept of Western culture is generally linked to the classical definition of the Western world. In this definition, Western culture is the set of literary, scientific, political, artistic, much of this set of traditions and knowledge is collected in the Western canon. The term has come to apply to countries whose history is marked by European immigration or settlement, such as the Americas, and Oceania. The geopolitical divisions in Europe that created a concept of East and West originated in the Roman Empire, Roman Catholic Western and Central Europe, as such, maintained a distinct identity particularly as it began to redevelop during the Renaissance. Even following the Protestant Reformation, Protestant Europe continued to see itself as more tied to Roman Catholic Europe than other parts of the civilized world. Use of the term West as a cultural and geopolitical term developed over the course of the Age of Exploration as Europe spread its culture to other parts of the world. Additionally, closer contacts between the West and Asia and other parts of the world in recent times have continued to cloud the use, herodotus considered the Persian Wars of the early 5th century BC a conflict of Europa versus Asia. The terms West and East were not used by any Greek author to describe that conflict, the Great Schism and the Fourth Crusade confirmed this deviation. The Renaissance in the West emerged partly from currents within the Roman Empire, Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew from a city-state founded on the Italian Peninsula about the 9th century BC to a massive empire straddling the Mediterranean Sea. In its 12-century existence, Roman civilization shifted from a monarchy, to a republic, nonetheless, despite its great legacy, a number of factors led to the eventual decline of the Roman Empire
19.
McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle
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The McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle is an American twin-engine, all-weather tactical fighter aircraft designed by McDonnell Douglas to gain and maintain air supremacy in aerial combat. Following reviews of proposals, the United States Air Force selected McDonnell Douglas design in 1967 to meet the services need for an air superiority fighter. The Eagle first flew in July 1972, and entered service in 1976 and it is among the most successful modern fighters, with over 100 victories and no losses in aerial combat, with the majority of the kills scored by the Israel Air Force. The Eagle has been exported to Israel, Japan, and Saudi Arabia, the F-15 was originally envisioned as a pure air superiority aircraft. Its design included a secondary ground-attack capability that was largely unused, the aircraft design proved flexible enough that an all-weather strike derivative, the F-15E Strike Eagle, was later developed and entered service in 1989. The F-15 Eagle is expected to be in service with the U. S. Air Force past 2025, newer models are still being produced for foreign users. The F-15 production line is set to end in 2019,47 years after the types first flight. The F-15 can ultimately trace its origins to the Vietnam War, when the U. S. Air Force, at the time, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara was pressing for both services to use as many common aircraft as possible, even if there were performance sacrifices involved. The former were capable in the tactical role, while the latter might be less so. If the Air Force did choose a design, maintaining air superiority would be a top priority. The next month, a report on light tactical aircraft suggested the Air Force purchase the F-5 or A-7 and this point was reinforced after the loss of two Republic F-105 Thunderchief aircraft to obsolete MiG-15s or MiG-17s on 4 April 1965. In April 1965, Harold Brown, at that time director of the DDR&E, stated the position was to consider the F-5. On 1 August, Gabriel Disosway took command of Tactical Air Command and reiterated calls for the F-X, an official requirements document was finalized in October, and sent out as a request for proposals to 13 companies on 8 December 1965. Following a downselect, four companies were asked to further developments. In total, they developed some 500 design concepts, typical designs featured variable-sweep wings, weighed over 60,000 pounds, included a top speed of Mach 2.7 and a thrust-to-weight ratio of 0.75. When the proposals were studied in July 1966, the aircraft were roughly the size and weight of the TFX, and like that aircraft, through this period, studies of combat over Vietnam were producing worrying results. Previous doctrine had stressed long-range combat using missiles, and optimized aircraft for this role, the result was highly loaded aircraft with large radars and excellent speed, but limited maneuverability and often lacking a gun. In early 1967, they proposed that the design had a thrust-to-weight ratio of near 1,1, a maximum speed further reduced to Mach 2.3, a weight of 40,000 pounds
20.
Viktor Belenko
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Viktor Ivanovich Belenko is a former Soviet pilot who defected to the West while flying his MiG-25 Foxbat jet fighter and landed in Hakodate, Japan. The opportunity to examine the plane up close was a bonanza for the West. Belenko later became an American aerospace engineer, Belenko was born in Nalchik, Russian SFSR in a Ukrainian family. Lieutenant Belenko was a pilot with the 513th Fighter Regiment, 11th Air Army, Soviet Air Defence Forces based in Chuguyevka and his name became known worldwide on 6 September 1976, when he successfully defected to the West, flying his MiG-25 Foxbat jet fighter to Hakodate, Japan. This was the first time that Western experts were able to get a look at the aircraft. His defection caused significant damage to the Soviet Air Force, Belenko was granted asylum by U. S. President Gerald Ford, and a trust fund was set up for him, granting him a very comfortable living in later years. The U. S. Government debriefed him for five months after his defection, Belenko had brought with him the pilots manual for the MiG-25 Foxbat, expecting to assist American pilots in evaluating and testing the aircraft. Belenko was not the pilot to have defected from the USSR in this way. In March and May 1953, two Polish Air Force pilots flew MiG-15s to Denmark. Later in 1953, North Korean pilot No Kum Sok flew his MiG-15 to an American air base in South Korea, captain Aleksandr Zuyev flew his MiG-29 to Trabzon, Turkey on 20 May 1989. In 1980, the U. S. Congress enacted S.2961 and it was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter on 14 October 1980, as Private Law 96-62. After his defection, he co-wrote an autobiography, MiG Pilot, while residing in the United States, Belenko married a music teacher from North Dakota, Coral, and fathered two sons, Tom and Paul. He also has a son from his first marriage, Belenko has never divorced his Russian wife. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, he visited Moscow in 1995 on business, the MiG-25s arrival in Japan was a windfall for western military planners. It was dismantled for this purpose in Japan, the plane was moved by U. S. The Japanese government laid out a plan on 2 October to return the aircraft in crates from the port of Hitachi and bill the Soviets $40,000 for crating services, the aircraft was moved from Hyakuri to the port of Hitachi on 11 November on a convoy of trailers. It left in 30 crates aboard the Soviet cargo ship Taigonos on 15 November 1976, neither the Japanese nor Soviet bill is thought to have been paid. A senior diplomat described the Soviet position as sulky about the whole affair, munir Redfa List of Cold War pilot defections List of Eastern Bloc defectors MiG Pilot, the Final Escape of Lt. Belenko, by John Barron,1980, ISBN 0-380-53868-71996 interview with Belenko
21.
Japan
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Japan is a sovereign island nation in Eastern Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asia Mainland and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea, the kanji that make up Japans name mean sun origin. 日 can be read as ni and means sun while 本 can be read as hon, or pon, Japan is often referred to by the famous epithet Land of the Rising Sun in reference to its Japanese name. Japan is an archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands. The four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku, the country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions. Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one, the population of 127 million is the worlds tenth largest. Japanese people make up 98. 5% of Japans total population, approximately 9.1 million people live in the city of Tokyo, the capital of Japan. Archaeological research indicates that Japan was inhabited as early as the Upper Paleolithic period, the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other regions, mainly China, followed by periods of isolation, from the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shoguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a period of isolation in the early 17th century. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan is a member of the UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the country has the worlds third-largest economy by nominal GDP and the worlds fourth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It is also the worlds fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer, although Japan has officially renounced its right to declare war, it maintains a modern military with the worlds eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a country with a very high standard of living. Its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and the third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, in ancient China, Japan was called Wo 倭. It was mentioned in the third century Chinese historical text Records of the Three Kingdoms in the section for the Wei kingdom, Wa became disliked because it has the connotation of the character 矮, meaning dwarf. The 倭 kanji has been replaced with the homophone Wa, meaning harmony, the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, which is pronounced Nippon or Nihon and literally means the origin of the sun. The earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, at the start of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan introduced their country as Nihon
22.
Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird
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The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird was a long-range, Mach 3+ strategic reconnaissance aircraft that was operated by the United States Air Force. It was developed as a project from the Lockheed A-12 reconnaissance aircraft in the 1960s by Lockheed. American aerospace engineer Clarence Kelly Johnson was responsible for many of the innovative concepts. During aerial reconnaissance missions, the SR-71 operated at high speeds, if a surface-to-air missile launch was detected, the standard evasive action was simply to accelerate and outfly the missile. The SR-71 was designed with a reduced radar cross-section, the SR-71 served with the U. S. Air Force from 1964 to 1998. A total of 32 aircraft were built,12 were lost in accidents, the SR-71 has been given several nicknames, including Blackbird and Habu. It has held the record for the fastest air-breathing manned aircraft since 1976. Lockheeds previous reconnaissance aircraft was the relatively slow U-2, designed for the Central Intelligence Agency, in late 1957, the CIA approached the defense contractor Lockheed to build an undetectable spy plane. The project, named Archangel, was led by Kelly Johnson, head of Lockheeds Skunk Works unit in Burbank, the work on project Archangel began in the second quarter of 1958, with aim of flying higher and faster than the U-2. Out of 11 successive designs drafted in a span of 10 months, despite this, however, its shape made it vulnerable to radar detection. After a meeting with the CIA in March 1959, the design was modified to have a 90% reduction in radar cross-section, the CIA approved a US$96 million contract for Skunk Works to build a dozen spy planes, named A-12 on 11 February 1960. The 1960 downing of Francis Gary Powerss U-2 underscored its vulnerability, the A-12 first flew at Groom Lake, Nevada, on 25 April 1962. Thirteen were built, two variants were developed, including three of the YF-12 interceptor prototype, and two of the M-21 drone carrier. The aircraft was meant to be powered by the Pratt & Whitney J58 engine, but development ran over schedule, the J58s were retrofitted as they became available, and became the standard powerplant for all subsequent aircraft in the series as well as the SR-71. The A-12 flew missions over Vietnam and North Korea before its retirement in 1968, the programs cancellation was announced on 28 December 1966, due both to budget concerns and because of the forthcoming SR-71, a derivative of the A-12. During the later period of its testing, the B-70 was proposed for a reconnaissance/strike role, when it was clear that the A-12 performance potential was much greater, the Air Force ordered a variant of the A-12 in December 1962. Originally named R-12 by Lockheed, the Air Force version was longer and heavier than the A-12, with a longer fuselage to hold more fuel, Reconnaissance equipment included signals intelligence sensors, a side looking airborne radar and a photo camera. Air Force Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay preferred the SR designation, before the July speech, LeMay lobbied to modify Johnsons speech to read SR-71 instead of RS-71
23.
Soviet Air Forces
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The Soviet Air Forces was the official designation of one of the air forces of the Soviet Union. The other was the Soviet Air Defence Forces, the Air Forces were formed from components of the Imperial Russian Air Service in 1917, and faced their greatest test during World War II. The groups were involved in the Korean War, and dissolved along with the Soviet Union itself in 1991–92. Former Soviet Air Forces assets were divided into several air forces of former Soviet republics. March of the Pilots was its anthem, the All-Russia Collegium for Direction of the Air Forces of the Old Army was formed on 20 December 1917. This was a Bolshevik aerial headquarters initially led by Konstantin Akashev and it became the Directorate of the USSR Air Forces on 28 March 1924, and then the Directorate of the Workers-Peasants Red Army Air Forces on 1 January 1925. Gradually its influence on aircraft design became greater, from its earliest days, the force mimicked ground forces organization especially in the 1930s, by which time it was made up of air armies, aviation corps, aviation divisions, and aviation regiments. At first, the I-16 proved superior to any Luftwaffe fighters, however, the Soviets refused to supply the plane in adequate numbers, and their aerial victories were soon squandered because of their limited use. Later, Bf-109s delivered to Francos Spanish Nationalist air forces secured air superiority for the Nationalists, on 19 November 1939, VVS headquarters was again titled the Main Directorate of the Red Army Air Forces under the WPRA HQ. Between 1933 and 1938, the Soviet government planned and funded missions to break numerous world aviation records, not only did aviation records and achievements become demonstrations of the USSRs technological progress, they also served as legitimization of the socialist system. With each new success, Soviet press trumpeted victories for socialism, furthermore, Soviet media idolized record-breaking pilots, exalting them not only as role models for Soviet society, but also as symbols of progress towards the socialist-utopian future. The early 1930s saw a shift in focus away from collectivist propaganda. In the case of aviation, the government began glorifying people who utilized aviation technology instead of glorifying the technology itself. Pilots such as Valery Chkalov, Georgy Baydukov, Alexander Belyakov, in May 1937, Stalin charged pilots Chkalov, Baydukov, and Belyakov with the mission to navigate the first transpolar flight in history. On 20 June 1937, the aviators landed their ANT-25 in Vancouver, a month later, Stalin ordered the departure of a second crew to push the boundaries of modern aviation technology even further. The public reaction to the flights was euphoric. The media called the pilots Bolshevik knights of culture and progress, Soviet citizens celebrated Aviation Day on 18 August with as much zeal as they celebrated the October Revolution anniversary. Literature including poems, short stories, and novels emerged celebrating the feats of the aviator-celebrities, feature films like Victory, Tales of Heroic Aviators, and Valery Chkalov reinforced the positive hero imagery, celebrating the aviators individuality within the context of a socialist government
24.
Strategic bomber
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In addition to strategic bombing, strategic bombers can be used for tactical missions. There are three countries including United States, Russia, and China are operating strategic bombers, the modern strategic bomber role appeared after strategic bombing was widely employed, and atomic bombs were first used in combat during World War II. An example is Frances Mirage IV, a strategic bomber replaced in service by the ASMP-equipped Mirage 2000N fighter-bomber. Study of strategic bombing continued in the interwar years and it was widely believed by the late 1930s that strategic terror bombing of cities in any war would quickly result in devastating losses and might decide a conflict in a matter of days or weeks. But theory far exceeded what most air forces could actually put into the air, Germany focused on short-range tactical bombers. Britains Royal Air Force began developing four-engine long-range bombers only in the late 1930s, the U. S. Army Air Corps was severely limited by small budgets in the late 1930s, and only barely saved the B-17 bomber that would soon be vital. The equally important B-24 first flew in 1939, both aircraft would constitute the bulk of the American bomber force that made the Allied daylight bombing of Nazi Germany possible in 1943–45. Both Britain and the U. S. were developing larger two- and four-engined designs, after American entry into the war, late, in 1941, the U. S. 8th Air Force began to develop a daylight bombing capacity using improved B-17 and B-24 four-engine aircraft. The RAF concentrated its efforts on night bombing, but neither force was able to develop adequate bombsights or tactics to allow for often-bragged pinpoint accuracy. The post-war U. S. Strategic Bombing Survey studies supported the notion of strategic bombing. Attempts to create pioneering examples of smart bombs resulted in the Azon ordnance, deployed in the European Theater, most strategic bombers of the two superpowers were designed to deliver nuclear weapons. For a time, some squadrons of Boeing B-52 Stratofortress bombers were kept in the air around the clock, the Royal Air Forces British-produced V bombers were designed and designated to be able to deliver British-made nuclear bombs to targets in European Russia. These bombers could have been able to reach and destroy cities like Kiev or Moscow before American strategic bombers, the Soviet Union produced hundreds of unlicensed, reverse-engineered copies of the American Boeing B-29 Superfortress, which the Soviet Air Forces called the Tupolev Tu-4. The Soviets later developed the jet-powered Tupolev Tu-16 Badger, the Peoples Republic of China produced a version of Tupolev Tu-16 on license from the Soviet Union in the 1960s which they named the Xian H-6, it remains in service today. Mirage IVs served until mid-1996 in the role, and to 2005 as a reconnaissance aircraft. Today the French Republic has limited its strategic armaments to a squadron of four nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines, france also maintains an active force of supersonic fighter-bombers carrying stand-off nuclear missiles such as the ASMP, with Mach 3 speed and a range of 500 kilometers. These missiles can be delivered by the Dassault Mirage 2000N and Rafale fighter-bombers and it is likely that this bomber would also serve as a replacement for both the B-52 and B-1. The Russian Air Forces new Tu-160 strategic bombers are expected to be delivered on a regular basis over the course of 10 to 20 years, in addition, the current Tu-95 and Tu-160 bombers will be periodically updated, as was done during the 1990s with the Tu-22M bombers
25.
Lockheed U-2
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It provides day and night, high-altitude, all-weather intelligence gathering. The U-2 has also used for electronic sensor research, satellite calibration. Early versions of the U-2 were involved in several events through the Cold War, being flown over the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, in 1960, Gary Powers was shot down in a CIA U-2A over the Soviet Union by a surface-to-air missile. Another U-2, piloted by Major Rudolf Anderson, Jr. was lost in a fashion during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The U-2 is one of a handful of types to have served the USAF for over 50 years. The newest models entered service in the 1980s, the current model, the U-2S, received its most recent technical upgrade in 2012. They have taken part in post–Cold War conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, after World War II, the U. S. military desired better strategic aerial reconnaissance to help determine Soviet capabilities and intentions. Richard Leghorn of the USAF suggested that an aircraft that could fly at 60,000 feet should be safe from the MiG-17, the Soviet Unions best interceptor, which could barely reach 45,000 feet. He and others believed that Soviet radar, which used American equipment provided during the war, the highest-flying aircraft available to America and its allies at the time was the English Electric Canberra, which could reach 48,000 feet. Air Research and Development Command mandated design changes made the aircraft more durable for combat. The Soviet Union, unlike the United States and Britain, had improved radar technology after the war and it was thought that an aircraft that could fly at 70,000 feet would be beyond the reach of Soviet fighters, missiles, and radar. Another USAF officer, John Seaberg, wrote a request for proposal in 1953 for an aircraft that could reach 70,000 feet over a target with 1,500 nmi of operational radius. The USAF decided to solicit designs only from smaller companies that could give the project more attention. Under the code name Bald Eagle, it contracts to Bell Aircraft, Martin Aircraft. Officials at Lockheed Aircraft Corporation heard about the project and decided to submit an unsolicited proposal, to save weight and increase altitude, Lockheed executive John Carter suggested that the design eliminate landing gear and avoid attempting to meet combat load factors for the airframe. The company asked Clarence Kelly Johnson to come up such a design. Johnson was Lockheeds best aeronautical engineer, responsible for the P-38 and he was also known for completing projects ahead of schedule, working in a separate division of the company, informally called the Skunk Works. Johnsons design, named CL-282, was based on the Lockheed XF-104 with long, slender wings, the design was powered by the General Electric J73 engine and took off from a special cart and landed on its belly
26.
Boeing B-47 Stratojet
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The Boeing B-47 Stratojet was an American long range, six-engine, turbojet-powered strategic bomber designed to fly at high subsonic speed and at high altitude to avoid enemy interceptor aircraft. The B-47s primary mission was to drop bombs on the Soviet Union. With its engines carried in nacelles under the wing, the B-47 was a major innovation in post-World War II combat jet design. The B-47 entered service with the United States Air Forces Strategic Air Command in 1951 and it never saw combat as a bomber, but was a mainstay of SACs bomber strength during the late 1950s and early 1960s, and remained in use as a bomber until 1965. The B-47 arose from an informal 1943 requirement for a reconnaissance bomber. In December 1944, North American Aviation, the Convair Corp, Boeing and the Glenn Martin Company submitted proposals for the new long-range jet bomber. The USAAF awarded study contracts to all four companies, requiring that North American and Convair concentrate on four-engined designs, while Boeing, the powerplant was to be General Electrics new TG-180 turbojet engine. In May 1945, the von Kármán mission of the Army Air Forces inspected the secret German aeronautics laboratory near Braunschweig, on von Kármáns team was the eminent chief of the technical staff at Boeing, George S. Schairer. He wired his home office, Stop the bomber design, analysis work by Boeing engineer Vic Ganzer suggested an optimum sweepback angle of about 35 degrees. Boeings aeronautical engineers modified their Model 432 design to include swept wings and tail, resulting in the Model 448, the Model 448 retained its four TG-180 jet engines in its forward fuselage, with two more TG-180s in the rear fuselage. The flush-mounted air intakes for the engines were inadequate, while the USAAF disliked the installation of engines within the fuselage. The Army Air Force liked this new configuration, and so Boeings team of engineers continued to refine it, with the engines being moved further inboard. As the landing gear arrangement made rotation impossible, the gear was designed so that the aircraft rested on the ground at the proper angle for takeoff. The USAAF was very pleased with the refined Model 450 design, and in April 1946, the first XB-47 was rolled out on 12 September 1947, a few days before the USAAF became a separate service, the U. S. Air Force, on 18 September 1947. The XB-47 prototype flew its first flight on 17 December 1947, with the test pilots Robert Robbins and it flew from Boeing Field in Seattle to the Moses Lake Airfield in central Washington state, in a flight that lasted just 27 minutes, with no major problems. In Feb.1949, Russ Schleeh and Joe Howell broke all coast-to-coast speed records flying from Moses Lake Air Force Base to Andrews Air Force Base and they averaged 607.8 miles per hour. During early tests of the XB-47 prototype, the canopy came off at high speed, the copilot safely landed the aircraft. This resulted in a redesign, and the hiring of pilot Tex Johnston as chief test pilot
27.
Boeing B-52 Stratofortress
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The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress is an American long-range, subsonic, jet-powered strategic bomber. The B-52 was designed and built by Boeing, which has continued to provide support and it has been operated by the United States Air Force since the 1950s. The bomber is capable of carrying up to 70,000 pounds of weapons, the B-52 took its maiden flight in April 1952. Built to carry weapons for Cold War-era deterrence missions, the B-52 Stratofortress replaced the Convair B-36. A veteran of wars, the B-52 has dropped only conventional munitions in combat. The B-52s official name Stratofortress is rarely used, informally, the aircraft has become referred to as the BUFF. The B-52 has been in service with the USAF since 1955. As of December 2015,58 were in service with 18 in reserve. The B-52 completed sixty years of service with its original operator in 2015. After being upgraded between 2013 and 2015, it is expected to serve into the 2040s, the aircraft was to have a crew of five or more turret gunners, and a six-man relief crew. It was required to cruise at 300 mph at 34,000 feet with a radius of 5,000 miles. The armament was to consist of a number of 20 mm cannon and 10,000 pounds of bombs. On 13 February 1946, the Air Force issued bid invitations for these specifications, with Boeing, Consolidated Aircraft, and Glenn L. Martin Company submitting proposals. On 5 June 1946, Boeings Model 462, an aircraft powered by six Wright T35 turboprops with a gross weight of 360,000 pounds. On 28 June 1946, Boeing was issued a letter of contract for US$1.7 million to build a full-scale mock-up of the new XB-52 and do preliminary engineering and testing. However, by October 1946, the air began to express concern about the sheer size of the new aircraft. In response, Boeing produced Model 464, a smaller version with a 230,000 pound gross weight. Boeing responded with two powered by the T-35 turboprops
28.
Convair B-58 Hustler
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The Convair B-58 Hustler was the first operational jet bomber capable of Mach 2 flight. The aircraft was designed by Convair engineer Robert H. Widmer and it used a delta wing, which was also employed by Convair fighters such as the F-102, with four General Electric J79 engines in pods under the wing. It carried five weapons, four on pylons under the wings. Replacing the Boeing B-47 Stratojet medium bomber, it was intended to fly at high altitudes. The B-58 received a deal of notoriety due to its sonic boom. This resulted in only an operational career between 1960 and 1970 when the B-58 was succeeded by the smaller, swing-wing FB-111A. The proposed bombers design and development was to begin less than two years after sustained supersonic flight had successfully been achieved, a number of contractors submitted bids to perform the generalized study including Boeing, Convair, Curtiss, Douglas, Martin and North American Aviation. The delta planform had good internal volume for support systems and fuel, plus a low wing loading, the final Convair proposal, coded FZP-110, was a radical two-place, delta wing bomber design powered by General Electric J53 engines. The performance estimates included a 1,000 mph speed and a 3,000 statute mile range, the USAF chose Boeing and Convair to proceed to a Phase 1 study. The Convair MX-1626 evolved further into a refined proposal redesignated the MX-1964. In February 1953, the Air Force issued a contract for development of Convairs design, the resulting B-58 design was the first true USAF supersonic bomber program. The Convair design was based on a wing with a leading-edge sweep of 60° with four General Electric J79-GE-1 turbojet engines. Although its large wing made for relatively low wing loading, it proved to be well suited for low-altitude. It seated three in separated tandem cockpits, later versions gave each crew member a novel ejection capsule that made it possible to eject at an altitude of 70,000 ft at speeds up to Mach 2. The capsule would float, and the crewmember could open the clamshell, in an unusual test program, live bears and chimpanzees were successfully used to test the ejection system. The XB-70 would use a similar system, because of heat generated at Mach 2 cruise, not only the crew compartment, but the wheel wells and electronics bay were pressurized and air conditioned. The B-58 utilized one of the first extensive applications of aluminum honeycomb panels, the pilots cockpit was fairly conventional for a large multiengine aircraft. The electronic controls were ambitious and advanced for the day, the navigator and DSOs cockpits featured wraparound dashboards with warning lights and buttons, and automatic voice messages and warnings from a tape system were audible through the helmet sets
29.
North American XB-70 Valkyrie
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The North American Aviation XB-70 Valkyrie was the prototype version of the planned B-70 nuclear-armed, deep-penetration strategic bomber for the United States Air Force Strategic Air Command. In the late 1950s, North American Aviation designed the Valkyrie as a large, at these speeds, it was expected that the B-70 would be almost immune to interceptor aircraft, the only effective weapon against bomber aircraft at the time. The bomber would spend only a few minutes over a particular radar station, High speed also made the aircraft difficult to see on the radar displays and its high-altitude flight could not be matched by any contemporary Soviet fighter. The introduction of the first Soviet surface-to-air missiles in the late 1950s put the near-invulnerability of the B-70 in doubt, in response, the United States Air Force began flying its missions at low level, where the missile radars line of sight was limited by local terrain. In this low-level penetration role, the B-70 offered little additional performance over the B-52 it was meant to replace being far more expensive with shorter range, other alternate missions were proposed, but these were of limited scope. With the advent of intercontinental ballistic missiles during the late 1950s, the USAF eventually gave up fighting for its production and the B-70 program was canceled in 1961. Development was then turned over to a program to study the effects of long-duration high-speed flight. As such, two aircraft, designated XB-70A, were built, these aircraft were used for supersonic test-flights during 1964–69. In 1966, one crashed after colliding in mid-air with a smaller jet aircraft. At the time, nuclear weapons weighed several tons, and the need to carry fuel to fly that payload from the continental United States to the Soviet Union demanded large bombers. They also concluded that after release of bombs the aircraft would need supersonic speed to escape the critical blast-radius, the aviation industry had been studying this problem for some time. From the mid-1940s, there was much interest in using nuclear-powered aircraft in the bomber role, in a conventional jet engine, thrust is provided by heating air using jet fuel and accelerating it out a nozzle. In a nuclear engine, heat is supplied by a reactor, most designs also carried a small amount of jet fuel for use during high-power portions of flight—take-off and high-speed dashes. Zip fuels appeared to offer sufficient performance improvement to produce a bomber with supersonic speed. The new bomber was expected to service in 1963. Both nuclear and conventional designs would be considered, the nuclear-powered bomber was organized as Weapon System 125A and pursued simultaneously with the jet-powered version, Weapon System 110A. The requirement also called for a 50,000 pounds payload, the Air Force formed similar requirements for a WS-110L intercontinental reconnaissance system in 1955, but this was later canceled in 1958 due to better options. In July 1955, six contractors were selected to bid on WS-110A studies, Boeing and North American Aviation submitted proposals, and on 8 November 1955 were awarded contracts for Phase 1 development
30.
Mikoyan-Gurevich Ye-150 family
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The Mikoyan-Gurevich Ye-150 family was a series of prototype single-seat fighter/interceptor aircraft designed and built by the Mikoyan-Gurevich design bureau in the Soviet Union from 1955. The MAP ordered the Mikoyan OKB to build prototypes of the new interceptor, to be armed with either K-6, K-7, K-8, K-9, unguided rockets, automatic guidance to the interception point was to be provided by Urugan-5 integrated weapons systems. The initial missile armed version, designated Ye-150, flew for the first time on 8 July 1960, after extensive ground checks of systems and a delay in delivery of a flightworthy engine. Manufacturers flight tests, over 42 flights, revealed high rates of climb, impressive maximum speed. Installation of weapons systems was not carried out on the Ye-150 and it was not authorised for production, but development continued with the Ye-151, the Ye-151 cannon armed version was designed in parallel with the Ye-150 but did not proceed to the hardware stage. The weapon system was to have consisted of twin TKB-495 or Makarov TKB-539 cannon, with a rate of fire of 2,000 rds/min, mounted on a rotating ring in tilting mounts. The mounts could tilt ±30° and the ring could rotate 360°. Studies were carried out with the cannon mount aft of the cockpit to reduce de-stabilising moment, as the Ye-151-2, the poor reliability of the engine and the cancellation of the intended K-9 / Urugan-5B weapon system brought the Ye-152 program to a close. Cropped delta wings with greater area allowed the large K-80 or K-9 missiles to be carried on wingtip launchers, world record flights were carried out by the first prototype Ye-152-1 in 1961 and 1962, registered with the FAI as the Ye-166. The Ye-152M was retired to the Central Air Force Museum at Monino misleadingly marked as the Ye-166 which was, in fact, the change in engine type, necessitated by the extremely poor reliability of the R-15, led to a widened rear fuselage with large ventral fins. Armament was to have been two K-9 air-to-air missiles, as part of the Ye-152-9-V weapon system, featuring the TsKB Almaz TsP-1 fire control radar. The Ye-152A was assigned the NATO reporting name Flipper after a flypast during the 1961 Aviation Day display at Tushino, a proposed development powered by the more reliable R-15-300 engine and using the Urugan-5B weapon control system and carrying the large K-80 long-range AAM. After initial flight testing the canards were removed leaving the mounting structures behind, fictitious designation of the Ye-152-1 used when registering the world records with the Federation Aeronautique Internationale. Also applied to the Ye-152M displayed at Monino as an intelligence ruse, an erroneous designation applied by western intelligence observers to the Ye-152A after the display at Tushino in 1961. The History of Soviet Aircraft from 1918, the Osprey Encyclopaedia of Russian Aircraft 1875–1995. ISBN 1-85780-099-0 Gordon, Yefim & Komissarov, Dmitry
31.
Tupolev Tu-28
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The Tupolev Tu-28 was a long-range interceptor aircraft introduced by the Soviet Union in the 1960s. The official designation was Tu-128, but this designation was commonly used in the West. It was the largest and heaviest fighter ever in service, in the 1950s, the Soviet Union sought means to defend against nuclear-armed American bombers possibly penetrating its borders. Contemporary interceptors, even the Yakovlev Yak-28P, were able to only a radius of a few hundred kilometers. Considering both, the numbers required to defend a 5,000 km air front were economically impossible to maintain. This left the Soviet Union able to provide an air defense only for selected valuable areas. The PVO decided to cover the territory, but with a more loose defense. In 1955 it placed a requirement for a large area-defense interceptor, the PVO requirement called for a supersonic aircraft with enormous fuel tanks for both a good patrol time and long range, a capable radar, and the most powerful air-to-air missiles possible. The first attempt, although unsuccessful, was a 30-tonne Lavochkin La-250 prototype, iosif Nezval of Tupolev Design Bureau led development of the new interceptor aircraft. The work began in 1958, based on a single prototype of the unsuccessful Tu-98 supersonic bomber. The military designation of the interceptor was at first Tu-28, but it was changed in 1963 to Tu-128, the Tu-128 had a broad, low/mid-mounted swept wing carrying the main landing gear in wing-mounted pods, and slab tailplanes. Two Lyulka AL-7F-2 turbojet engines were mounted in the fuselage, the two-man crew of pilot and navigator were seated in tandem. The Tu-128, with its weight of 43 tonnes, was the heaviest fighter to enter service. It was a bomber-interceptor with high wing loading, unsophisticated but reliable avionics and it was not an agile aircraft. It was intended to combat only NATO bombers like the B-52, the interceptor made its initial public appearance in the 1961 Tushino air parade. Western experts, unaware that the bulge on the belly carried testing instruments, the production version lacked the bulge and had a large nose radome housing a radar, known as RP-S Smerch, having a detection range of about 50 km and a lock-on range of about 40 km. Armament of the Tu-128 was four Bisnovat R-4 air-to-air missiles, usually two of them were R-4Rs with semi-active radar homing and two were R-4T infrared-homing missiles, with the former on the outer pylons and the latter on the inner underwing pylons. There was no internal weapons bay, production of the Tu-128 ended in 1970 with a total of 198 aircraft having been built
32.
Lockheed A-12
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The Lockheed A-12 was a reconnaissance aircraft built for the United States Central Intelligence Agency by Lockheeds Skunk Works, based on the designs of Clarence Kelly Johnson. The aircraft was designated A-12, the 12th in a series of internal design efforts for Archangel and it competed in the CIAs Oxcart program against the Convair Kingfish proposal in 1959, and won for a variety of reasons. CIAs representatives initially favored Convairs design for its smaller radar cross-section, the companies respective track records proved decisive. Convairs work on the B-58 had been plagued with delays and cost overruns, whereas Lockheed had produced the U-2 on time, in addition, it had experience running a “black” project. The A-12 was produced from 1962 to 1964, and operated from 1963 to 1968, the A-12s final mission was flown in May 1968, and the program and aircraft retired in June. The program was revealed in the mid-1990s. A CIA officer later wrote, OXCART was selected from a random list of codenames to designate this R&D, the aircraft itself came to be called that as well. The crews named the A-12 the Cygnus, suggested by pilot Jack Weeks to follow the Lockheed practice of naming aircraft after celestial bodies, under Project Gusto the designs were nicknamed Archangel, after the U-2 program, which had been known as Angel. As the aircraft designs evolved and configuration changes occurred, the internal Lockheed designation changed from Archangel-1 to Archangel-2 and these names for the evolving designs soon simply became known as A-1, A-2, etc. The CIA program to develop the aircraft to the U-2 was code-named Oxcart. These designs had reached the A-11 stage when the program was reviewed, the A-11 was competing against a Convair proposal called Kingfish, of roughly similar performance. However, the Kingfish included a number of features that reduced its radar cross-section. Lockheed responded with an update of the A-11, adding twin canted fins instead of a single right-angle one. On 26 January 1960, the CIA ordered 12 A-12 aircraft, because the A-12 was way ahead of its time, many new technologies had to be invented specifically for the Oxcart project, some still in use today. One of the biggest problems that engineers faced at that time was working with titanium, the Russians never had an inkling of how they were actually contributing to the creation of the airplane being rushed into construction to spy on their homeland. After development and production at the Skunk Works, in Burbank, California, on 25 April 1962 it was taken on its first flight with Lockheed test pilot Louis Schalk at the controls. The first official flight took place on 30 April and subsequent supersonic flight on 4 May 1962. The first five A-12s, in 1962, were flown with Pratt & Whitney J75 engines capable of 17,000 lbf thrust each
33.
North American A-5 Vigilante
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The North American A-5 Vigilante was a carrier-based supersonic bomber designed and built by North American Aviation for the United States Navy. Prior to the unification of the Navy designation sequence with the Air Force sequence in 1962, in 1953, North American Aviation began a private study for a carrier-based, long-range, all-weather strike bomber, capable of delivering nuclear weapons at supersonic speeds. This proposal, the North American General Purpose Attack Weapon concept, was accepted by the United States Navy, with some revisions, a contract was awarded on 29 August 1956. Its first flight occurred two years later on 31 August 1958 in Columbus, Ohio, at the time of its introduction, the Vigilante was one of the largest and by far the most complex aircraft to operate from a United States Navy aircraft carrier. It had a swept wing with a boundary-layer control system to improve low-speed lift. Roll control was provided by spoilers in conjunction with differential deflection of the tail surfaces. The use of alloy for wing skins and titanium for critical structures was also unusual. The A-5 had two widely spaced General Electric J79 turbojet engines, fed by intake ramps and a single large all-moving vertical stabilizer, preliminary design studies had employed twin vertical fin/rudders. The wings, vertical stabilizer and the nose radome folded for carrier stowage, the Vigilante had a crew of two seated in tandem, a pilot and a bombardier-navigator in individual North American HS-1A ejection seats. Despite being designated by the US Navy as a heavy, the A-5 was surprisingly agile for such a large aircraft, without the drag of bombs or missiles, even escorting fighters found that the clean airframe and powerful engines made the Vigilante very fast at high and low altitudes. However, its approach speed and high angle of attack in the landing configuration made returning to the aircraft carrier a challenge for inexperienced or unwary pilots. The Vigilante had advanced and complex electronics when it first entered service, the single nuclear weapon, commonly the Mk 28 bomb, was attached to two disposable fuel tanks in the cylindrical bay in an assembly known as the stores train. A set of fins was attached to the aft end of the most rearward fuel tank. These fuel tanks were to be emptied during the flight to the target, the stores train was propelled rearward at about 50 feet per second relative to the aircraft. It thereafter followed a ballistic path. In practice, the system was not reliable and no weapons were ever carried in the linear bomb bay. In the RA-5C configuration, the bay was used solely for fuel, on three occasions, the shock of the catapult launch caused the fuel cans to eject onto the deck, this resulted in one aircraft loss. The Vigilante originally had two wing pylons, intended primarily for drop tanks, the second Vigilante variant, the A3J-2, incorporated internal tanks for an additional 460 gallons of fuel along with two additional wing hardpoints, for a total of four
34.
Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-19
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The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-19 is a Soviet second-generation, single-seat, twin jet-engined fighter aircraft. It was the first Soviet production aircraft capable of speeds in level flight. The I-340 was supposed to attain 1,160 km/h at 2,000 m,1,090 km/h at 10,000 m, climb to 10,000 m in 2.9 minutes, and have a service ceiling of no less than 17,500 m. The new fighter, internally designated SM-1, was designed around the SI-02 airframe modified to accept two engines in an arrangement and was completed in March 1952. The I-340 suffered from poor cockpit pressurization and the engines proved temperamental with frequent flameouts, the engines were upgraded to the AM-5A standard delivering 21.1 kN of thrust each, which exceeded the power output of the Klimov VK-1F in afterburner while providing better fuel economy. The SM-1 was barely supersonic, reaching 1,193 km/h at 5,000 m and this performance was deemed insufficient for the new supersonic fighter and an after-burning version of the engine, the AM-5F, was proposed. While not implemented, the AM-5F served as the basis for the Tumansky RD-9 which powered production aircraft, Further development of the twin-engine concept resulted in a government request for the I-360, internally designated SM-2, powered by the AM-5F engines, but featured a highly swept wing. The I-360, built in 1952, had 1.6 m longer fuselage, wingspan reduced to 9.04 m, and weight increased to 6,802 kg, the Nudelman N-37D cannon were moved to the wing roots to open space in a nose for the radar. Cockpit and landing gear were redesigned and a stabilizer of increased area mounting a T-tail was fitted. In April 1952 the first prototype was sent to the Letno-Issledovatelskiy Institut and it was immediately clear that the AM-5A engines were not powerful enough, and they were replaced with AM-5F delivering 21. 09–26.49 kN, allowing a maximum speed of M=1.19 in horizontal flight. Flight testing prompted modifications to the air-brakes and control surfaces, re-designated as the SM-2A, the second prototype, SM-2/2 introduced horizontal stabilizers mounted on the upper rear fuselage and guns with shorter barrels. However the AM-5F engine was not considered powerful enough. A. Sedov, making a total of 132 flights, final changes included a modified air intake, new 23 mm Nudelman-Rikhter NR-23 guns with 340 rpg, RSIU-3M Klen radio, Uzel-1 transponder, and SRDM-1M Konus radio-rangefinder. Absence of a trainer version, slowed pilot transition to the type. The Soviet of The Ministers of the Soviet Union issued an order #286-133 to start production on 17 February 1954 at factories in Gorkiy. Factory trials were completed on 12 September 1954, and government trials started on 30 September, approximately 5,500 MiG-19s of all versions were produced, in the USSR, Czechoslovakia as the Avia S-105 and Peoples Republic of China as the Shenyang J-6. The aircraft saw service with a number of national air forces, including those of Cuba, North Vietnam, Egypt, Pakistan. The aircraft saw combat during the Vietnam War, the 1967 Six Day War, all Soviet-built MiG-19 variants were single-seaters only, although the Chinese developed the Shenyang JJ-6 trainer version of the Shenyang J-6
35.
English Electric Lightning
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The English Electric Lightning is a supersonic fighter aircraft of the Cold War era. It was designed, developed, and manufactured by English Electric and it was then marketed as the BAC Lightning. The Lightning was the only all-British Mach 2 fighter aircraft, the Lightning was used by the Royal Air Force and the Royal Saudi Air Force. Although it was the RAFs primary interceptor for more than two decades it was never required to attack another aircraft, the Lightning is powered by two Rolls-Royce Avon turbojet engines in a unique staggered stacked installation in the fuselage. This performance made the Lightning a fuel-critical aircraft, meaning that its missions are dictated to a degree by its limited range. Later developments provided greater range and speed along with aerial reconnaissance, following retirement in the late 1980s, many of the remaining aircraft became museum exhibits and, until 2010, three Lightnings were kept flying at Thunder City in Cape Town, South Africa. In September 2008, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers conferred on the Lightning its Engineering Heritage Award at a ceremony at BAE Systems site at Warton Aerodrome. The specification for the aircraft followed the cancellation of the Air Ministrys 1942 E. 24/43 supersonic research aircraft specification which had resulted in the Miles M.52 programme. Teddy Petter, formerly chief designer at Westland Aircraft, was an early proponent of Britains need to develop a supersonic fighter aircraft. Petter initiated a proposal with F. W. Freddie Page leading the design. By July 1948 their proposal incorporated the engine configuration and a high-mounted tailplane but was designed for Mach 1.5. As a consequence it had a conventional 40° degree swept wing This proposal was submitted in the November, on 29 March 1949 MoS granted approval for English Electric to start the detailed design, develop wind tunnel models and build a full-size mockup. The design that had developed during 1948 evolved further during 1949, to achieve Mach 2 the wing sweep was increased to 60° with the ailerons moved to the wingtips. In late 1949 low-speed wind tunnel showed that a vortex was generated by the wing which caused a large downwash on the tailplane. Following the resignation of Petter, Page took over as team leader for the P.1. In 1949, the Ministry of Supply had issued Specification F23/49, on 1 April 1950, English Electric received a contract for two flying airframes, as well as one static airframe, designated P.1. The Royal Aircraft Establishment was sceptical of Petters swept wing concepts, to test the design of both the wing, the tailplane and to assess handling, Short Brothers were issued a contract to produce the Short SB5 in mid-1950. This was a research aircraft and was designed so that different wing sweep angles could be assumed by the single aircraft
36.
Variable-sweep wing
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A variable-sweep wing, colloquially known as a swing wing, is an airplane wing, or set of wings, that may be swept back and then returned to its original position during flight. It allows the shape to be modified in flight, and is therefore an example of a variable-geometry aircraft. A variable-sweep wing allows a pilot to select the correct wing configuration for the intended speed. The variable-sweep wing is most useful for aircraft that are expected to function at both low and high speed, and for this reason it has been used primarily in military aircraft. This is another form of geometry, although it is not commonly called such. The 1931 Westland-Hill Pterodactyl IV was a design whose lightly swept wings could vary their sweep through a small angle during flight. This allowed longitudinal trim in the absence of a horizontal stabiliser. Later, experimental aircraft were built to study the effects of a swept wing. The first of these was the Messerschmitt Me P.1101 whose sweep angle could be changed on the ground, world War II in Europe ended before the P.1101 could be completed. Soon afterwards, the P.1101 was taken to the United States for study at Bell Aircraft, instead, a close copy was constructed which featured wings that could adjust sweep angle in flight. One problem discovered while testing the Bell X-5 was that as the wing pivoted rearward, a system to compensate for this basic effect had to be added for any such design to be viable. Immediately after the war Barnes Wallis had started work on geometry to maximise the economy of supersonic flight. Initial work was on the military Wild Goose project, then he went on to the Vickers Swallow, intended to achieve a return flight from Europe to Australia in 10 hours. It had a blended wing design and he successfully tested several models including a six-foot scale model at speeds of up to Mach 2 in the 1950s. Wallis and his team presented their work to the Americans seeking a grant to continue their studies, in March 1949, the aeronautical engineer L. E. Baynes AFRAeS designed and patented a supersonic variable-sweep wing fighter. He lodged patent applications in Britain and subsequently in May 1956 was granted a US Patent for High Speed Aircraft Wing, in February 1951 he applied for another patent for a supersonic variable-sweep wing and tail fighter. The design was built and wind tunnel tests were completed successfully, but due to budget constraints at the time, a variable-sweep wing was tried on the Grumman F10F Jaguar in 1952. The XF10F never entered service, it possessed extremely poor flying characteristics, the idea was again revived in the early 1960s as a way to reconcile ever-growing aircraft weights with the need to provide reasonable takeoff and landing performance
37.
Iron Curtain
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The Iron Curtain was the name for the boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. A term symbolizing the efforts by the Soviet Union to block itself and its satellite states from open contact with the West, on the east side of the Iron Curtain were the countries that were connected to or influenced by the Soviet Union. The most notable border was marked by the Berlin Wall and its Checkpoint Charlie, the events that demolished the Iron Curtain started in discontent in Poland, and continued in Hungary, the German Democratic Republic, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Romania. Romania became the only communist state in Europe to overthrow its government with violence. The use of the iron curtain as a metaphor for strict separation goes back at least as far as the early 19th century. It originally referred to fireproof curtains in theaters, various usages of the term iron curtain pre-date Churchills use of the phrase. The term iron curtain has since been used metaphorically in two different senses - firstly to denote the end of an era and secondly to denote a closed geopolitical border. The source of these metaphors can refer to either the safety curtain deployed in theatres or to roller shutters used to secure commercial premises. The first metaphorical usage of iron curtain, in the sense of an end of an era, perhaps should be attributed to British author Arthur Machen, who used the term in his 1895 novel The Three Impostors. The door clanged behind me with the noise of thunder, and I felt that an iron curtain had fallen on the passage of my life. Queen Elisabeth of the Belgians used the term Iron Curtain in the context of World War I to describe the situation between Belgium and Germany in 1914. The passage runs, With clanging, creaking, and squeaking, time to put on your fur coats and go home. We looked around, but the fur coats and homes were missing, chesterton used the phrase in a 1924 essay in The Illustrated London News. Chesterton, while defending Distributism, refers to that iron curtain of industrialism that has cut us off not only from our neighbours condition, how, a moment before the iron curtain was wrung down on it, did the German political stage appear. All German theatres had to install an iron curtain as a precaution to prevent the possibility of fire spreading from the stage to the rest of the theatre. Such fires were common because the decor often was very flammable. In case of fire, a wall would separate the stage from the theatre. Douglas Reed used this metaphor in his book Disgrace Abounding, The bitter strife had only hidden by the iron safety-curtain of the Kings dictatorship
38.
Canard (aeronautics)
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A canard is an aeronautical arrangement wherein a small forewing or foreplane is placed forward of the main wing of a fixed-wing aircraft. The term canard may be used to describe the aircraft itself, despite the use of a canard surface on the first powered aeroplane, the Wright Flyer of 1903, canard designs were not built in quantity until the appearance of the Saab Viggen jet fighter in 1967. The aerodynamics of the configuration are complex and require careful analysis. Canard foreplanes, whether used in a canard or three-surface configuration, have important consequences on the aircraft’s longitudinal equilibrium, the term “canard” arose from the appearance of the Santos-Dumont 14-bis of 1906, which was said to be reminiscent of a duck with its neck stretched out in flight. The Wright Brothers began experimenting with the foreplane configuration around 1900 and their first kite included a front surface for pitch control and they adopted this configuration for their first Flyer. They were suspicious of the aft tail because Otto Lilienthal had been killed in a glider with one, the Wrights realised that a foreplane would tend to destabilise an aeroplane but expected it to be a better control surface, in addition to being visible to the pilot in flight. They believed it impossible to provide control and stability in a single design, and opted for control. Many pioneers initially followed the Wrights lead, the Fabre Hydravion of 1910 was the first floatplane to fly and had a foreplane. But canard behaviour was not properly understood and other European pioneers—among them, Louis Blériot—were establishing the tailplane as the safer, some, including the Wrights, experimented with both fore and aft planes on the same aircraft, now known as the three surface configuration. After 1911, few canard types would be produced for many decades, in 1914 W. E. Evans commented that the Canard type model has practically received its death-blow so far as scientific models are concerned. Experiments continued sporadically for several decades, in 1917 de Bruyère constructed his C1 biplane fighter, having a canard foreplane and rear-mounted pusher propellor. First flown in 1927, the experimental Focke-Wulf F19 Ente was more successful, two examples were built and one of them continued flying until 1931. Immediately before and during World War II several experimental canard fighters were flown, including the Ambrosini SS.4, Curtiss-Wright XP-55 Ascender and Kyūshū J7W1 Shinden. These were attempts at using the configuration to give advantages in areas such as performance, armament disposition or pilot view. The Shinden was ordered into production off the board but hostilities ceased before any other than prototypes had flown. But the stability and control problems encountered prevented widespread adoption, in 1963 the Swedish company Saab patented a delta-winged design which overcame the earlier problems, in what has become known as the close-coupled canard. It was built as the Saab 37 Viggen and in 1967 became the first modern aircraft to enter production. The success of this aircraft spurred many designers, and canard surfaces sprouted on a number of derived from the popular Dassault Mirage delta-winged jet fighter
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Aerodynamics
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Aerodynamics, from Greek ἀήρ aer + δυναμική, the study of the motion of air, particularly its interaction with a solid object, such as an airplane wing. Aerodynamics is a sub-field of fluid dynamics and gas dynamics, the term aerodynamics is often used synonymously with gas dynamics, the difference being that gas dynamics applies to the study of the motion of all gases, and is not limited to air. The formal study of aerodynamics began in the sense in the eighteenth century. Most of the efforts in aerodynamics were directed toward achieving heavier-than-air flight. Recent work in aerodynamics has focused on issues related to flow, turbulence. Fundamental concepts of continuum, drag, and pressure gradients appear in the work of Aristotle, in 1726, Sir Isaac Newton became the first person to develop a theory of air resistance, making him one of the first aerodynamicists. In 1757, Leonhard Euler published the more general Euler equations which could be applied to both compressible and incompressible flows, the Euler equations were extended to incorporate the effects of viscosity in the first half of the 1800s, resulting in the Navier-Stokes equations. The Navier-Stokes equations are the most general governing equations of fluid flow, in 1871, Francis Herbert Wenham constructed the first wind tunnel, allowing precise measurements of aerodynamic forces. Drag theories were developed by Jean le Rond dAlembert, Gustav Kirchhoff, in 1889, Charles Renard, a French aeronautical engineer, became the first person to reasonably predict the power needed for sustained flight. Otto Lilienthal, the first person to become successful with glider flights, was also the first to propose thin, curved airfoils that would produce high lift. Building on these developments as well as carried out in their own wind tunnel. During the time of the first flights, Frederick W. Lanchester, Martin Wilhelm Kutta, Kutta and Zhukovsky went on to develop a two-dimensional wing theory. Expanding upon the work of Lanchester, Ludwig Prandtl is credited with developing the mathematics behind thin-airfoil, as aircraft speed increased, designers began to encounter challenges associated with air compressibility at speeds near or greater than the speed of sound. The differences in air flows under such conditions leds to problems in control, increased drag due to shock waves. The ratio of the speed to the speed of sound was named the Mach number after Ernst Mach who was one of the first to investigate the properties of supersonic flow. Theodore von Kármán and Hugh Latimer Dryden introduced the term transonic to describe flow speeds around Mach 1 where drag increases rapidly, by the time the sound barrier was broken, aerodynamicists understanding of the subsonic and low supersonic flow had matured. The Cold War prompted the design of an line of high performance aircraft. Understanding the motion of air around an object enables the calculation of forces, in many aerodynamics problems, the forces of interest are the fundamental forces of flight, lift, drag, thrust, and weight
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Aerospace engineering
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Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft. It has two major and overlapping branches, aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering, avionics engineering is similar, but deals with the electrical side of aerospace engineering. Aeronautical engineering was the term for the field. As flight technology advanced to include craft operating in outer space, Aerospace engineering, particularly the astronautics branch, is often colloquially referred to as rocket science. Flight vehicles are subjected to demanding conditions such as produced by changes in atmospheric pressure and temperature. The interaction between these technologies is known as aerospace engineering, because of the complexity and number of disciplines involved, aerospace engineering is carried out by teams of engineers, each having their own specialized area of expertise. Early knowledge of engineering was largely empirical with some concepts. Scientists understood some key elements of aerospace engineering, like fluid dynamics, many years later after the successful flights by the Wright brothers, the 1910s saw the development of aeronautical engineering through the design of World War I military aircraft. The first definition of aerospace engineering appeared in February 1958, the definition considered the Earths atmosphere and the outer space as a single realm, thereby encompassing both aircraft and spacecraft under a newly coined word aerospace. In response to the USSR launching the first satellite, Sputnik into space on October 4,1957, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was founded in 1958 as a response to the Cold War. Some of the elements of aerospace engineering are, Radar cross-section – the study of vehicle signature apparent to Radar remote sensing, fluid mechanics – the study of fluid flow around objects. Specifically aerodynamics concerning the flow of air over bodies such as wings or through objects such as wind tunnels, astrodynamics – the study of orbital mechanics including prediction of orbital elements when given a select few variables. While few schools in the United States teach this at the undergraduate level, statics and Dynamics – the study of movement, forces, moments in mechanical systems. Mathematics – in particular, calculus, differential equations, and linear algebra, electrotechnology – the study of electronics within engineering. Propulsion – the energy to move a vehicle through the air is provided by internal combustion engines, jet engines and turbomachinery, a more recent addition to this module is electric propulsion and ion propulsion. Control engineering – the study of modeling of the dynamic behavior of systems and designing them, usually using feedback signals. This applies to the behavior of aircraft, spacecraft, propulsion systems. Aircraft structures – design of the configuration of the craft to withstand the forces encountered during flight
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Metallurgy
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The production of metals involves the processing of ores to extract the metal they contain, and the mixture of metals, sometimes with other elements, to produce alloys. Metallurgy is distinguished from the craft of metalworking, although metalworking relies on metallurgy, as medicine relies on medical science, Metallurgy is subdivided into ferrous metallurgy and non-ferrous metallurgy or colored metallurgy. Ferrous metallurgy involves processes and alloys based on iron while non-ferrous metallurgy involves processes, the production of ferrous metals accounts for 95 percent of world metal production. The roots of metallurgy derive from Ancient Greek, μεταλλουργός, metallourgós, worker in metal, from μέταλλον, métallon, metal + ἔργον, érgon, in the late 19th century it was extended to the more general scientific study of metals, alloys, and related processes. In English, the pronunciation is the more common one in the UK. The /ˈmetələrdʒi/ pronunciation is the common one in the USA. The earliest recorded metal employed by humans appears to be gold, small amounts of natural gold have been found in Spanish caves used during the late Paleolithic period, c.40,000 BC. Silver, copper, tin and meteoric iron can also be found in native form, egyptian weapons made from meteoric iron in about 3000 BC were highly prized as daggers from heaven. Certain metals, notably tin, lead and copper, can be recovered from their ores by simply heating the rocks in a fire or blast furnace, a process known as smelting. The first evidence of this extractive metallurgy dates from the 5th and 6th millennia BC and was found in the sites of Majdanpek, Yarmovac and Plocnik. To date, the earliest evidence of copper smelting is found at the Belovode site, other signs of early metals are found from the third millennium BC in places like Palmela, Los Millares, and Stonehenge. However, the ultimate beginnings cannot be ascertained and new discoveries are both continuous and ongoing. These first metals were single ones or as found, about 3500 BC, it was discovered that by combining copper and tin, a superior metal could be made, an alloy called bronze, representing a major technological shift known as the Bronze Age. The extraction of iron from its ore into a metal is much more difficult than for copper or tin. The process appears to have been invented by the Hittites in about 1200 BC, the secret of extracting and working iron was a key factor in the success of the Philistines. Historical developments in ferrous metallurgy can be found in a variety of past cultures. A 16th century book by Georg Agricola called De re metallica describes the highly developed and complex processes of mining metal ores, metal extraction, Agricola has been described as the father of metallurgy. Extractive metallurgy is the practice of removing valuable metals from an ore, in order to convert a metal oxide or sulphide to a purer metal, the ore must be reduced physically, chemically, or electrolytically
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Zoom climb
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A zoom climb is a climb where the rate of climb is greater than the maximum for a sustained climb, as determined from the thrust of the aircrafts engines. Before a zoom climb, the aircraft accelerates to an air speed at an altitude at which it can operate in sustained level flight. The pilot then pulls steeply upward, trading the kinetic energy of motion for altitude. During these maneuvers the engine is in full thrust, the aircraft gains potential energy at the expense of kinetic energy. This is different from a climb, where the increase in potential energy comes from mechanical work done by the engines. In a demonstration of their performance, English Electric Lightning fighter aircraft have sometimes used zoom climbs to climb above a Lockheed U-2, during the Second World War, MiG-3 pilots utilized zoom climbs and subsequent descents to maintain a speed advantage over German fighters. Zoom climbs have been used to test new designs and conduct research in different flight regimes. The previous record of 94,658 feet was set by a Soviet Sukhoi T-43-1 prototype, commander Lawrence E. Flint Jr. accelerated his aircraft to Mach 2.5 at 47,000 feet and climbed to 90,000 feet at a 45-degree angle. He then shut down the engines and glided to the peak altitude, as the aircraft fell through 70,000 feet, Flint restarted the engines and resumed normal flight. An NF-104A Starfighter fitted with a rocket engine was also regularly used in zoom-climb research for future spaceflight. On May 7,1958, the reached a altitude of 91,249 feet in a zoom climb at Edwards Air Force Base. The Mach 2 mission took the airplane so high that the standard F-104’s jet engines routinely exceeded their temperature limits and had to be shut down, sometimes the engine simply flamed out for lack of air. Then the pilot steered the aircraft like a spaceship to a lower altitude. It was on one such zoom climb flight that test pilot Chuck Yeager was nearly killed flying a heavily modified F-104 on December 10,1963. On 25 July 1973, A. Fedotov reached 35,230 m in a Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25 with 1,000 kg payload, in the thin air, the engines flamed out and the aircraft coasted in a ballistic trajectory by inertia alone. At the apex the speed had dropped to 75 km/h, without engine power, the cockpit would depressurize on these missions. Consequently, for protection against the atmosphere, the pilot wore a full-body pressure suit. Properly outfitted with a helmet and suit, the pilot received breathing oxygen without ill effects
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