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This Canceled Soviet VTOL Jet Inspired the F-35B, Now It’s Coming to War Thunder

So much of the western understanding of the capabilities of the Soviet Air Force before the fall of the Berlin Wall resulted from hyperbole and word-of-mouth hype-ups resulting from a deliberate attempt by the Kremlin to obscure the facts. But at least one aspect of the Red Air Force and later the Russian Air Force wasn't just hype at all.
Yakovlev Yak-141 in War Thunder 12 photos
Photo: Gaijin Entertainment
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Though it's hard to say anything nice about the Russian Air Force in 2023, the Yakovlev Yak-141 showed the best and brightest of Eastern Bloc aviation tech 35 years before all of the current unpleasantness began. At a time when the Joint Strike Fighter was just a glimmer in the eye of some NATO generals and Lockheed executives, it was the Soviets who set the trend for all future military VTOLs.

Historically, the United States and the Pentagon really don't like spooky surprises in terms of military technology from nations adversarial to themselves. Most famously, the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25 once scared the daylights out of the U.S. Air Force, who feared the thing could potentially tussle with the still-in-development F-15. That was until a Soviet pilot defected to Japan and exposed it as nothing more than a big, bloated point-and-shoot interceptor that couldn't dogfight.

But this wasn't the case with the Yak-141. If anything, Lockheed Martin wanted a cup of coffee with Yakovlev's engineers; and possibly a few hundred million in cash subsidies. That's in American money, mind you, not red roubles. If nothing else, that's a signifier of how special the Yak-141 was in the late '80s and early '90s. But to tell the story of the Yak-141, you need to know the tale of its far less impressive predecessor.

Yakovlev often stated their Yak-38 VTOL jet was a transitional aircraft. A technological demonstrator that showed the Soviets could indeed match the capabilities of the British Harrier and its American counterparts. Had it not been for the Yak-141, this claim would've been nothing more than huffing some "copium." The truth was that the Yak-38 was not a great military jet by most measures.

Yak\-141
Photo: Russian Federal Archives
The first Navy-oriented Soviet VTOL jet was inferior to the Harrier in nearly every respect, aside from the relative leap in technology compared to what was available beforehand in either nation. With a paltry weapon loadout and maneuverability that was very unlike a fighter, a much-improved successor VTOL jet was in the works even before the Yak-38 entered service.

The resulting project was dubbed Yak-41M under top secret Soviet development. Had the design entered production, it would have received the call sign Yak-43. The 141 designation was only added when the aircraft broke so many records that Yakovlev needed a non-classified descriptor for the western press to boast of its achievements. Like the lame-duck Yak-38, the Yak-41M used a configuration by which separate engine systems handled vertical and horizontal flight.

In the case of the latter aircraft, two vertical lift jets worked in tandem with a single Soyuz R-79V-300 vectoring-nozzle turbofan engine with an afterburner. In basic operating principles, the Yak-141's main engine worked remarkably similarly to a modern F-35B. Rotating down toward the ground on a rotating pivot, 108 kN (24,000 lbf) of dry thrust aided the 41.7 kN (9,400 lbf) generated by each lift jet to send the 19,500 kg (42,990 lb) airframe vertically into the sky.

Where the Yak-38 famously wasn't allowed to go supersonic for safety reasons, the Yak-141's sleek body and rugged airframe were built to smash the sound barrier. Extra structural integrity came from an airframe with at least 26 percent of its construction made of composite metals. Vital flight components close to any of the aircraft's three engines were finished with an outer layer of titanium for better thermal resistance over repeated use.

Yak\-141
Photo: Anthony Noble- Own work
Armament on this novel Soviet warbird was a choice of three air-to-air missiles manufactured by the Vympel NPO company. These ran the full gamut of short-range, medium-range, and beyond-visual-range in the form of the R-73 heatseeker, the R-77 radar missile, and the R-27 semi-active homing missile. If these methods failed, a single 30 mm GSh-30-1 autocannon sporting 120 rounds was at hand to handle particularly pesky targets.

In terms of late 20th-century VTOL technology, the Yak-141 made everything else on the planet look like child's play, including the Sea Harrier. With its first conventional flight in March 1987 with Yakovlev's chief test pilot at the controls, it'd take until December 1989 before the first vertical takeoff flight was authorized. Soon afterward, the Yak-141 set no less than 12 new records for VTOL aviation. The most obvious among these records were for raw speed, which would only be broken once the F-35B came around.

It genuinely appeared Yakovlev was ready to field a supersonic VTOL jet unlike any to enter service. But there was a problem. Right in line with the Yak-141's first vertical takeoff came the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union. As Glastnost and Perestroika on the part of Mikhail Gorbachev broke the Soviet stranglehold on Eastern Europe, the communist lynchpin suddenly had far more important matters to attend to than a flight of fancy VTOL prototypes.

In August 1989, Alexander Yakovlev, the leading man behind the company, sadly passed away. It was another gut punch to the Yak-141 program, which caused the company to do something unprecedented. Soon after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Yakovlev formally reached out to the American Lockheed company in complete secret to work out a deal to finish the remaining three airframes in Russian factories.

Yak\-141
Photo: Ken Videan- Own work
By the turn of the 90s, Lockheed had already begun preliminary research on its entry into the international Joint Strike Fighter program alongside the substantially uglier Boeing X-32. It's estimated Lockheed provided as much as $400 million in private-sector monetary grants to Yakovlev to manufacture the final three semi-completed Yak-141 airframes. In 2023 money, that's closer to $900 million.

The result was a slew of technology developed for the Yak-141 making its way to the X-35 and later the F-35 Lightning II. The greatest difference, of course, being the F-35's lift-fan configuration taking the place of the Yak's lift jets. But come on, the resemblance between the hind quarters of a Yak-141 and an F-35B

The new Russian government had already canceled the program by the time the final aircraft, serial number 48-2, made its public debut at the 1992 Farnborough Air Show in the England. But in its ever-so-brief time in the spotlight, the Yal-141 made a lasting impression. Little did any civilian know at the time, but that ex-Soviet VTOL jet was funded by a few large briefcases loaded wilth Ben Franklins.

Today, the two surviving Yak-141s reside in museums in Russia. This includes one on display at the Central Air Force Museum in Monini, just east of Moscow. By most measures, that's where the Yak-141's story should have come to an end. But because Gaijin Entertainment exists, this isn't the case.
Yak\-141
Photo: Gaijin Entertainment

In February 2023, it was announced that Russia's finest VTOL would be making its way soon to the vehicular combat game War Thunder at an eye watering 12.0 battle rating. Now that sounds like some real fireworks. Rest assured, when the jet does make its War Thunder debut, you'll hear about it right here on autoevolution.

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