The Yak-141 Freestyle may not technically count as a predecessor to the F-35, but the JSF does seem to have at least some Russian DNA floating around its engine design — and as the F-35 came to fruition in the United States, the Yak-141 Freestyle died a quiet death in Russia. However, if a resurgent Russian defense industry chooses to move forward with a carrier-based VTOL aircraft, at least one Russian legislator has called for the Yak-141 to be revived, most likely with a stealthier new look for a new Cold War.For all the yelling and shouting over the Department of Defense’s much-maligned F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, there’s an unusual, often overlooked footnote in the trillion-dollar project’s history: its origins as an experimental Soviet fighter that only fell into Lockheed Martin’s lap because a desperate Russian aerospace company needed some cold, hard cash.Before the F-35, there was the Yak-141 ‘Freestyle’ multi-role vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) fighter born during a tumultuous period in Russian military history. Though the Yak-141’s first flight in 1987 was a revolutionary contribution to the development of VTOL systems, the hovering death bird was largely developed as the Soviet Union came apart at the seams, and the newly-broke Russian military was in no position to continue development of the new aircraft after the Berlin Wall.(This first appeared in 2018.)
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