Soviet design philosophy in the west?

[The Rat]

Here's a thought - sometime in the fifties the U.S, Britain, France, etc., realise that the Russians actually do have at least one good idea; making their aircraft capable of rough field performance. As a consequence they decide to apply this to various designs.

How would this affect some of the better known products - Can we envision Phantoms and Jaguars with larger wheels and tires, with fuselages designed a little differently? Mudguards like the Mig-23? F-16 with a built-in FOD guard like the Mig-29? Military VC-10s with big bulging wheel housings on the wings like the Tu-134?

Discuss.  B)  

[Daryl J.]

For starters, the F-104 would have had a tandem gear much akin to the Tsybin NM-1 with little Harrier-like outriggers in the aft part of the wing tanks.  Nose canted up at about 8 degrees.    

The F-106 would have been built to full spec North Dakota Edition standards complete with a heavy-duty gear consisting of chunkier struts, dual wheels all the way around, requisite underwing bulges, and the front debris fender would have been subcontracted by General Dynamics to Harley Davidson.


Has anyone seen the footage of the Jaguar taking off through a field, through ditches, over a road, back into a ditch and into another field before taking off?  IIRC, the vertical differances were some 10 feet or so.   The landing gear was all over the place.   It would have been fun to be aboard, yes?



Daryl J.

[rallymodeller]

Once the rough-field idea had taken hold in the West, a lot of the designs mentioned would have either looked a lot different or not appeared at all. Most fighters would have looked more like Navy aircraft, with beefy landing gear and so forth. A FOD-magnet intake like that on the F-16 would never have gotten off the ground, for example.  

[nev]

Here's a thought - sometime in the fifties the U.S, Britain, France, etc., realise that the Russians actually do have at least one good idea; making their aircraft capable of rough field performance. As a consequence they decide to apply this to various designs.

How would this affect some of the better known products - Can we envision Phantoms and Jaguars with larger wheels and tires, with fuselages designed a little differently? Mudguards like the Mig-23? F-16 with a built-in FOD guard like the Mig-29? Military VC-10s with big bulging wheel housings on the wings like the Tu-134?

Discuss.  B)

The Jaguar did have a (limited) rough field capability.  So did the TSR2.  The Tornado has some as well.

[upnorth]

Lessee here....

C-130 Hercules:
Main gear would have bigger blisters to house four wheels each instead of two, tighter cowled engines with contraprops.

F-4 Phantom:
Mud deflector on nose wheels, main wheels stay same size but main gear is redesigned for two wheel main gear units like on the MiG-31, MiG-29 style retractable intake FOD guards and compensatory louvre system for take offs and landings, IRST ball (just cus' I like IRST balls).

[Daryl J.]

RE: IRST balls--->  In talking to people in the microscope industry, they claim that no one has optics like the Russians.   No small amount of effort is spend getting Russian-built microscopes simply to get the optics.
FYI.

IRST balls are very cool, yes.



Daryl J., visualizing an IRST under the nose of an F-4N

[grayman]

F-4 Phantom with 30mm NK cannon in the wing roots, with suitable plating for the blast effect (a la Su7).

C130 Hercules and C-141 Starlifter with glazed noses...

UH-60 Blackhawk with coaxial rotors...

C-5 Galaxy with low-set wings for WIG effect...