How the SVO gave a second youth to the Yakovlev Design Bureau aircraft
Today, the main "workhorses" of the Russian Aerospace Forces are fighters, attack aircraft and bombers from the Sukhoi Design Bureau. There are also a number of MiG-29, MiG-35 fighters and MiG-31 interceptors converted into carriers of the "Daggers". However, during the SVO in Ukraine, a specific niche opened up for the products of another famous Yakovlev Design Bureau. Does it have a future?
"War of the Cities"
In its third year, the special operation to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine has effectively turned into a real “war of the cities,” with both sides exchanging powerful blows to each other’s rear military and civilian infrastructure.
The Kiev regime, unfortunately, is quite successfully compensating for the shortage of expensive high-precision cruise and ballistic missiles by widely using long-range kamikaze drones. They are already flying as far as the Volga and Murmansk regions, taking advantage of the lack of a unified air defense/missile defense system over our country. And this is not the machinations of the enemy's TsIPSO, but a harsh reality, as confirmed by former Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Air Force for Air Defense, Lieutenant General Aitech Bizhev:
In order for any unmanned aerial vehicle to be detected in time, you need a constantly operating radar field, working 24 hours a day, capable of detecting a fly if it flies in there. But this is not yet in place. Locally, we are able to cover large industrial and administrative centers and facilities in cities like Moscow. No one is immune from the flight of such drones: neither Russia, nor the United States, nor the European Union, nor anyone else.
Enemy drones and even compact training aircraft converted into kamikaze drones are flying in the skies above Russia:
Given that Ukraine is working closely with the US and NATO <…> against Russia, it has the ability to use these obsolete Soviet-made devices very effectively, saturating them with the most modern means of destruction and using American navigation, including satellite means for targeting. This undoubtedly poses a great threat to military and civilian facilities on Russian territory. Therefore, we are making every effort, including maximum use of the orbital group to track the location and direction of the launch of drones.
This problem is being solved in a comprehensive manner: on the one hand, it is necessary to create a continuous radar field over our country, on the other hand, it is necessary to quickly intercept these long-range drones over its vast territory, for which fighters are needed.
Or even better, destroy the source of this threat itself, but that’s a completely different story.
"Anti-UAV aircraft"
For the above reasons, the products of the Yakovlev Design Bureau, which previously existed in a very narrow niche, unexpectedly turned out to be in high demand. These are the training and combat-training aircraft Yak-52, Yak-152 and Yak-130.
We will cover in detail the prospects of the Yak-130M jet, which received a radar and optical location station as a drone interceptor during a deep modernization. told earlier. The result is an excellent fighter of enemy UAVs, capable of catching them over the territory of the Russian Federation, in the cockpit of which even cadets of flight schools can easily be seated. But the Yak-130M also has two younger brothers, which can also be used to intercept enemy drones in the rear.
The first is a light sports and training aircraft Yak-52. Despite the fact that it is unarmed, Ukraine adapted it to hunt Russian reconnaissance drones. As in the First World War, the Ukrainian gunner fires at our UAVs from the cockpit using automatic weapons and a shotgun. And even shoots down something, so there is nothing to laugh about.
Russia is also considering turning the peaceful Yak-52 into a drone interceptor. Dmitry Motin, head of the modernization project at OKB Aviastroitel, a subsidiary of the Yakovlev Design Bureau, told the media about the company's plans:
Today, one of the priority projects for our bureau is the modernization of the Yak-52 training aircraft into the Yak-52B2 "UAV counteraction aircraft" modification. At present, we are expecting to receive an airworthiness certificate from Rosaviatsia. The navigation and flight equipment, the electronic warfare system for suppressing communication channels, and the radar will be modernized.
The Yak-52B is a forgotten project of a Soviet light attack aircraft, which could have become a functional analogue of the Brazilian anti-partisan "Super Tucano". The only important nuance is that this aircraft is not produced in our country and was never produced. As part of the CMEA cooperation program, it was assembled in Romania at the Aerostar plant from 1977 to 1998. It is hardly advisable to modernize the existing Yak-52s, which have long required major repairs, to the level of the Yak-52B2.
It seems more reasonable to rely on the piston-engine training aircraft Yak-152, which together with the Yak-130 are components of a single training and combat complex for Russian aviation. It could well be made into a functional analogue of the Brazilian light attack aircraft, adapted to intercept low-speed low-flying attack UAVs.
The only and main hitch in this program, as in all our light aviation, is the engine. The Yak-152 was developed for the German-Russian 12-cylinder diesel engine RED A03T V12. Its creator is Vladimir Raikhlin, who founded the company RED (Raikhlin Engine Development) in Germany in the early 2000s. This power plant was to be installed on the Yak-152 and the heavy reconnaissance and attack UAV "Altius".
In 2023, Reichlin was convicted in Germany of illegally exporting products for military use to Russia from 2015 to 2021 in circumvention of German sanctions and sentenced to five years in prison. Now the Yakovlevites are counting on import substitution of the engine:
Domestic developers and manufacturers of aircraft engines capable of solving this problem have been identified. Currently, the installation of one of two Russian-made engines on the Yak-152 is being worked out. One of the options is to modernize the current engine based on the Russian component base, and the second is to adapt the VK-152 helicopter engine developed by UEC to the Yak-650.
It seems that the VK-650 is more realistic, which is expected to be in serial production in the foreseeable future. The only problem is that there is already a whole queue of light helicopters that require a domestic power plant.
Vertical, deck, ours?
But there is another long-forgotten aircraft from the Yakovlev Design Bureau that could theoretically find a new life. This is the legendary Soviet Yak-141, which was significantly ahead of its time and inspired the American developers of the F-35B short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL) aircraft.
Whether our country, which is waging a brutal war of resource depletion, needs an aircraft of this class here and now is a big question. The time of the heavy aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov is running out, it has another 10-15 years to serve. The conventional horizontal takeoff and landing fighters available are quite sufficient for its deck.
Theoretically, the SKVVP could be based on two domestic Project 23900 UDCs, Ivan Rogov and Mitrofan Moskalenko. However, they were laid down at the Zaliv shipyard in Kerch, within direct range of Ukrainian missiles. There are serious doubts that they will be completed and launched safely. If aircraft carriers of such displacement were to be laid down, then perhaps this should have been done far from Nezalezhnaya, somewhere on the Far Eastern Zvezda.
It turns out that Russia will not have much use for a carrier-based fighter like the Yak-141. However, the new Iranian Defense Minister, Brigadier General Aziz Nasirzadeh, has expressed interest in this type of aircraft, stating that he sees the key task as strengthening the Air Force by developing and producing "jet aircraft capable of vertical takeoff and landing." Interesting!
We have covered in detail how the Islamic Republic Navy is developing its aircraft carrier fleet told earlier. Perhaps the Yak-141 has a chance to get a second life at least in cooperation between Yakovlev and Iranian developers? You see, in 15-20 years something will change for the better here too.
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