The Sukhoi T-4: The Soviet Valkyrie

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 08/09/2017 at 12:35 • Filed to: Planelopnik, planes you've (probably) never heard of, wingspan

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From the Planes You’ve (Probably) Never Heard Of   Department of Wingspan , we bring you the Sukhoi T-4 .

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Before the advent of the intercontinental ballistic missile, high-altitude bombers provided the only means of delivering a large nuclear bomb to its target. But early jet bombers remained susceptible to jet interceptors, so the obvious solution was to develop a bomber that could fly higher and faster than any fighter and could reach altitudes of more than 70,000 feet at speeds above Mach 2. America’s attempt to build such a supersonic super bomber was made with the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , though it was canceled after only two were built, one of which was involved in a fatal crash. But in the heat of the Cold War arms race, the Soviet Union decided they needed their own super fast penetration bomber, and they looked to the XB-70 to build one for themselves.

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This wasn’t the first time the Soviets cribbed from an American design. Towards the end of WWII, Russia reverse engineered a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! that had made an emergency landing in Russia. They copied it rivet for rivet, right down to duplicating the word “Boeing” on the rudder pedals. Dubbed the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , Russia built nearly 850 of them. While the Sukhoi T-4 (also called the T-100 or Project 100) was by no means a carbon copy of the XB-70, the influence the XB-70 had on its Soviet counterpart was clear.

Greg Goebel

Overall, the T-4 was smaller than the Valkyrie, an had a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! wing as compared to the true delta of the XB-70. The Tu-4 also did not employ the drooping outer wings of the Valkyrie that were used to take advantage of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The T-4 also had a single vertical stabilizer, and used a drooping nose taken from the Tu-144. During high-speed flight, the pilots used a periscope to see forward when the nose was raised. Both aircraft shared forward canards and triangular intake ramps under the fuselage, but where North American employed six engines on the massive Valkyrie, the smaller T-4 had only four. The !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! turbofans, variants of those used on the Tu-144 SST (itself heavily influenced by the Anglo-French Concorde), generated 35,000 pounds of thrust each and gave the T-4 a projected top speed of Mach 3.

The T-4 presented significant technological challenges for its Soviet designers. Like the Valkyrie, the T-4 made use of titanium structures that provided both strength and lightness and could withstand the demands of Mach 3 flight. But Sukhoi had to develop new techniques to machine and weld the exotic metal, and as many as 600 patents for new manufacturing processes came out of the T-4 program. The Soviets also made advances in the realm of fly-by-wire controls, and the T-4 was one of the first Russian designs to use the system, though it also had quadruple redundancy and a mechanical backup in case the advanced system failed.

The first T-4 took its maiden flight on August 22, 1972 piloted by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , son of the famed Russian aircraft builder !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Over the course of 10 test flights totaling a little more than 10 hours of total flying time, the T-4 only achieved a speed of Mach 1.3 and an altitude of 19,000 feet. As with the Valkyrie, the enormous cost of the program (the Soviet Air Force initially hoped to build a staggering 850 of them) and the advent of high-altitude antiaircraft missiles cast doubt on whether the T-4 could complete its mission. Soviet military planners also felt the need to put money into more conventional aircraft that would be of more use.

The T-4 101 on display at Monino (Sergey Dukachev)

Ultimately, as with the Valkyrie, the T-4 became an anachronism, a plane whose time had come and gone before it made its maiden flight, its survivability put in doubt by modern antiaircraft missiles and its mission made redundant by ICBMs. Just two aircraft, designated 101 and 102, were built, and only 101 ever flew. Two other prototypes were left unfinished when the program was abandoned in 1974, and all but one were scrapped. The sole remaining T-4 is now on display at the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! near Moscow.

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xyzabc > ttyymmnn 08/09/2017 at 12:50

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“ Time to get Moose and Squirrel... ”

user314 > ttyymmnn 08/09/2017 at 12:59

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See, I’ve never really bought the conventional wisdom that SAMs made the B-70 vulnerable. How many dozens of missiles were fired at A-12s and SR-71s, only to fall short?

The ICBM tack holds a little more water, but on the flip side, we’re still developing manned bombers sixty years after ballistic missiles were introduced. I think it’s more likely McNamara was the wrong man for the job, something the F-111 debacle also points to.

sony1492 > ttyymmnn 08/09/2017 at 13:24

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A bit off topic but I see a theme that engineers went to great lengths to make the aircraft,”safe”. Things such as multiple redundancys, high altitude ejection modules and some other things I’m forgetting. I would think that with so few people being able to fly fighter jets or bombers it wouldn’t be too important for the pilot to survive. I mean wouldn’t there still be people willing to take high risks in order for the privilege to fly so e of these amazing planes? How much money could be saved, enough to make an impact in the grand scheme of designing a plane?

ttyymmnn > sony1492 08/09/2017 at 13:30

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I don’t know. Perhaps having rescue systems keeps a vestige of humanity in a might killing machine. You would probably have a harder time getting pilots to fly them if they didn’t have escape systems. The A3D Skywarrior didn’t have ejection seats in order to save weight. The 3-man crews said “A3D” meant “All three dead.” However, the Air Force’s version, the B-66, always had ejection seats. That said, the Navy didn’t seem to have problem getting pilots to fly the A3D. Of course, military pilots don’t have a whole lot of say in what they fly.

Flyboy is FAA certified insane > sony1492 08/09/2017 at 13:35

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As a pilot I would like to survive if I’m not supposed to be a test pilot

sony1492 > Flyboy is FAA certified insane 08/09/2017 at 13:49

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But if you got the chance to pilot an f-22 raptor with no ejection system would you do it?

WilliamsSW > sony1492 08/09/2017 at 14:08

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There’s certainly a morale impact in having safety systems in place.

But perhaps more to the point, a lot of time and money is spent training pilots to fly these ultra high-performance aircraft- and you lose that money if you lose the pilot. In addition, those system redundancies help you save the aircraft itself - another big investment. Finally, they might increase aircraft availability, depending on the Minimum Equipment List.

WilliamsSW > ttyymmnn 08/09/2017 at 14:20

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Great stuff! I wonder why they gave up so quickly on this program? 19,000 feet tells me that, for some reason, they never pushed the aircraft to its limits - either due to funding priorities, or perhaps airframe issues?

facw > user314 08/09/2017 at 14:26

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How many dozens of missiles were fired at A-12s and SR-71s, only to fall short?

Not many? We didn’t fly them over the USSR like we did with the U-2 as far as I can see. We flew them over lower level adversaries that didn’t have sort of air defense and early warning capabilities the Soviet Union did, and where the window where it was in hostile airspace was smaller. Even then, a North Vietnamese SAM did hit an A-12, though the damage was minimal.

user314 > facw 08/09/2017 at 15:00

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Are you sure about that? MiG-25 pilot Viktor Belenko talked about several failed attempts to shoot down Blackbirds, and SR-71 pilot Brian Shul mentions the plane had outrun something like four thousand missiles. They may not have flown over Soviet territory, but they got damn close, and flew over points of interest in North Vietnam, China, North Korea, Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, and Libya, Soviet client states all, who would have had the best SAMs money can buy.

Minor quibble: Dennis Sullivan ’s Sled wasn’t actually hit by a SAM, but it did pick up a couple bits of FOD from them detonating a couple hundred yards behind him.

ttyymmnn > WilliamsSW 08/09/2017 at 15:10

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Like so many other projects, they probably just lost interest. Also, it can be hard to get accurate information about Russian military projects, so there could have been a fatal problem with the aircraft but they didn’t want to admit it. In the end, as with the Valkyrie, I think it was just a plane that didn’t fit contemporary needs.

facw > user314 08/09/2017 at 15:37

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Not at all sure, but I wasn’t seeing much documented. It seems unlikely thousands of missiles would be shot if they thought they could not be effective.

Regardless, even if they were, my point remains, that with the exception of China, which would not have had top notch air defenses, the other nations would all be much easier to overfly than the USSR simply by virtue of being much smaller, which greatly limits the opportunities to detect and intercept, regardless of the quality of SAMs deployed.

Flyboy is FAA certified insane > sony1492 08/09/2017 at 21:48

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Don’t tempt me like that

ttyymmnn > facw 08/10/2017 at 10:31

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From my reading, the SR-71 rarely, if ever, flew over the USSR. Of course, if it did, the public would be the last to know about it.

e36Jeff now drives a ZHP > facw 10/16/2017 at 09:47

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They fired the missiles at them because, in theory, it was possible for the SAM to make the intercept. It had the speed and range to hit an SR-71, but it was so far in the margins that, realistically, it never could make the intercept. And shooting down an SR-71 would be a massive PR & military coup for the USSR. The Viet Cong alone fired at least 800 SAMs at the SR-71, and I’d bet more than a few of those had Soviet advisors manning the controls.

e36Jeff now drives a ZHP > ttyymmnn 10/16/2017 at 09:49

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afaik, it never actually overflew the USSR, it stayed just outside the territorial waters limit and watched the naval bases. 

ttyymmnn > e36Jeff now drives a ZHP 10/16/2017 at 10:02

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I don’t think it did, and that surprised me.

e36Jeff now drives a ZHP > ttyymmnn 10/16/2017 at 10:04

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IIRC there was some kind of agreement with the USSR that we’d stop overflying them and they wouldn’t try to overfly us. That or they were too embarrassed by the Gary Powers incident to risk it again.

ttyymmnn > e36Jeff now drives a ZHP 10/16/2017 at 10:59

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I think after Powers it was just too dangerous.