The MiG 1.44: How the Soviets Answered the F-22

when the F-22 Raptor took to the skies in its first flight on September the 7th 1997 it set a nearly impossible standard by which every fighter aircraft from that moment onward would be judged packed full of some of the most sophisticated technology ever Incorporated to an aircraft Orit invisible to radar and capable of beating nearly any air superiority fighter in the world before its Pilots even realized they being hunted the Raptor is as of the time of writing the best airto a fighter jet ever made but long before it ever took flight long before it

ever proved its dominance against the best fighter jets in any Global Arsenal the F22 Raptor had a challenger hiding in secret designed deep in the heart of Moscow in a crucible formed by the best Aerospace mines that the Soviet Union could provide the Challenger was an S superiority fighter said to rival the F-22 in head-to-head combat its name was the Mikan project 144 and for the briefest moment the Mig 144 might have done more than just stand up to the Raptor it might have even beaten the Raptor in the sky this is the story of

mean project 144 what the Soviet super Blane was what it was capable of and why or when the race to a fifth generation fighter jet was concluded it was the F22 that made it over the Finish Line while the Mig was left shattered in the Raptor's thunderous exhaust today's video is sponsored by Squarespace now if you ever thought creating a website sounds like a hassle then hold on to your keyboard because Squarespace is here to change that Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform designed to help you stand out and succeed online whether you're launching your

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ready to take your online presence to the next level head over to squarespace.com meegar projects for a free trial and when you're ready to launch use the code Mega projects to save 10% on your first purchase of a website or a domain big thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring today's video and now back to it the Mig 144 was a product of the Cold War which meant like every other American and Soviet Cold War project alike it was a response to a threat sometimes in those long and difficult years Washington and Moscow would build devices to

get ahead of new capabilities they suspected the other might soon start developing sometimes they produced a design meant to cross a boundary or set a record before the other side could get to it sometimes they ow were Force to design at high levels very quickly while cutting as many corners as possible because the other side had called them with their pants down but by the waning years of the Cold War in the 1980s the Soviet Union was doing a whole lot less of those more proactive sorts of developments and spending a good bit more time

getting caught with their pants down the Soviets were losing their long Battle of attrition and a few more ambitious projects to build a few more Wonder Weapons could Doom the whole thing and in 1981 just about a decade before the Soviet Union took its final tble into the dust Moscow was caught yet again with its trouses all bunched up around its ankles this time the problem was a program within the US Air Force code named senior sky but soon announced to be a procurement Initiative for something called the advanced tactical fighter now what the advanced

tactical fighter was probably seemed relatively obvious to the Soviets as it did to the Americans the F14 F-15 F-16 and fa18 fighter jeds that the US relied on were all well and good but technology was getting better and probably they were going to want to better fighter jets before the Soviets go one building a more advanced fighter was also an initiative on the Soviets radar but with Moscow strapped for cash over strained in a number of areas and lacking the military industrial might to really embark on that sort of project outside indicators would suggest that

the Soviets were hoping that the race to a Next Generation fighter might not kick off for a little while longer but the Air Force's Advanced tactical fighter was on its way and headache or not the Soviets were now on a timeline match the new American aircraft with something of their own or get caught behind in a way that would hand the American exactly the sort of wonder weapon the Soviets had wanted to build for so long the Kremlin reached out to its design bureaus for the task particularly the suai bureau responsible for the su27 and

its many derivatives and the mckm bureau responsible for the iconic mig21 the Superfast mig2 and the modern MiG 29 suoy would take part in the design contest to rival the advanced tactical fighter building the Strang looking an ultimately unsuccessful su47 burkut a fighter primarily known for asking the question what if we put the wings on backward and scare the Americans with our fancy acrobatics now we won't get into details on the su47 in this episode you're welcome to let us know down in the comments if you'd like to learn more about it it's uh what

we do on this channel we make videos about things you want to watch fun isn't it meanwhile the Micky and team got to work in the design room seeking to satisfy a few key requirements that the Kremlin had laid out and a few others that were widely understood at the time while America's Advanced tactical fighter program would focus on a dedicated a superiority fighter with a strong emphasis on stealth technology the Soviets were looking for a multi-roll fighter something similar to the F35 aircraft that serves today beside the F22 Moscow wanted a plane that could

excel at air to ground operations perhaps taking over or helping to support aircraft like the suco su2 and the Mikan Mig 27 in the Open Sky the new mckian plane was supposed to be able to endure long flights at supersonic speed but it was also supposed to be super maneuverable executing tactical Maneuvers in Flight that aren't aerodynamically possible by only using flaps air brakes Rudders and the other control services that most aircraft use to maneuver most likely that would have made the new Mikan plane capable of Performing the Cobra short stall maneuver and would have

required or benefited from the use of thrust vectoring engine nozzles specialized nozzles that can control the direction of thrust and enable much tighter turns at the start Mikan had the option to develop two planes rather than one and they clearly wanted to do so working on a heavy multi-roll aircraft and a light tactical fighter that would have used a lot of overlapping parts for a very brief moment around this time it seemed as if the mckian bureau might have been on track to get something in the air before the Americans did and if history had

gone their way they might even have been able to get it into production within a few years as time went on however Rising costs forced a consolidation of both designs into one with the smaller light Tactical iCal aircraft sheld and most of its attributes carried over to the bigger multi-roll aircraft as best as the design team could manage the Soviet Union threw its support behind the new aircraft even giving it a shout out in the 5-year economic plan of 1986 and Design Elements began to get slapped onto the airframe that mam was working on the

plane was even given canards small four wings underneath the cockpit and it was tweaked to reduce its radar cross-section reducing the size that radar would perceive it to be if it were traveling in the sky for reference the F22 is 62 ft long and 44 1/2 ft wide that's 19 by 13 1/2 M but on a radar it shows up as being roughly the size of a single bumblebee it was given an internal weapons Bay in order to reduce its radar cross-section even further although that wouldn't be included on the eventual flyable aircraft that the

program produced the program would be beset by delay after delay slowed down in much the same way that the F22 was being slowed down half a world away first it took time to integrate both airplane designs into one then the Soviet Air Force took forever to do its critical review then the Soviet Union collapsed pushing long awaited elements of the program like a first flly back by several years but by 1994 Mikan was able to produce a technology demonstrator that was ready for ground tests and in that year the demonstrator version of the Mig 144

arrived at moscow's zovsky Airfield to begin his trials upheaval in Russia ands within Mikan o would push back deadlines cancel production runs of the aircraft and more but finally in 1999 Russian military and government Elites foreign journalists and international dignitaries finally got to see Russia's secret project unveiled it would fly for the first time about a year later on the 29th of February [Music] 2000 now when it comes to discussing the Mig 144s capabilities in Flight we've got to include a caveat according to publicly available information the Mig 144 would never be pushed to its

limits in Flight either during tests or actual developments any estimation on the outter bounds of what it was capable of come from a mix of Soviet and Russian records public statements on the program and independent analysis of the aircraft and what it should have been capable of but with all of that said we can at least make some pretty good guesses as to what the Mig 144 would have been capable of so let's dive into that shall we the Mig 144 was envisioned as a single seat fighter measuring A fulllength tipto Tail of 21.7 me

that's 71 ft 2 in it featured a wingspan of 17 M or 55 ft 9 in and sat at a height of 4 1/2 M just under 15 ft shaped with boxy engine inlets and chunky Fus a Lage reminiscent of the Mig 25 and Mig 31 it flew in a Delta wi configuration aided by canards set behind the cockpit his twin vertical stabilizers at the tail leaned outward at a slight angle leaving room in the middle for two leka Al 41f after burning turbofan engines each producing 177 kons of thrust with after burn is engaged

the aircraft sat empty at a weight of 18 metric tons or just shy of £40,000 but could fly at slightly over twice its empty weight maxing out at 37 metric tons or £ 81,500 its performance specs quite impressive purportedly able to fly well in excess of twice the speed of sound the Mig 0144 would have hit its top speed barely shy of 2500 km per hour it's 1,540 m per hour and would have been capable of super cruise at Mac 1.5 it featured an impressive range of 4,000 km or 25 200 mil helped Along by

its bulk and the inherent capacity for fuel storage while it would have flown at a maximum altitude of 7,000 M or 56,000 ft on board it featured modern pulse dolar radar Target detection capabilities at a range of 250 km or 160 Mi and the ability to track up to 40 targets and attack 20 simultaneously it utiliz a fly by wire system and was built in a way that according to Russian Aviation experts would have given it a radar cross section about the size of a household microwave heater allegedly integrating radar absorbent materials along with physical

features to reduce its radar return whether that would have been enough to qualify it as a true fifth generation fighter aircraft that's a matter of debate but by any metric it would have been a very impressive aircraft when compared to most fighter jets of the time when it came to the onboard Arsenal the Mig 144 was well armed capable of carrying several kinds of air-to-air missile along with a 30mm auto Cannon some sources indicate that it would have been been able to farm missiles backwards in order to win dog fights with American fighters well it's

not known precisely how many hard points it would have been fitted with its lack of an internal weapons bait suggests that it would have been carrying externally mounted weapons the SEO S35 is slightly smaller and isn't a deltawing design but it's big enough and of similar enough size to be a useful analog here and it carries a total of 12 onboard hard points while the smaller but similar profile Swedish J as39 grippin features eight and the also smaller but similarly shaped Euro Fighter typhoon has up to 13 so a figure north of 10 hard points

for the Mig 144 would have probably been a good bet because of its expected capacity to serve as a multi-roll fighter the Mig 144 would have likely been able to carry airto surfice missiles anti- ship missiles unguided and precision bombs and drop tanks but as impressive as those figures and puror capabilities are they really only matter when we make one key comparison to the F-22 Raptor if the estimates that we've presented are to be believed then the Mig 144 would have beaten the Raptor out in a few key areas it would have been a bit

faster a bit lighter and used engines that produced greater thrust and specifically a better thrust weight ratio with afterburners engaged the Mig 144 would have significantly outworked the Raptor in terms of its range and since the Raptor relies on internal Weaponry Bays to be stealthy the Mig 144 would have had it massive massively outguns the F22 would have had its own advantages though and arguably those were the ones that matter more it was capable of flying a full 3,000 M 10,000 ft above the Mig 144 service ceiling it hit fast a super cruise by several

hundred miles of kilm per hour whichever you prefer and most important of all its combination of better avionics and better stealth technology meant that more than likely it would have been able to see the Mig 144 while the Mig wouldn't have been able to see it in return so would the Mig 144 have beaten the Raptor in direct combat well that's unclear and we will never know for certain but the indicators are that it would have probably taken more losses than wins that being said it would still have been an impressive aircraft if only it

had seen production for all its apparent potential the Mig 144 would only fly once it's February the 29th 2000 Excursion into the skies would reveal engineering issues that would require tweaking and somewhere along the line while those tweaks were being made someone somewhere in Moscow decided that the Mig 144 would never see production it's not too difficult in hindsight to understand why after all the project was a relic of Soviet competition with the west and reflected decisions made by moscow's leaders from a full generation prior it had been intended to go head-to-head with the American

Advanced tactical fighter but there were two problems with that first the advanced tactical fighter was now called the F22 Raptor and it was a real fighter aircraft that would enter full service very soon on a timeline that Russia just couldn't compete with and second if the rumors were true about the f-22's capabilities then it would take substantial design overhauls for the Mig 144 to become an aircraft that could do anything other than to humbly accept a beat down from the F22 if they ever faced off the Mig 144 once had real promise but the window

had closed and Moscow knew it the lone Mig 144 prototype would be shelved and eventually refurbished in the mid2 tends for display in the years since Russia most likely took many of the design elements and principles it relied on for the Mig 144 and leveraged them into a wide range of later products one direct derivative of the big 144 was known as the mckian lmfs the light multi-function Frontline aircraft a proposed single seater all weather multi roll stealth aircraft the lmfs was in discussion during the 2010s although by 2021 it was no longer in development

so far as the world knows no flyable airframe was ever built the sc57 felon would have considerably greater success in the sense that it did at least go into Mainline production and become a proper fighter jet although that Russian design has had a wide range of other problems and is at best a questionable entry into the fifth generation aircraft Club the Mig 144s Legacy lives on in the allegedly soon to arrive suco su75 Checkmate a single engine fighter aircraft that Russia claims is in pre-production and will by their claim be introduced in 2027 although as

of now it's made and flight is not yet believed to have taken place place and finally there's another mean design the pack DP also slated for a first flight in 2025 and for introduction in 2028 the ptip is purportedly a sixth generation fighter aircraft promised to feature cruising speeds above Mac 3 and be able to fly well into the stratosphere while also integrating stealth technology and potentially using anti-missile lasers but at the time of writing the pack DP like the su75 is nowhere to be found in terms of an actual flyable aircraft the idea that

the Su 57 felon will one day become several hundred copies filling Russia's air fleet is already somewhat unbelievable and given the felon's troubles the PDP and the su75 are unlikely to carry on the Mig 144s Legacy anytime soon but to say the Mig 144 has no successor at all might not actually be true Russia has raised allegations against China around design elements of the Mig 144 which Russia alleges have shown up as part of China's now Flagship fifth generation stealth Fighter the changdu j20 mighty Dragon unlike the Mig 144 or the s57 Falcon the j20

is very much a functional combat aircraft with an estimated 300 or so in service at the time of writing China is long understood to have stolen US military Secrets particularly elements from the F22 and the F-35 to build its own stealth Fighters and high-profile criminal cases in the US have found that data theft including significant theft perpetrated by a spy named suin starting in the late 2000s did occur at a large scale but while the stealth elements of the j20 seem to be mostly based on American state Secrets its overall design its Delta wings and

its canards make it a dead ringer for the Mig 144 as some experts have pointed out there also just aren't that many ways to build a stealth aircraft and it's not inconceivable that Russia and China might have come to similar design profiles independently but most experts agree at the time of the j20 is unveiling that its resemblance to the Russian design was probably a bit more than pure coincidence regardless of any resemblance or outright design theft involved in building another country's fighter currently serving a role in another country's Air Force the legacy of the Mig

144 is largely wrapped up in its demise on the drawing board but it's worth asking in a 21st century environment that has become used to big but ultimately empty Russian threats and copying allegations against China how the Mig 144 would Affair if it really had been put into production and we'll refine that line of inquiry to one question in particular was the Mig 144 vaporware all along just another piece of technology that was mostly smoke mirrors and a compelling story that people of the time just wanted to believe there are certainly elements of the Mig

144 and its broader mythology that would lead us to conclude that yes it was a vaporware design at its core for example as we explained earlier all those performance stealth and weaponry specs we mentioned earlier were basically just made up sure they were made up by drawing from all the available source forces and made up by very knowledgeable experts who do have the ability to create and validate rough estimates for the aircraft but they were still at the end of the day made up perhaps the Mig 144s airframe would have disintegrated once it at the

speed of sound it's not likely but we don't know for sure since it literally never went past the speed of sound perhaps the model unveiled to the global press back in 1999 was nicely painted cardboard and the alleged First Flight of the aircraft never happened at all at the end of the day we simply don't know but what we do know is that the Mig 144 regardless of how it ended up was born out of a very different type of strategic thinking in Moscow than what exists today there's always been an element of Showmanship behind

Russian and old Soviet warplane designs but the ultra confidence smok and mirrors show that today's Russia R Vladimir Putin seems to favor was not characteristic of the old Soviet military where Russia Today engages in Bluster around its purported new aircraft in order to intimidate its adversaries and challenge the Western order that freaks Putin out so badly the Soviets back then were still very much engaged in an active cold war and the way they went about their designs successful or not was still a reflection of that fact whether the Mig 144 would have actually been a

useful aircraft tough to say whether it would have evolved into a true fifth generation jet fighter oh simply won't ever know for sure but regardless of how badly it would have lost the race with the Raptor it was designed with the clear intent to win not just by getting the better of a war of words but by actually Fielding a technology that could be to America what the prospect of the Raptor became to the Soviet Union what Advanced stealth technology Russia does have whatever aerodynamic features and fifth gen Design Elements it can leverage into its

aircraft designs of today were most likely born out of this promising but failed little program and in entire generation ago the Mig 144 didn't work crippled by the shortages funding troubles an internal strife of a Dying Empire and a one that perished before the Mig 144 could even be born but could it have worked well the answer to that is an absolutely resounding yes [Music] [Music]