Guys I think you are all forgetting one thing.......The YAK 38 was a complete stinker of an aircraft...........To suggest that the f-35 is based upon it is laughable to say the least.........
The Yakovlev OKB was only getting started on the VTOL fighter concept, with bureau engineers deciding that a combination of the R27V-300 vectored-thrust engine with afterburning and Kolesov RD36-35FV liftjets had potential over the short run. The Red Navy was very interested in this concept, and approved construction of prototype aircraft in late 1967, to be operated off the KIEV-class half-deck aircraft-carrier / missile cruiser vessels then under consideration as a strike aircraft, with secondary reconnaissance and interceptor roles. The prototypes were originally to be designated "Yak-36M", though in fact they were much different aircraft from the original Yak-36. The program was actually conducted by the Red Air Force bureaucracy on behalf of the Red Navy.
Five Yak-36M prototypes were ordered, with one to be a two-seater, discussed below. Two Tu-16 "Badger" bombers were used in the test program, carrying a mockup of the Yak-36M's fuselage with engines; the fuselage was carried below the bombbay on a rig that allowed it to be extended into the airstream below the bomber. The first hover test flight of a single-seat Yak-36M prototype was on 22 September 1970, followed by the first conventional-takeoff flight on 2 December 1970. Development was troublesome, and the first full vertical takeoff / horizontal flight / vertical landing flight wasn't until 25 February 1972, with Mikhail S. Deksbah at the controls. Deksbah also performed the first landing on a naval vessel, the helicopter cruiser MOSKVA, on 18 November 1972.
After working out the worst bugs, the type was ordered into manufacture, the first production item being rolled out in early 1975, with formal acceptance into Red Navy service as the "Yak-38" in October 1976. It was given the NATO designation of "Forger A".
The Yak-38 was a fairly sleek aircraft, arguably more so than its contemporary, the Harrier. In service, it was generally painted an overall dark sea blue. It featured:
* Short swept mid-mounted wings, featuring vertically folding wingtips and double slotted flaps. The wing had a dihedral of 10 degrees and a zero angle of incidence relative to the aircraft centerline. Why the double flaps were used is a bit puzzling, since the aircraft wasn't supposed to take off or land horizontally on a normal basis. It appears that the designers wanted to hedge their bets, a notion reinforced by the fact that the Yak-38 was fitted with a brake parachute for horizontal landings.
* A conventional tail arrangement, with the tailplanes featuring a strong dihedral.
* The two RD36-35FV liftjets mounted vertically in tandem behind the cockpit under a louvered door that hinged up at the rear.
* The R27V-300 main engine in the rear half of the fuselage, with the inlets alongside the cockpit.
* Conventional tricycle landing gear, with differential braking used for steering. All gear had single wheels, with the nose wheel retracting backward and the main gear tucking neatly into the fuselage.
* A side-hinged canopy, opening to the right. The pilot sat on a K-36VM ejection seat, with the ejection performed automatically during takeoffs or landings using an "SK-EM" system. The SK-EM system was automatically engaged after the aircraft rose a few meters from the deck; it could be turned off manually, or would turn itself off if the vectored-thrust nozzles were more than 67 degrees to the vertical. The seat ejected toward the left to avoid hitting the carrier above-deck superstructure to the right. If the lift engine door was closed, the canopy would be popped off before ejection, but if the door was open, the seat would punch through the canopy top using rams on the top of the seat.
* A relatively simple avionics suite with radios, identification friend or foe (IFF) gear, a navigation suite, and a flight data recorder. There was no radar and no built-in targeting systems, other than a gunsight for gun and missile aiming.
The Tumansky R27V-300 main engine featured twin hydraulically-actuated vectored thrust nozzles at the rear. Max dry takeoff thrust was 57.81 kN (5,895 kgp / 13,000 lbf), while afterburning thrust was 64.71 kN (6,600 kgp / 14,550 lbf). The nozzles could be moved from horizontal to vertical for landings in in a single sequence that took six seconds; moving the nozzles from vertical to horizontal was done in stages, with intermediate positions at 25 and 45 degrees.
The Kolesov RD36V-35FV liftjet was a compact, lightweight unit that could provide a maximum thrust of 28.46 kN (2,900 kgp / 6,400 lbf) for a short time. The exhaust was fixed but was "bent" to deliver thrust off the engine axis. Although both of the liftjets were installed at an angle of ten degrees to the vertical -- tilted forward so their exhaust went towards the rear -- the exhausts of the engines were at different angles so their output flow would meet under the center of gravity of the aircraft. There were ventral strakes alongside the exhausts to help maximize vertical lift.
Some sources claim that the Yak-38 was fitted with a twin-barreled GSh-23L 23 millimeter cannon under the fuselage, but it does not appear to have had any built-in armament. It did have two stores pylons under each wing, for a total of four, with possible stores including external tanks; **** bombs; unguided rocket pods; cannon pod; A-60 (AA-8 Aphid) heat-seeking air-to-air missiles (AAMs); and Kh-23 (AS-10 Karen) guided air-to-surface missiles (ASMs), which demanded carriage of a guidance pod on one of the pylons. Although sources vary wildly on the Yak-38's external load capability, it appears to have been a modest 600 kilograms (1,325 pounds).
As mentioned, one of the prototypes was a two-seater. It was recognized from the outset that flying a jet VTOL aircraft was something new, unfamiliar, and tricky, dictating production of a conversion trainer. It was originally designated the "Yak-36MU", with initial (conventional takeoff) flight on 17 August 1972, the pilot being Mikhail Deksbah. Introduction to service was in 1978 as the "Yak-38U", and it was given the NATO designation of "Forger B". The two-seat nose was basically grafted on to the single-seat fuselage at a nose-down angle to give the back-seat instructor a good forward view, with a fuselage plug inserted behind the wings to maintain pitch trim, resulting in an ugly aircraft that looked much too long and bent.
Refinements were added to the Yak-38 as the design bureau thought them up. One of the most visible was the addition of a dorsal strake along each side of the liftjet door; these two strakes helped reduce exhaust ingestion into the liftjet inlets. Boundary-layer splitter plates were also added in front of the main engine inlets. Cumulative improvements led to a generally improved variant, the "Yak-38M", with first flight in 1982.
The Yak-38M featured new, more powerful engines, in the form of the Tumansky R-28-300 vectored-thrust engine and the Kolesov RD-38 liftjet, both with about ten percent more thrust than their predecessors. Other new kit included a steerable nosewheel, which was helpful not only for ground / deck handling but for short takeoffs; a revised installation for the rear liftjet, allowing it to be rotated from 5 degrees forward to 30 degrees to the rear, probably as an aid for short takeoffs; a limit setting control for the main engine exhaust nozzles, once again to support short takeoffs; and an oxygen-boost system for the liftjets. There were a number of changes to improve reliability and airframe ruggedness as well.
About 150 Yak-36s of all makes were built -- the numbers vary wildly from source to source -- with the type deployed on the four KIEV-class aircraft cruiser-carrier vessels. There were experiments with operating the type off of other vessels, such as container ships rigged with flight decks, but such flights were not performed in operational service.
Soviet-Russian design philosophy tends to be different from that of the US. Traditionally, at its best, Soviet-Russian gear is straightforward, effective, inexpensive, reliable, and extraordinarily rugged; at its worst, it's pathetic junk. The Yak-38 fell into the second category. Its operational radius was only about 100 kilometers (62 miles), in large part due to the excessive fuel consumption in vertical flight. During cruises in tropical waters and hot weather, endurance was no more than about 15 minutes at best. As with the Harrier, Yak-38 pilots learned to prefer the short "rolling takeoff" and "rolling landing" to preserve fuel, though rolling landings on carrier decks required the introduction of a safety barrier net. Apparently the multiengine configuration made short takeoffs and landings tricky and hazardous. The limits on range-payload capability meant that the Yak-38 was usually only fitted with two stores pylons, not the full four, since it couldn't realistically carry four external stores.
Reliability was very poor. The lift engines were the worst problem, with a useful lifetime of only about 22 hours. Since the lift engines were only used in takeoffs and landings that was better than it sounded, but it still wasn't good, and there were plenty of other things to go wrong. When the KIEV went on its first cruise in the Mediterranean in 1976, it carried six Yak-38s. Only three were working at the outset of the cruise, and only one was flying at the end. The unreliability was a benefit in a way, since if the aircraft didn't work, nobody had to fly them. It was tricky to pilot, and about a third of the machines would be lost in accidents through its service life.
A brief operational evaluation was performed in Afghanistan in 1980 and confirmed the limitations of the type: poor range and load, too complicated and unreliable, too hard to maintain, and too hard to fly. The Afghanistan evaluation also showed that the Yak-36 kicked up tremendous clouds of dirt and dust on takeoffs and landings, which could create hazards, and overall the evaluation showed that helicopter gunships were much more practical weapons, hands down.
A charitable judgement was that the Yak-38 was basically an operational demonstrator machine that had been hastily pressed into service for political reasons. Although trying to second-guess bureaucratic logic is a treacherous game, certainly the Yakovlev OKB was doing everything they could to promote their VTOL technology, even if it wasn't ready for "prime time"; but it seems more likely that the Red Navy wanted aircraft carriers, could only obtain the KIEV-class vessels over the short run, and to justify obtaining them, the service had to have a combat aircraft that could fly off them. It is worth noting that the KIEV-class vessels were the first warships ever operated by the Red Navy that resembled a real aircraft carrier. At least it gave the service some experience in operating carrier combat aircraft. Not all the experience was good -- but that's the way experience works.
Pilots despised the Yak-38 and were with good reason even afraid of it. Many tried to transfer to other duties, and it was not unusual for pilots to go on the sicklist rather than fly it. A handful of pilots went so far as to send a letter of complaint against the type to the Soviet Central Committee. Of course, as is often the case with bureaucracies everywhere that encounter messengers with bad news, the result was that disciplinary actions were ordered against those who had pressed the complaints.
Such actions might have reduced the complaints but they didn't eliminate the problems. With the fall of the USSR, the Yak-38 was withdrawn from service after a crash in June 1991, with few expressing regrets over its grounding. It provides an interesting suggestion of what might have happened if some of the more exotic experimental Western VTOL combat jets developed in the 1960s had actually been put into production
http://www.airtoaircombat.com/detail.asp?id=110