bigger is always better

That little flying wing-boatie looks the coolest.

I think it's a production ground effect aircraft, although obvioulsy it can fly higher than that.

And if you like those, you might like these!

[www.airliners.net]

[www.hep.uiuc.edu]

Talk about last minute ejections!!

Kim

Ekranoplan? is there one in there? cause those are weird.

How could you forget about this gem? The Buran shuttle...talk about a knock off..

[en.wikipedia.org]

Not sure if that is technically a soviet airplane...but it technically isn't either.

The SU-47 (the fighter jet with forward swept wings) looks pretty cool, flying would be mind bendingly hard. The specs for the SU-47 show it can out maneuver an F22 and is also faster (Mach 2.1). I bet some of the Americans reading this will now say its a copy of the X29. Sorry "wrong", fighters with a forward swept wing design were first tested by the Nazi's and failed due to the lack of a control systems that could compensate for its stability problems.

ah, all you need now is either a rogue regime somewhere or a drug cartel and you'd be set since the Russians would be selling you anything your heart desired.

Tho' the SU-47 does look cool. Too bad is not Radar invisible and, faster or not then the F22, it would get its ass handed to itself in any fight.

@linuxgalore - the X29 might be a copy of the Nazi variants, but, more likely, the idea of a forward swept wing was a copy. The X29 design and build were original. BTW, most of the early Soviet airplanes and rockets were copies of Nazi designs. And the same goes for most of the early US missiles.

I love to see fighters with the kind of ultra-maneuverability of the SU-47, it's just too bad that today, there would be two missles in that plane's tailpipe before it can really use that maneuverability.

BVR is the name of the game.

(Those fighters are seriously beautiful.)

Just nitpicking here: the SU-47 is actually dubbed Berkut, not Bekrut ("Officially nicknamed Berkut (Golden Eagle)").

The Russians have always had a very puristic view of flight. I've wondered what would happen if you combined Russian design with western efficiency.

@LINUXGALORE: Lots of aircraft are more maneuverable than the F-22. Without its flight computers, it's just a really stealthy turd.

So kool!

The MIG29 is the coolest looking fighter jet ever. Sad thing, because US jets used to always be cooler looking than Soviet jets until the MIG29 came along. It's like what would happen if an F15 and an F16 eloped and had a baby. If I die and come back as a transformer robot, I want to be a MIG29 transformer robot.

I had the G.I. Joe mock up of the SU-47 when I was a kid.

i like the crazy copters with 2 sets of rotors

To Gizmodo,

Please post more stuff like this! I likey the airplanes-y...

Russian aviation is crazy! I would so want to attend one of these airshows if not for the Youtube video with hundreds of people dismembered and ripped into pieces. That will be scarred into my brain for at least the next 10 years.

@jawzxy:

I would so want to attend one of these airshows if not for the Youtube video with hundreds of people dismembered and ripped into pieces.

Yeah, but your chances of being among that particular group in the crowd are only like 1 in 10, so it's a gamble that's totally worth it.

1. Amazing how close to the ground that MIG is!
2. WIG or not, flying boats are cool

Uh, we did the forward swept wing thing with a T-38 at NASA Dryden in the late 70s! Old news Ruskies, old news.

@AhnyerKeester: that may be so, but I used to bulls-eye womp rats with my t-16 back home.

i'm glad the SU-27UB didn't crash again.

Um... That MIG isn't flying along 4' above the ground. The picture was photoshopped. That's a photo of the plane taxiing along a taxiway, that someone has removed the landing gear from. It's a pretty elementary photoshop job.

None of the planes pictured here are hydroplanes. Hydroplanes are just racing boats with extremely shallow drafts (also not to be confused with hydrofoils).

As mentioned upthread, if you want weird sea-based planes, you should look into ekranoplanes. Only made by the USSR, AFAIK.

Should read:

"Craziest, Weirdest, Coolest Soviet PILOTS ever".

Those guys are nuts.

The Russians sure have made some cool-looking aircraft; I think I just had Transformers and G.I. Joe toy flashbacks at the same time.

I think that pic of the SU27 is photo-shopped. For one, where's the exhaust heat coming from the back? Also, shouldn't the control surfaces (ailerons ot be precise) show some sort of angle in order to keep the plane airborne at that ridiculously low altitude? Plus, why is the pilot flying on the right edge of the runway? If he is flying in formation then why is there not a picture of the other aircraft? I don't buy it.

I think you meant "flying boats" when you said hydroplane. A flying boat is an aircraft that can take of and land by floating on it's belly (as opposed to a seaplane that just uses pontoons instead of wheels).

The double-rotor helicopters don't have a rear yaw-controlling rotor on the tail so that must mean that the two rotors on top are spinning in opposite directions (holy crap, how does that work). I can see how that would be beneficial from an aerodynamics point of view (forces all coming from the same location instead of two locations as with traditional helicopters), but I wonder if that makes for a strange/choppy feeling ride as the blades sweep over each other...

@x23:

yes there is, read my comment just above yours.

The pic of the jet 'four feet from the ground' is fake. Anyone taking a picture of a moving object will notice two effects: 1. the object in motion relative to the background is frozen while the background is blurred/streaked/fade, suggesting that the camera is panning/moving at a constant rate with the moving object. 2. the object will have a blurred/streaked appearance if the image is not taken while panning or moving relative to the object. this picture does not have either of those effects, someone photoshopped the landing gears.

why is it that any incredible images of anything are inevitably purported to be photoshopped? im not saying it isn't... but it's like with UFOs, it's either, "that's too blurry, must be swamp gas, lame photo!" or "that's too well focused, it must be faked with maya and photoshop!"

@Karmageddon:
Okay man, the counter rotating propellers are to cancel out torque rotation (I believe that's the term). So, in other words, a helicopter with just one single propeller and no tail rotor will want to spin in the opposite direction in which the propeller is spinning. But, if you add another propeller on top of it, rotating in the opposite direction, then it cancels out and stabilizes the bird. Simple as that. No hopping motion, etc. Why two props instead of just traditional prop and boom? Because these counter-rotating prop birds tend to be pretty small and compact so they could be more easily stored in, say, small aircraft carriers, like, say the Minsk.

In Russia, the planes fly You!

@apeguero: That is 100% correct. Also, I believe that maneuverability is increased as well.

@Stealth43:
Yes, maneuverability should be as good if not better. This is why the Russian answer to the Apache (Ka-50) uses that configuration. Why then didn't the Comanche t use that configuration? I don't know. Must be a "my design is better than yours" thing between the Russians and us.

The Sukhoi is _NOT_ photoshopped. Godalmighty people, what's wrong with you conspiracy theorists? There are even crazier shots of normal planes, like a passenger yet doing a crazy turn over the crowd. Didn't put them up because it was not a cool plane.

This is about the cool planes, not about the pilots (although that picture is amazing).

@MrMaestro:

Yeah, I remember that one, too. On the subject of knock offs, boy the they rip off the B1 with the Su-160!

@ruggels:

Yeah, a Russian air show just isn't a Russian air show without somebody "auguring in."

Jesus: just like with the Typhoon and Hercules, it helps if you don't just scream "it's not Photoshopped" and instead provide something more to people. That photo definitely looks faked because there's zero motion blur, the angle of attack is extremely low, etc. I can totally understand that people doubt it. But it's not a fake and it's easy to prove:

[www.airliners.net]
[www.airliners.net]
[www.airliners.net]

But just saying "no! it's not a fake" will not convince anyone.

Kim

@Kim98:
Thanks man. I'm a believer now. That is one bad mo'fo.

I think it's the angle in which the original picture was taken in, that adds to the credulousness of the picture.

Somebody call Clint Eastwood and have him go steal that Berkut.

Firefox? Anyone? An hour and a half of boring and 20 minutes of special effects flying scenes? Anyone?

[imdb.com]

More importantly, just because a photo passed through Photoshop doesn't mean it's fake; every photographer nowaday passes his digital pictures through Photoshop adjust his the brightness, contrast, and to nullify effects such as motion blur.

Grab your nearest newspaper and I ASSURE you, EACH AND EVERY ONE picture in there was photoshopped. Now, will you call the paper and yell your "ZOMG PHOTOSHOP!!!eleventy1!@@"?

hey
how can you publich copyrighted photos like that? is that normal practice in your house?

@KIM, I precisely said it wasn't fake because of the pics available there. I said that in my answer: there are more pics from the same source (I linked to the sources in the post.) I don't have time to start copying URLs in comments to convince the naysayers or to write a dissertation about optics. Just like the footage of the lunar landings doesn't come with plans for the Saturn V and a book on physics explaining it all. There will always be skeptics doubting stuff. Good for them.

@Brian B:

Do you mean TU-160? Cause, otherwise I don't know what you mean.

not in transformers? no care.

The picture of the SU-27 flying 4 feet above the ground is most certainly a fake. An airplane can only fly perfectly straight and level at cruise speed because any slower and they have to pitch up the nose. That is 608 mph in an SU-27. They simply would never fly that low at that speed and altitude due to the semi-random ground effect that messes with lift. The camera would have tremendous motion blur of the foreground and background if someone did try to pan and take a picture of something moving that fast. Also, if you google a picture of an SU-27 on the ground you will notice it is EXACTLY at this height above the runway. This picture is a simple shot of an SU-27 taxiing down a runway at about 20 knots with the gear photoshopped out. Both photography physics and airplane physics prove this.

@apeguero: Interesting, thanks for the clarification. The mechanics to make that work amaze me.

Beriev has plenty of weird aircraft also. Take a look at one of the strangest beasts I've ever seen: [www.beriev.com] and of course, my favorite: [www.ai