The Sukhoi T-4, or "Aircraft 100", or "Project 100", or "Sotka" is a

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

high-speed

reconnaissance In military operations, military reconnaissance () or scouting is the exploration of an area by military forces to obtain information about enemy forces, the terrain, and civil activities in the area of operations. In military jargon, reconnai ...

, anti-ship and

strategic bomber A strategic bomber is a medium- to long-range Penetrator (aircraft), penetration bomber aircraft designed to drop large amounts of air-to-ground weaponry onto a distant target for the purposes of debilitating the enemy's capacity to wage war. Unl ...

aircraft that did not proceed beyond the

prototype A prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process. It is a term used in a variety of contexts, including semantics, design, electronics, and Software prototyping, software programming. A prototype ...

stage. It is sometimes called the Su-100.

Design and development

In 1963, the Soviet government held a request for proposal among the aircraft design bureaus. The Sukhoi design, with its high cruise speed of was favored over the designs submitted by

Yakovlev The Joint-stock company, JSC A.S. Yakovlev Design Bureau () is a Russian aircraft designer and manufacturer (design office prefix Yak). Its head office is in Aeroport District, Northern Administrative Okrug, Moscow. It is a subsidiary of Yakovle ...

and

Tupolev Tupolev ( rus, Туполев, , ˈtupəlʲɪf), officially United Aircraft Company Tupolev - Public Joint Stock Company, is a Russian aerospace and Arms industry, defence company headquartered in Basmanny District, Moscow. UAC Tupolev is succes ...

and after a preliminary design review in June 1964, the building of a prototype was authorized. Development of the T-4 required massive research efforts to develop the technologies necessary, including the manufacturing technologies to machine and weld the materials necessary to withstand sustained Mach 3 flight. Nearly 600 patents or inventions are attributed to the program.T-4 on Sukhoi Company website
/ref> The first flying prototype was finally completed in the autumn of 1971. Work continued on an additional three airframes (one for static testing) through 1975. In 1974, the Ministry of Aviation Industry (Soviet Union) ordered work suspended on the T-4 project, which was officially scrapped on 19 December 1975. The aircraft's droop nose lowered to provide visibility during takeoff and landing. A

periscope A periscope is an instrument for observation over, around or through an object, obstacle or condition that prevents direct line-of-sight observation from an observer's current position. In its simplest form, it consists of an outer case with ...

was used for forward viewing when the nose was retracted, and could be employed at speeds of up to .

Drogue parachute A drogue parachute, also called drag chute, is a parachute designed for deployment from a rapidly moving object. It can be used for various purposes, such as to decrease speed, to provide control and stability, as a pilot parachute to deploy ...

s were used in addition to conventional wheel brakes.

Operational history

The first T-4, designated "101", first flew on 22August 1972. The test pilot was Vladimir Ilyushin, son of famed aircraft designer Sergei Ilyushin, and the navigator was Nikolai Alfyorov. Testing continued to 19January 1974. The T-4 flew only ten times for a total of 10 hours and 20 minutes..

Aircraft on display

One T-4 survives. Aircraft "101" is on display at the

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in Monino near

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. The serial numbers of the prototypes were "101" to "106". Only "101" and "102" were built, while other additional prototypes "103" and "104" were under construction, and "105" and "106" only existed on draft charts. Only the "101" completed all the test flights and flew the last test flight before the project was cancelled on 22 January 1974. The rest of the prototypes were scrapped.

Specifications

References

External links