Su-27 Flanker: Fatal T-10 Prototypes, the Cobra and a Canned Meat Deal

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In 1969 Soviet intelligence learned that the United States was building the F-15 Eagle, and the general staff asked for a fighter with Mach 2 speed, bomber-escort range, dogfight agility and short-runway performance. The requirement was split: the light fighter became the MiG-29 and the heavy long-range fighter went to Sukhoi as the Su-27, NATO name Flanker. The first prototype, the T-10, flew in May 1977 and was badly flawed: its ogival wing caused buffeting and instability, its AL-21 engines burned fuel too fast to meet range targets, and a heavy radar made it nose-heavy. The T-10-2 broke apart in a spin in July 1978 and the T-10-12 broke up in 1981, killing both test pilots. Chief designer Mikhail Simonov stopped the program and started over as the T-10S.

The production Su-27 was deliberately unstable, with its center of gravity behind its center of lift, and became the first Soviet operational fighter with fly-by-wire controls. Viktor Pugachev showed off the Cobra maneuver in 1989, pitching to a 120-degree angle of attack. China, the first export customer, bought 24 jets around the Soviet collapse in a deal valued at $1.3 to $1.5 billion, 70 percent paid in barter goods such as canned meat, thermoses and winter coats, and later built its own Shenyang J-11. Ethiopian Su-27s beat Eritrean MiG-29s in the 1998 to 2000 Badme War, and Russia and Ukraine both fly the jet today.

• The stripped, unpainted P-42 prototype reached a two-to-one thrust-to-weight ratio and broke the F-15 Streak Eagle's time-to-height records.
• The carrier-based Su-33 added canards to climb safely off a ski-jump ramp, and the Su-34 strike variant seats its crew side by side in an armored titanium tub.
• In September 1987 an Su-27 clipped a Norwegian P-3 Orion's propeller over the Barents Sea, and in March 2023 one collided with a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper over the Black Sea.
• The 2002 Sknyliv air show crash in Ukraine killed 77 spectators, the deadliest air show disaster in history.
• Ukrainian Su-27s have been adapted to fire U.S. AGM-88 HARM missiles and drop JDAM glide bombs, and display pilot Colonel Oleksandr Oksanchenko, "Grey Wolf," died flying one over Kyiv in 2022.