Miko
SMF Supporter
The deep thawing of the cold War and it's peace dividend meant East and West could share technology for the advancement mankind, military projects being cancelled worldwide, One survivor of the cash strapped Russian Federation was the Su47 Berkut, Sukhoi's latest technology demonstrator with it's 'avant garde' forward swept wings. One of the greatest world stages to promote indigenous technology is the Farnborough International Airshow. Sukhoi was granted permission from the Kremlin to apply for an invite to appear at Farnborough and promote Russian aerospace technology around the world. The hosting committee agreed all terms with Sukhoi to accommodate this 'unique' guest! the the early hours one week before the show, the unadvertised surprise guest left Chernyakhovsk Air Base in Kalinigrad for the 1000 mile hop to Farnborough taking a more northern track to avoid Dutch and German airspace being met over the Baltic by a pair of Danish F-16 from Skrydstrup Air Base to allow the Su47 to transit through Danish airspace and out westward over the North Sea where mid way the Eskadrille 727, F-16's handed over to a pair of 56 Squadron Tornado F3's to lead the Berkut into Farnborough. However, 120 miles off the Lincolnshire coast the crew of the Berkut reported a cockpit fire warning alarm and requested a diversion to the closest air station for an emergency landing! The F3 lead pilot vectored the the distressed Russian jet home towards RAF Conningsby, landing safely at 03.13 hours the, alerted station fire crew and emergency services ushered the Berkut into a hardened aircraft shelter on the south side of the station away from the administration accommodation and service areas. The pilot of the stricken jet Major I M Pistov was given access to communicate with the support crew at Farnborough having arrived the previous day with their Ilyushin IL-76 Candid, At 09.32 the Candid departed Farnborough for the short flight north to RAF Conningsby, the huge Russian transport aircraft setting down in the fen lands to the east of the Lincolnshire Wolds caused a frenzy of activity as questions were asked from the lowest ranks to the Station commander! The Sukhoi technical staff soon began work to diagnose the faults in the Berkut avionics bay, the following day it was discovered the processors of the fly-by-wire had over heated in the extended flight west having being incorrectly serviced at Chernyakhovsk having left Novosibirsk preparation facility near Moscow. The chip architecture was unique to Berkut and no replacement was in existence. The aircraft was now grounded for the foreseeable future and plans to recover the aircraft back to Novosibirsk were made. without the mechanical jigs and infrastructure to disassemble the Su47 would need to say a guest of RAF Conningsby for considerable time! Political lobbying of the Kremlin by design bureaus from MiG and Yakovlev suggested the scrapping of Sukhoi's flawed jet siting the recovery being economically inviable, the huge expense to bring home an aircraft that may not be capable of successfull repair and return to service.
The Russian military attache informed the Ministry of Defence their intention to destroy the Berkut and ship the wreckage home to Russia. it was at this meeting that the director of DERA (Defence Research Agency) proposed an alternate solution, the Berkut would be handed over to the expertise of Farnborough and Boscombe Down in order to create a new technology sharing agreement between Russia and the UK. This was a lifeline Sukhoi couldn't refuse and Moscow agreed that some of the vast investment in Su47 could be recovered. In the following months an Anglo/Russian team collaborated in applying British avionics into the Russian jet, it was found with little adaption the active control technology installed in the ACT Jaguar could be accommodated to return the Berkut back to the sky, in an intellectual property exchange, Russia acquired data on advance avionics where as UK MoD (PE) received and 'almost' state of the art Russian forward swept wing technology demonstrator which appeared at the following Farnborough International Airshow' in it's new MoD (PE) Conspicuity Colour Scheme
Huge isn't it?
Miko (my next will be a should have been rather than a what if?)
The Russian military attache informed the Ministry of Defence their intention to destroy the Berkut and ship the wreckage home to Russia. it was at this meeting that the director of DERA (Defence Research Agency) proposed an alternate solution, the Berkut would be handed over to the expertise of Farnborough and Boscombe Down in order to create a new technology sharing agreement between Russia and the UK. This was a lifeline Sukhoi couldn't refuse and Moscow agreed that some of the vast investment in Su47 could be recovered. In the following months an Anglo/Russian team collaborated in applying British avionics into the Russian jet, it was found with little adaption the active control technology installed in the ACT Jaguar could be accommodated to return the Berkut back to the sky, in an intellectual property exchange, Russia acquired data on advance avionics where as UK MoD (PE) received and 'almost' state of the art Russian forward swept wing technology demonstrator which appeared at the following Farnborough International Airshow' in it's new MoD (PE) Conspicuity Colour Scheme
Huge isn't it?
Miko (my next will be a should have been rather than a what if?)
