Hello again.
More of the same. A new ship model is nearing completion - the first US ship - but it'll be a bit before it has enough of the weapons' systems models to be completed to show it off here.
Last week I showed some screencaps of the Sea Harrier FRS-1 - today, it's a similar, but Soviet aircraft - the Yak-38 "Forger".
The Yak-38 was developed specifically for use on the Kiev-class "Aviation Cruisers", which are strikingly similar in airwing capacity to the British Invincible-class aircraft carriers, except that the Kiev also carried a formidable armament of its own.
Faced with the same design requirement of VTOL capability, what the Soviets ended up with is very similar to what the British got in their Sea Harrier program: a subsonic jet fighter with relatively little armament and short range - greatly inferior to land-based aircraft, but still a vast improvement to relying on SAMs alone for fleet air defense.
A bit of an unusual design choice, it had no internal guns but instead had to use a 23mm gunpod (or two) installed on one of its four under-wing pylons.
Part of this relatively restricted loadout, is that it could carry 2 FAB-500 bombs, 2 AA-8 Aphid short-range AAM, or 2 Kh-23 Grom (NATO name "AS-7 Kerry") small air-to-ground/antiship missiles. Use of the Kh-23, however, required another pylon be occupied with its guidance system.
It could also carry external tanks on the pylons, and surprisingly enough given its relatively small payload weight, two RN-28 nuclear bombs.
Another interesting design feature is that unlike the Sea Harrier FRS-1, which used two nozzles on each side of the fuselage for balance, the layout of the Yak-38 was more similar to today's F-35, using centerline thrust behind the cockpit to balance the torque.
Some interesting trivia about the design is that it featured an automatic ejection seat that would fire if one of those forward VTOL engines failed and the aircraft rolled beyond 60 degrees.
By 1983, Soviet pilots were well-adjusted to the new technology.