Does/Has Russia/USSR mimicked the look of US aircraft Just For Looks?

[redsquid2]

Of course, if two aircraft are designed to fill the same purpose, they are going to look similar, right?

I used to see pictures of the soviet space shuttle and think, "Hey! That's a copycat!"

Do the following resemble the FA-18, or some other U.S. aircraft just for the sake of looking like it?

MiG-29

MiG-35:

I recently saw a picture of something that looked like a T-38, except it was a combat aircraft, with a huge payload under the wings.

So there is the nagging thought of whether they would actually mimic the look, and not just to meet engineering requirements? Then there is also the question of whether the US has ever done the same.

 

[redsquid2]

It makes sense that the USSR would not mimic the F-4. Nothing desireable to mimic there. "Supersonic school bus."

 

[Planterz]

We've copied from them, they've copied from us. For decades. The irony is that the stuff that gets stolen also gets improved upon, which gets stolen back. And of course, much of that got its start from Nazi Germany. And some from Imperial Japan. Not exactly the purest of sources, but the contribution to science they made is immeasurable. Both our (USA/Russia) air forces and space programs got jumpstarted by Nazi technology. Medical knowledge was advanced by the most horrific of stuff imaginable. And our hands are far from clean too. Ever watch that POS film "Pearl Harbor"? Whether you were cheering or crying at the end, or stabbing yourself in the temple wishing it was over, you probably thought the Dolittle Raid was pretty amazing. It kinda was. Didn't do hardly a damn thing for the war effort, except perhaps for morale. And then there's the part they don't mention in the movie- that Japan killed 250,000 Chinese people in result. Yep. Two hundred and fifty thousand. 10,000 as a direct reaction, the remainder in effort that such an attack (and China helping) wouldn't happen again. YAY AMERICA!

Now that I'm off that tangent, yes, Russia has copied us, and we've copied them. Russia wanted some of our B-29's as part of the lend/lease thing, which we wouldn't do. So they reverse-engineered a few that crashed there and made the Tu-4. They also stole one of our missiles (I forget which one), which we randomly reverse-threaded a screw, just to see if they were stealing from us. They did, and copied the same unnecessarily reverse-threaded screw. As for us, we totally hijacked a train carrying one of their satellites, took it apart (the satellite, not the train) and put it back together, without them knowing it (at that time). We also stole some helicopter (I think the Hind) from some poor African country so we could take it apart an analyze it, because the USSR wouldn't let us. And then there's the defectors/asylum seekers. Or Gary Powers' U2, or the F-117 that crashed in Serbia or wherever.

Beyond the technology though there'll obviously be some appearance resembling. Mig-25 Foxbat vs F-15 Eagle, for example. But for the most part, I see that planes from certain countries or regions kinda look like they come from those regions. Migs and Sukhois look like Migs and Sukhois. Delta-wing with canards? Probably European. Mig-28? Were you inverted, or just playing homoerotic beach volleyball to Kenny Loggins music?

 

[severtecher]

Aerodynamics is an extreme example of "form follows function ". If you are moving a body in the same fluid, air,
there are fixed rules which end in similar designs. Advances are disimenated rapidly in the aviation business.
Gotta sell that product to stay in business. Costs huge amounts to go radical.

 

[Danke42]

As for us, we totally hijacked a train carrying one of their satellites, took it apart (the satellite, not the train) and put it back together, without them knowing it (at that time)

We did a school trip to see that exhibition. It was a super cool thing for a space obsessed kid to see.



https://medium.com/war-is-boring/how-the-cia-stole-a-soviet-satellite-61cb49cdab66#.unhpoihhm

& don't forget the Foxbat Belenko flew to Japan; or the WARPAC aircraft zipping around Area 51.

 

[sideways]

The american space program and rocket tech in general is based in no small part the work of nazi rocket scientist Wernher Von Braun.

A lot of medical, biological, and chemical tech was acquired by giving amnesty to unit 731 of the japanese imperial army. These were the guys in charge of conducting medical experiments on death camp prisoners.

Research and development ideas get copied. No matter the source. Thats just the nature of scientific advancement.

 

[jackknife]

Ever watch that POS film "Pearl Harbor"? Whether you were cheering or crying at the end, or stabbing yourself in the temple wishing it was over, you probably thought the Dolittle Raid was pretty amazing. It kinda was. Didn't do hardly a damn thing for the war effort, except perhaps for morale. And then there's the part they don't mention in the movie- that Japan killed 250,000 Chinese people in result. Yep. Two hundred and fifty thousand. 10,000 as a direct reaction, the remainder in effort that such an attack (and China helping) wouldn't happen again. YAY AMERICA!

Please check your history before you make statements like that.

The Doolittle Raid was NOT just an moral boosting exercise. Exactly the opposite. The Japanese had bragged that no allied bomb would ever fall on the home Islands. It was put out as a strategically necessary move to make the Japanese pill back much needed carriers from the Pacific to guard the so called invulnerable home islands. The Doolittle Raid caused so much of a shock to the Japanese that they did just that. Thjey pulled back a lot of the Navy to keep us from doing that again, and just a few months after the Doolittle Raid the Japanese were defeated at Midway, that was the turning point of the war in the Pacific. After that, the Japanese never had another victory in the pacific war.

We needed that victory at Midway very badly, and we wee outnumbered by the Japanese carriers, so we had to figure a way to get them to move some back. Threatening the home islands was the easiest way. With the sacrifice of just 16 B-25's, the Japanese moved a large percentage of their forces back out of the fight, creating more favorable conditions for our victory at a very crucial point in the war. With the sinking of the Japanese carriers at Midway, it put a dent in their navy that they could never make up.

They sucker punched us at Pearl Harbor, so we sucker punched them by bombing Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, and Nagasaki with B-25's, then kicked them in the nuts at Midway. Their navy never got over it, and it made the Tokyo express possible. If they had their full Navy forces at Midway, instead of having part of them sent home to guard the home turf, we'd have been screwed, blued and tatoo'd.

 

[Planterz]

Please check your history before you make statements like that.

The Doolittle Raid was NOT just an moral boosting exercise. Exactly the opposite. The Japanese had bragged that no allied bomb would ever fall on the home Islands. It was put out as a strategically necessary move to make the Japanese pill back much needed carriers from the Pacific to guard the so called invulnerable home islands. The Doolittle Raid caused so much of a shock to the Japanese that they did just that. Thjey pulled back a lot of the Navy to keep us from doing that again, and just a few months after the Doolittle Raid the Japanese were defeated at Midway, that was the turning point of the war in the Pacific. After that, the Japanese never had another victory in the pacific war.

Morale goes both ways. Perhaps I misspoke when I said "perhaps". What I meant to say that the Doolittle Raid didn't do anything big as far as physical damage. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if the monetary cost of the raid on our side (super-secret projects aren't cheap) wasn't more than the damage we caused on them, but there's really no way to know either way. What I meant to say about morale is that it boosted ours because we hit them back, and hurt theirs because we proved they weren't invulnerable. It's my fault that I wasn't clearer about that. My mini-rant was about crappy movies and directors being as emotionally manipulative as possible about the lives of a few fictional pretty people while never even mentioning that the result caused (well, not really "caused", they committed the atrocities, not us), and we're supposed to be sad about Josh Hartnet's fictional character dying and not the estimated 250,000 Chinese that were killed by direct violence or deliberate introduction of disease. I got sidetracked about remembering to mentioning some things because talking about Michael Bay gets me seeing red.

Everything you said was right. You seem that, like me, you'd rather watch a documentary about historical events than watching a badly-adapted, history-ignoring, emotionally manipulative blockbuster film solely to make money. Crap like "Pearl Harbor" and "Windtalkers". Even great movies like "The Great Escape" or "Dam Busters" are less fascinating than documentaries about what really happened. I'm not saying that there's not plenty of movies or TV shows/series that aren't great. The ones that don't ignore certain things in the name of making money. Would "Pearl Harbor" have been a blockbuster if every viewer complained about it being such a downer letting us know that the Japanese killed 250,000 Chinese because they helped a handful of Americans? Of course not. The movie was never about teaching anyone history, it was about telling a BS story in a setting they can emotionally manipulate to make money.

BTW, did you ever hear the story about how, towards the end, Japan could only afford to fund one war-saving science project; either an atomic bomb or a death ray. They chose to work on the death ray.

 

[gadgetgeek]

On the form following function, just look at super-cars, to the average joe on the street and Mclaren, a Konigsegg (sp?), and a Gumpert are all siblings from the same skunkworks that creates le-mans experimentals. To the gearhead they could be as different as a Mack truck and a Vespa. Same with the jets. Ratios have to be met for certain things, and as you said, same function is going to lead to certain design features. (of course no one is saying an A-10 is a ripped off stuka, but form follows function)

When it comes to certain historical events, that is a whole other ball of wax, with way more waste than even the worst cynic would admit to. Just listened to a podcast (stuff you missed in history class) about dolittle and the results, didn't realize how bad that was, and even though I know that we don't get the whole story here, I had no idea how bad it was, even though I was passingly familiar with the events. crazy stuff. Then of course there is learning about how much the "science" we learned from some of the sadists on both sides of the conflict was less medicine, and more just torture with lab coats... bit thats a different thing for a different day.

There was a story going around for a while that NASA's first rocket that could have put a satellite into orbit was a re-worked V2, but they didn't want to use it, as they'd have to admit to the design, so they waited until they had a more original concept, putting them behind the russians, thought that was kinda interesting.