Chapter 751: E-8 in a New Bottle

The people from Chengfei had also arrived early. When Andre conveyed Moscow's greetings to President Mubarak at the airport, he got in the car and drove directly to the head of state's residence in Cairo. The meeting was officially held in a conference room.

Those who came with Andrei were mainly engineers from the Mikoyan Design Bureau. Although the Super-7 project was considered quite important in Egypt, for the Mikoyan Design Bureau, it was just a small work. Their main energy was focused on the new MiG 1.44 fighter project to compete with the Sukhoi Company. Therefore, the chief designer Beliakov did not come with them at all. The person who came with Andrei was the old designer Alexander Milodovich who had been in the Mikoyan Design Bureau for more than 30 years.

At the beginning, there was a saying circulating in the Mikoyan Design Bureau that General Andrei's support for the Sukhoi Design Bureau was unparalleled. General Andrei took this business to the Mikoyan Design Bureau purely to disrupt the development of the Mikoyan Design Bureau's new fighter jets!

When Andrei heard this, he immediately suggested to Moscow that the Yak Design Bureau should undertake this cooperation task. Anyway, the Yak Design Bureau now only has one trainer aircraft project left, and it has a lot of engineers, which can be used to develop a modified version of the MiG-21. At the beginning, Andrei only considered that the Mikoyan Design Bureau had designed the MiG-21, so he transferred personnel from the Mikoyan Design Bureau. He didn't expect that the Mikoyan Design Bureau would be so ungrateful!

As a result, Belyakov, chief designer of the Mikoyan Design Bureau, quickly stopped the rumor and sent Alexander, the designer who had participated in the development of the MiG-21, especially the E-8 verification aircraft, to Egypt with Andre.

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At the beginning, after arduous research and development, the Mikoyan Design Bureau finally developed the lightweight and flexible MiG-21 fighter. At the same time, improvements to the MiG-21 fighter are also ongoing, and the E-8 verification aircraft project is the one that best fits Andre's proposal!

Among all the improvements to the MiG-21, the E-8 is the most thorough. Although it is an improvement on the MiG-21PF, it is very different from other modifications. Except for the wings, tail and landing gear, the rest of the parts have been redesigned. In fact, this verification aircraft is planned to be given a new code name: MiG-23. If the variable sweep wing technology was not popular at that time, the Soviet MiG-23 might really be this kind of aircraft!

The fuselage structure was completely redesigned, the nose air intake was removed and moved under the cockpit. The air intake section is hexagonal and the shape is close to a rectangle. The air intake is divided into two air ducts by a partition and merged into one in front of the engine air intake. The intake air flow is regulated by a three-wave vertical wedge block, and its regulating mechanism is installed in the air intake partition. There is also a vent door on the side wall of the air intake.

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At the same time, the nose is oval-conical, and the "Sapphire-21" radar was pre-installed when it was designed. At the same time, the more peculiar thing about this aircraft is that the front horizontal tail is installed on the nose, but there is no control mechanism. When it is subsonic, the front horizontal tail is in a state of arbitrary deflection of the wind vane; at supersonic speed, it is fixed in a neutral position. This device increases the lift coefficient and improves the maneuverability of the aircraft.

In fact, this is also to balance the weight brought by the nose. When the belly air intake is changed and the nose radar is added, the center of gravity of the fighter moves forward. If you want to restore the center of gravity of the fighter, you need to increase the lift in the front.

At the same time, another feature of this aircraft is that it is equipped with a large ventral fin to improve directional stability. It also serves as an auxiliary vertical tail. When the aircraft lands, the ventral fin folds to the right side of the heading into a horizontal state; and when the aircraft takes off, the ventral fin returns to its normal vertical state. This design was very successful and was later used on the MiG-23 aircraft.

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As the original designer of the E-8, Alexander is familiar with aircraft design. Now, helping Chengfei to improve the J-7 is actually just taking out the E-8 plan and redesigning it. The workload is not large. Moreover, Andre meant that this improvement is mainly to sell engines and avionics, as well as explore new aircraft development plans.

For the Mikoyan Design Bureau, this was just a side job, but for Chengfei, this project was of great importance. After all, Chengfei was responsible for its own profits and losses, and the country would not pay a penny for this project. The Air Force was focused on the MiG-23 and would not allocate funds to Chengfei. It can be said that this project was related to the development of Chengfei! Therefore, Tu Jida of Chengfei personally led a large team from China to Cairo.

For Egypt, this may affect the main equipment of the Egyptian Air Force in the next few decades. At this time, Egypt has not yet imported F-16s, let alone become the fourth largest overseas user of F-16s. What will Egypt's main fighter jets look like in the future? Even Egyptian President Mubarak is looking forward to it.

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A large group of people gathered in the conference room, including senior officials from the Egyptian Air Force and the Ministry of Defense, who all sat aside and listened to the explanation given by Mikoyan's engineer Alexander.

"This is our plan. In order to adapt to the RD33 engine, the rear fuselage needs to be modified. Then, the belly air intake will be added to improve the high angle of attack performance. At the same time, there is a front horizontal tail at the front to improve the maneuverability." Alexander showed the slide produced by the Mikoyan Design Bureau, which looked almost like an E-8.

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"We have already put this modified MiG-21 through long-term testing. The engine failed to meet the standards at the beginning. But now, with the RD33 engine, this fighter can easily reach the design performance. Moreover, the development cost will not be too high. We initially estimated that 100 million rubles of development cost would be enough."

At the beginning, the Mikoyan Design Bureau had high hopes for this aircraft and built two prototypes, which were tested many times. The difficulties at the beginning can now be completely overcome, so it is not difficult to make this aircraft. One hundred million rubles is a bit much, but after the successful development, mass production and cost sharing, the price is not high.

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However, looking at this photo, the Egyptian Air Force personnel frowned. Even Mubarak put his hand on his chin, thought for a long time, and then asked: "Why does this plane look so weird?"