While many of you may not have heard about this aircraft, I have a few questions. Everything written about the aircraft says it was supposed to cruise at mach 3, but only reached mach 1.3 in testing. Also, they say the only one that flew was BELIEVED to set a record of mach 1.89 over a 2000 km circuit. Do you think that this record shows that the aircraft actually couldn't go mach 3 and maybe the project was cancelled because it couldn't reach it's design goal? By the way, the only surviving airframe is at the Monino Museum.
Sukhoi T-4
- Thread starter Brandon
- Start date
the soviets designed the T-4 to match the U.S XB-70. the jet definately had teh capability to supercruise at mach 3 with the enourmous RD-36-41 turbofans. i still dont know why the program was canceled before the full performance of the aircraft could be reached 
i dont know if it could actually be an answer to the XB-70 but both aircrafts are pretty close, skill wise. but the t-4 had the worlds most advanced electrohydraulic, quadruple redundancy fly-by-wire system.
i dont know if it could actually be an answer to the XB-70 but both aircrafts are pretty close, skill wise. but the t-4 had the worlds most advanced electrohydraulic, quadruple redundancy fly-by-wire system.
Both the XB-70 and the T-4 were cancelled due to the same reasons - cost and obsolescence. The concept that high altitude and high speed could provide protection to deep penetration bombers was invalidated with the advent of effective SAMs. Virtually all of their capabilities could be better performed by cruise missiles and ICBMs. These aircraft were highly optimized for their specified role and would not have been easily converted to the low-level stand-off role, which is anyway better performed by cheaper sub-sonic designs, which is why they ended up getting cancelled.the soviets designed the T-4 to match the U.S XB-70. the jet definately had teh capability to supercruise at mach 3 with the enourmous RD-36-41 turbofans. i still dont know why the program was canceled before the full performance of the aircraft could be reached
i dont know if it could actually be an answer to the XB-70 but both aircrafts are pretty close, skill wise. but the t-4 had the worlds most advanced electrohydraulic, quadruple redundancy fly-by-wire system.