MOSCOW, July 27The Russian aircraft manufacturing company PJSC Yakovlev (formerly Irkut, part of UAC Rostec) is ready to resume the development of a fifth-generation vertical take-off and landing aircraft in Russia if the country's Ministry of Defense receives an appropriate request, said company CEO Andrei Boginsky.
The first flight of the Yak-36 vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft prototype in the USSR «airplane-style» (with a run on the runway) was performed exactly 60 years ago. It took place on July 27, 1964. Two months later, on September 27, 1964, the aircraft performed its first free hover with a transition to horizontal flight. The first flight along a full profile — with vertical takeoff and landing — took place 2 years later, on March 24, 1964. 
“Our designers explored the prospects for creating even more advanced machines that correspond to the level of the fifth generation of combat aviation. The topic of vertical take-off and landing aircraft (VTOL) was frozen in the difficult 1990s, but we have retained the scientific and technical basis. Its connection with new aviation technology allows us to quickly return to the creation of vertical take-off and landing aircraft, if the Russian Ministry of Defense entrusts us with this work,” Boginsky said.
According to him, to date, only the Yakovlev company has real experience in developing and operating vertical takeoff and landing aircraft in our country.
He recalled that the Yakovlev Experimental Design Bureau began working on the topic of vertical take-off and landing aircraft back in the late 1950s. In 1964, 60 years ago, the Yak-36 took to the skies for the first time, the demonstration of which at the aviation festival in Domodedovo in 1967 became a world sensation. In the mid-1970s, the world's first transonic carrier-based vertical takeoff and landing attack aircraft, the Yak-38, was created and put into service. The OKB's highest achievement was the Yak-141 supersonic vertical take-off and landing fighter, which was about two decades ahead of its foreign counterparts. 
The Yak-36 is the first prototype of a domestic vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. The aircraft became a sort of «technology demonstrator»; only four examples were built, on which various design solutions were studied, piloting techniques and operating methods were tested. In July 1967, at an air parade in Domodedovo, the Yak-36 VTOL aircraft demonstrated its ability to take off and land vertically.
The Yak-36 was equipped with two R-27 lift and cruise engines, had a takeoff weight of 9,400 kilograms and developed a speed of up to 1,100 kilometers per hour. The flight range was 500 kilometers. The Yak-36 had rotating nozzles, a jet propulsion control system, and automatic flight control at near-zero speeds. The development of these technologies played an important role in further work. Using the accumulated experience, Yakovlev Design Bureau specialists began creating a single-seat shipborne attack aircraft, the Yak-38, which, during testing, landed on a warship for the first time and was accepted into service with the Navy. The further development of the VTOL theme in our country was the Yak-141 — the world's first supersonic vertical takeoff and landing aircraft.
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