Epic Soviet Era Aircraft [pictures]

[Jacob]

This may be of interest to some of our military hardware nerds here:







Way more pictures here and here.

[Malthus]

Damn, that thing is weird looking. Like an abandoned Soviet version of a Star Trek vehicle. 

[grumbler]

Ah, the Caspian Sea Monster.  I remember him well.

I'm assuming that this is the second, never-finished model.  The first crashed (these things were very sensitive to sea state and wind) and this looks in too good a shape to have been raised.  Google translate makes the blog you linked to a hash that i cannot penetrate.  Cool stuff, though.

here is a video of the first one in "flight." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8Nu94khHoo

Edit:  This is one of the handful of follow-on WIGE aircraft completed, not the KM itself (or the incomplete one).  It is apparently kept as a museum exhibit at Kaspiysk.  That's even cooler than this being a remnant.

[mongers]

Ekranoplans are thoroughly cool machines, well at least in my book they are.

[Malthus]

Are those things on its back missile tubes?

[Admiral Yi]

Looks very Moebius (sp?).

[mongers]

Are those things on its back missile tubes?

Yep, there's film on youtube of a launch irrc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lun-class_ekranoplan

[MadImmortalMan]

Is there any advantage to this over, say a normal hydrofoil? It doesn't seem like it was intended to fly it over land anyway.

[grumbler]

Is there any advantage to this over, say a normal hydrofoil? It doesn't seem like it was intended to fly it over land anyway.

It is much faster than a hydrofoil (c. 300 knots, IIRC) and  is much larger (something like 400 tons).  It was one of those concepts that worked supremely well up  until the moment it encountered reality.  It really only worked under near-ideal sea and wind conditions, which were rare.

[Hamilcar]

It looks like something an 8 year old drew.

[CountDeMoney]

Oooh, another mid-century vintage find on Etsy.  Favorited!

[Grinning_Colossus]

Экранопла́н 

[Berkut]

The thing I don't understand about things like this is that it seems obvious to me that this is simply not workable. I am not any kind of engineer, but it doesn't take a degree to imagine that something cruising along at 400MPH several feet above the surface of the water is going to have serious problems with wind and any kind of wave action.

[Ed Anger]

I'm a Frogfoot and Fencer fan myself.

[The Brain]

I like Fagot.