By John Lumpkin
For a nation that put the state before the individual, how curious that the old Soviet Union would name its aircraft after individuals in their design shops.
While the United States designates its airborne weapons with a simple "F" for fighter, "B" for bomber and "A" for attack - with no indication of who built it - the Soviets gave full credit to the aircraft designer.
For example, aircraft with a "Tu" come from the A.N. Tupolev Design Bureau in Moscow. The "MiG" designation is short for Mikoyan-Gurevich, the last names Artem Ivanovich Mikoyan and M.I. Gurevich, two fighter designers who founded the world-famous families of aircraft. And the line of "Su" aircraft are named for Pavel Osipovich Sukhoi. Sukhoi was born on July 10, 1895, in the village of Glubokoye, not far from Vitebsk.
In 1925, he graduated from the Moscow Technical Aircraft University and joined Tupolev, where he supervised the design of several aircraft. The ANT-51 was named in honor of Sukhoi himself and given the Su-2 designation.
Beginning in 1939 - the year he became chief designer of his own experimental production facility in Kharkov - some 800 Su-2s were produced. A two-seat fighter-bomber, the Su-2 carried a 1,300 horsepower engine, seven machine guns, and 400 kilograms of bombs. They fought with distinction on the German front in World War II.
Several other Sukhoi designs during the war never entered production, and in 1944, Sukhoi began working on jet aircraft.
By the late 1940s, the bureau produced what would be the first Soviet supersonic interceptor. It had swept-back wings and a hermetic cockpit. But in 1949, the test aircraft crashed after the pilot ejected.
In November 1949, Sukhoi's design bureau closed, and Sukhoi himself went back to work for Tupolev.
Work on supersonic aircraft in the Soviet Union was curtailed until 1953, when Stalin died and Sukhoi reopened the design bureau. Experimental jet aircraft produced by the bureau set world speed and height records.
From 1953 through 1975, the bureau produced a series of high-performance fighters, fighter-bombers and interceptors.
The Su-9 (NATO code name: "Fishpot"), a one-seat interceptor comparable to the MiG-19, entered service in 1957. One thousand were built. It wasn't decommissioned until the 1980s.
The Su-15 Flagon, a single- or two-seat all-weather interceptor, entered service in the mid-1960s. It had a top speed of Mach 2.4. A Su-15 downed the South Korean 747 over Russian airspace on Sept. 1, 1983. The Flagon was withdrawn from Russian service around 1992.
The Su-17/20/22 Fitter series, a single-seat ground attack fighter and recon aircraft comparable to the A-7 Corsair or MiG-21, remains in service today with many countries of the old Soviet bloc. It has variable swept wings and first flew in the late 1960s, and the earliest variant entered service in 1970. It has a maximum speed of over Mach 2, a ceiling between 15 and 18 kilometers, and can carry a maximum payload between 3,500 and 4,200 kilograms.
Exported versions have a deeper dorsal spine and bear the Su-20 and Su-22 designations. Production stopped in 1990.
Next came the Su-24 Fencer, a two-seat, twin-engine variable-wing tactical bomber, comparable to the F-111 Aardvark. Its first flight was in 1964; a vastly different design was produced beginning in 1971. The pilot and weapons officer sit side-by-side. It can carry 8,000 kilograms of weapons on external stores and has a maximum speed of Mach 1.35.
Following was the Su-25 Frogfoot, a "tank buster" similar to the U.S. A-10 Thunderbolt (also known as the "Warthog"). A prototype was flown in 1975, shortly before Sukhoi's death on Sept. 15, 1975, at the age of 80. The heavily armored, twin-engine, single-seat attack aircraft can carry 4,400 kilograms of weapons. It was nicknamed "Rascheska" because it resembled a comb when its 10 underwing weapons pylons were loaded.
Variants include the Su-28 and the Su-39, the latter a recent design incorporating lessons learned from the Frogfoots performance in Afghanistan.
After Sukhoi's death, the design bureau was renamed for him.
Yevgeni Alekseyevich Ivanov became chief designer in 1977. He was followed by Mikhail Petrovich Simonov, who took the reigns in 1983.
Simonov supervised the prototype production of the Su-27 Flanker, still considered to be one of the finest fighter aircraft ever built. It entered service in 1984 as single-seat, twin-engine all-weather air superiority fighter; a two-seat fighter-bomber variant has also been observed.
The production of the Flanker and the MiG-29 Fulcrum in the 1980s were seen as counters to the U.S. F-15 Eagle and F-16 Fighting Falcon. The Flanker carries a payload of 6,000 kilograms and has a maximum speed of Mach 2.35.
A modified Su-27 established dozens of climb and altitude records between 1986 and 1988. The Su-27 platform has set the stage for a series of variants and upgrades, notably the Su-30/33/34/35, many of them for export to other countries.
Several new fighters use thrust-vectored engines, enabling a degree of maneuverability and dogfighting never before seen.
A "fifth-generation" fighter, the S-37 Berkut ("Golden Eagle") or Su-37, introduced in 1997, has forward-swept wings.
The Sukhoi Design Bureau has remained in fighter design but has also branched out into civil transport and aerobatic aircraft. Export of high-quality Sukhoi aircraft is possible with the fall of the Soviet Union and the loosening of trade barriers between Russia and the West.
Since 1983, the former fighter designers at the company have created a series of one- and two-seat aerobatic planes, the Su-26/29/31 series, which make heavy use of composite materials to improve performance. The aircraft, flown by the Russian national team, have won scores of medals in competition as well as the 1997 Nesterov Cup, the most prestigious aerobatic trophy in the world.

John Lumpkin formerly covered U.S. military affairs for the Albuquerque Journal.

Su-27

 
Su-35

Su-37