Military Aircraft Videos

MiG-29 "Fulcrum"

The Mikoyan MiG-29 (Russian: МиГ-29) (NATO reporting name "Fulcrum") is a fighter aircraft designed for the air superiority role in the Soviet Union. Developed in the 1970s by the Mikoyan design bureau, it entered service in 1983 and remains in use by the Russian Air Force as well as in many other nations.Because it was developed from the same basic parameters laid out by TsAGI for the original PFI, the MiG-29 is aerodynamically broadly similar to the Sukhoi Su-27, but with some notable differences. It is built largely out of aluminum with some composite materials. It has a mid-mounted swept wing with blended leading-edge root extensions (LERXs) swept at around 40°. There are swept tailplanes and two vertical fins, mounted on booms outboard of the engines. Automatic slats are mounted on the leading edges of the wings; they are four-segment on early models and five-segment on some later variants. On the trailing edge, there are maneuvering flaps and wingtip ailerons. The MiG-29 has hydraulic controls and a SAU-451 three-axis autopilot but, unlike the Su-27, does not have a fly-by-wire control system. Nonetheless, it is very agile, with excellent instantaneous and sustained turn performance, high alpha capability, and a general resistance to spins. The airframe is stressed for 9-g (88 m/s²) maneuvers. The controls have "soft" limiters to prevent the pilot from exceeding the g and alpha limits, but these can be disabled manually. In joint USAF-Luftwaffe exercises, the downgraded MiG-29 9-12A that the Luftwaffe fielded defeated the F-16 Fighting Falcon in close-range combat almost every time using its highly practical infra-red search and track (IRST) sensor and helmet-mounted sight, together with the Vympel R-73 (NATO reporting name AA-11 'Archer') missile.The MiG-29 has two widely spaced Klimov RD-33 turbofan engines