The MiG-27 fighters of the Indian Air Force will be retired at a ceremony at the Jodhpur airbase on December 27. The event marks not just the retirement of another aircraft type from the Indian Air Force, but the end of the use of a technology, that, for about a decade, dominated military aviation.
This technology was ‘variable sweep’ wing design, more commonly known as ‘swing wing’. Aircraft with swing wing technology could sweep their wings forward or backward to optimise performance at take-off and landing and for high-speed flight. At the height of the Cold War in the 1960s, swing wing technology seemed to be the dominant theme in military aviation; its importance was akin to that of stealth technology in the 1990s.
Swing wing technology attempted to solve the problem of rapidly growing weight of aircraft by allowing the aircraft to, effectively, change its shape in flight. Sweeping the wings straight gave the aircraft design maximum lift, allowing for shorter take-off and landing runs, while maximising weapons load. Sweeping the wings backward reduced the drag in flight, improving speed, and allowed greater agility in aerial combat.
Like all forms of technology during the Cold War, research and development in swing wing aircraft saw considerable competition between the Soviet Union and the US. In 1967, the US Air Force inducted the first production swing wing aircraft, the F-111, which was a strike aircraft. The F-111, which was the brainchild of John F. Kennedy’s defence secretary Robert McNamara, had suffered a torturous development. Critics bristled at teething troubles with the aircraft, calling it ‘McNamara’s Folly’. However, the F-111 went on to serve as a capable strike aircraft, seeing service over Vietnam, the 1991 Kuwait War and, most famously, the US attack over Libya in 1986.
1967 proved to be a key year for swing wing aircraft as the first Soviet fighter equipped with the technology flew for the first time that year. This was the MiG-23. The MiG-23 was designed to be the replacement for the then standard MiG-21, which suffered from poor range and limited radar and weapons capability.
26/12/19 The Week
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This technology was ‘variable sweep’ wing design, more commonly known as ‘swing wing’. Aircraft with swing wing technology could sweep their wings forward or backward to optimise performance at take-off and landing and for high-speed flight. At the height of the Cold War in the 1960s, swing wing technology seemed to be the dominant theme in military aviation; its importance was akin to that of stealth technology in the 1990s.
Swing wing technology attempted to solve the problem of rapidly growing weight of aircraft by allowing the aircraft to, effectively, change its shape in flight. Sweeping the wings straight gave the aircraft design maximum lift, allowing for shorter take-off and landing runs, while maximising weapons load. Sweeping the wings backward reduced the drag in flight, improving speed, and allowed greater agility in aerial combat.
Like all forms of technology during the Cold War, research and development in swing wing aircraft saw considerable competition between the Soviet Union and the US. In 1967, the US Air Force inducted the first production swing wing aircraft, the F-111, which was a strike aircraft. The F-111, which was the brainchild of John F. Kennedy’s defence secretary Robert McNamara, had suffered a torturous development. Critics bristled at teething troubles with the aircraft, calling it ‘McNamara’s Folly’. However, the F-111 went on to serve as a capable strike aircraft, seeing service over Vietnam, the 1991 Kuwait War and, most famously, the US attack over Libya in 1986.
1967 proved to be a key year for swing wing aircraft as the first Soviet fighter equipped with the technology flew for the first time that year. This was the MiG-23. The MiG-23 was designed to be the replacement for the then standard MiG-21, which suffered from poor range and limited radar and weapons capability.
26/12/19 The Week
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