Think very big armoured Gripen Shturmovik: the Sukhoi that never was

Happy New year

Happy New Year!

As the Cold War was reaching its (thankfully low-key) climax, the craze across the fighter houses of Europe was for canard-deltas. Soviet designers had been studying canard foreplanes on jet fighters since the 1950s, and were re-awakened to the idea by both advances in flight control software and the Western trend. It was at this time, in the late 1980s, that Sukhoi was considered a new ground attack aircraft.