West is Best
I watch a bit of discovery wings, in particular Seawings and Jets of the Cold War. It appears to me that many russian aircraft appear to be copies of western aircraft. In particular;
The Rockwell B1B and the TU160
The TU22m and
B52 and TU142 and 95
The harrier and Yak VSTOL forger
and Koncordski
Is it a case of west knows best and the russians played catch-up or that both russian and the west produced aircraft to a similar brief and that "form follows function", therefore each particular design house would produce something close because they are working towards the same end product? Purely co-incidental or espionage is really what i am getting at.