Originally Posted by galaxy flyer
Having seen some of their other efforts, this one doesn't wonder. Ever fly on an IL96 or see a IL62? Their fighters aren't crude, they are positively agricultural!
This is off-topic, so I ain't going to bang on this subject after this post, but I wouldn't be so quick to denigrate former Soviet technology in all cases. Those "agricultural" fighters can mix it up with the best the west has to offer (until - or if - the F22 comes online) in terms of manoeuvering ability, if not in terms of weapons. Elements of their rocket technology were in advance of what we had at the time, and the solutions they came up with to put the Tu-144 in the air may have been crude, but they were to some degree effective, which can denote an elegant solution in itself.
That said, this thread is about an aircraft which was the result of - unarguably - some of the best engineering in aviation history, and I'd much rather talk about that!
