Sukhoi SU-11 Fishpot C

The Sukhoi Su-11 first went into service in 1962 as a replacement for the ageing Su-7 and Su-9, and benefited from its predecessors' extensive combat history in other Warsaw Pact countries. The Su-11 all-weather interceptor was a refinement of the Su-9 with a new engine, new radar and improved missile armament. These aircraft were the fastest and highest-flying Soviet interceptors of the 1960s. Generally speaking, the Su-11 was in a sense transitional machine between the Su-9, on which the OKB had to "do" interceptors, and soon followed by the "classical" Su-15. The flying characteristics of the Su-11 certainly deteriorated compared to the original Su-9, but the possibility of a new and more powerful radar homing missiles R-8M more than offset this weakness.

Phazotron-NIIR Corporation and Sukhoi Design Bureau are bound by a long-term fruitful co-operation. The first fully independent development of the airborne radar under the name Oryol [Eagle] has been started in 1957 by OKB-339, (so the Phazotron was called at that time), under the leadership of G.M.Kunyavsky, former designer-in-chief. The Oryol radar was adopted for service with the Air Force as a part of the Su-11 fighter-interceptor airborne equipment.

The subsequent fate of the Su-11 was less rosy. The serial production of the aircraft, which began at the Novosibirsk Aircraft Plant in the summer of 1962, was soon sharply limited, and subsequently practically curtailed in favor of the Yak-28P interceptor designed by OKB-115 (general designer A.S. Yakovlev). The reason was well-grounded claims to the low reliability of Sukhoi interceptors, demonstrated by them at the initial stage of rearmament. The increased accident rate of the Su-9 was explained by the low reliability of the engines, so the designers of OKB-51 together with OKB-165 (A.M. Lyulka) had to make considerable efforts in the future to rehabilitate their products. As a result, by the mid-60s, OKO P.O. Dry in terms of accident rate reached the average. But the fate of the Su-11 by that time was a foregone conclusion: its release was limited to only 110 aircraft. These machines began to enter service in the summer of 1964. The first combat unit that received the Su-11 was a fighter regiment based near Astrakhan. In total, in the period 1964-80. As part of the Su-11 air defense forces, 3 fighter aviation regiments were armed. Only in mid-1964 was the first production Su-11 finally transferred to an operatonal regiment, based at Astrakhan. By the end of the summer the whole Regiment had Su-11s, and in September it began military tests of the aeroplane. Program production Su-11 was the end of production aircraft in 1964, but really the last machines were produced in early 1965, for a total of 108 aircraft, almost an order of magnitude smaller than the Su-9. In addition to the Astrakhan Regiment, the Su-11 interceptors were deployed with two more armed combat units of the Moscow PVO.

The tactics of application Su-11 in practice did not differ from that accepted for Su-9. At the same time, the zone of interception along the height was somewhat was enlarged, due to the new radar and rockets. It is interesting to note that design for Su-11 provided for the application of rockets R-8[m] on the ground (at sea) targets. Obviously, thus servicemen attempted to compensate deficiency in the class of air-surface missiles.

In the early 60s, the Su-9 and Su-11 became the first fighters in the USSR to be included in the created interception aircraft systems. In the future, this area, including automation of control and guidance as the main priorities, became predominant during the creation of each new aviation complex as part of the air defense forces. It should also be noted that for their time, the Su-9 and Su-11 fighters were quite modern aircraft, providing a high level of flight performance and were armed with guided missile weapons. Until the end of the 60s, i.e. before entering service with the MiG-25, Su-9 and Su-11 were the highest and high-speed interceptors in the system of air defense forces of the country. The proof of this is a series of records of altitude and flight speed, established by pilots of the Design Bureau V.S. Ilyushin, A.A. Koznov and pilot of the Air Force GNIKI B.M. Adrianov in 1959-62 on experimental aircraft T-431 and T-405. A set of revisions, embedded on the Su-11 and engine AL-7F-2, clearly benefited the machine: compared to the Su-9 and its powerhouse AL-7F-1, it significantly improved its performance, that eventually led to a much less painful process. Su-11 were in service until the end of the seventies of the last century, after which they were replaced by interceptor MiG-23ML/p and MiG-25pd. The Sukhoi FISHPOT was withdrawn from Soviet service around 1980.