Long has that unborn ligth fighter project from Yugoslavia been my Holy grail of military matters and many, many hours i have spend in front of my cp to scroll down virtually all yugoslavian related military sites, mostly writen in serbo-croatia, which is still a language of great mystery to me. This afternoon, i came to conclusion that i have find everything that is possible for casual western military enthustiastic, so i decided to share everything i know about that spearhead of Yugoslavian aviation industry.
This is the one of the most common pic you can find of Novi Avion from internet...
Yugoslavia remained an unallyed and neutral state after its 48's expelition from cominform and other pro-moscow organisations. Under srtong leadership of marshal Tito, they managed to keep their rather innoative and visionary sosialistic system intact and workable untill late eightyes, when nationalistic proplems and ethnical disstrupitions finally doomed the idea of Yugoslavia, a single nation to all southern slavs to feel as their motherland.
Yugoslavian military was along whit rest of the non-alligment nations, wery diverse and consisted weaponory from both superpower blocks and very visible domestic arms section. In aviation field, Yugoslavians were long soldiers of basic MiG-21 fishbed which soldiered along whit older US F-84 and F-86 well into late 70's. By then, Yugoslavians had managed set up an indegenious aviation industry which produced rudimentar ligth utility planes and jettrainers as well as attack version of the latter.
At the end of that great decade, yugoslavians and pariah warsaw-pact neighbour Romania came to devolp an indeginious attack plane to statisfy needs of both air forces. The end result was some what 'unremarkable' j-22/Iar-93 Orao ligth attack/close support plane that was basicly a Jaguar whit inferior capapilityes. This plane featured Uk build Viper engines and at least yugoslavian version was able to carry US maverick missiles. Some rumours whispers that joint sino-romanian cooperation resulted Jh-7 as derivate from orao, cant say much about that, but those two planes do share some features...
Anyway, at the end of the 80's yugoslavians were fed up whit their MiG-21 and wanted something better. As a result they launched an ambitious project to produce multipurpose fighter to replace the fishbeds, and suprass the Orao. A desing called for ligth single engine fighter of similar acpect than Swedish Gripen, Spanish A-X, Indian LCA, Israel Lavi and unborn British P.106. It was mented to be a tailes delta whit candards and powered by single engine from f-404, RBS.199, M-88 or PW1120 category, so in all acpect very similar to Griben. (and to later Chinese Fc-1 which in other hand is rumoured to be derivate of romanian Iar-95...) the were heavy involvement of western aviation firms, mostly by Dassault and all of the concepts shows similarity to Dassault Rafale.
a line drawing of Novi Avion concept
But like whit many intresting yugoslav desings (like the Lora class submarines and Vihor tanks) it fell into teeths of the civil war and brake up, and not even single prototypes were build. Sad, couse if it would have entered to aviation world, it migth have broven to be hell of a aircraft and knowing the Yugoslavian loose and unpiccky export policys, aviable to almoust all who could have afforded it.
DESING FEATURES:
Mid-positioned delta wings whit 46 degree leading-edge sweep and 3 degree trailing edge foward sweep; canrdforeplanes whit 45 degree leading edge sweep. Single fin whit insert rudder; no horizontal tail: 'Rafael' style twin kidney-shaped air intakes for high AoA performance: low set cockpit. Artes of turn: sustained, 2 degree/s: instantenious 30 degree/s
ACCOMOTION: pilot only, under three-piece canopy; 17 downward view over nose
AVIONICS: Nose-mounted radar, digital fly by wire and fligth control system
ARMAMENT: Eleven (?!?) hardpoints including wingtips for AAMs, one cannon, PGMs and missiles
DIMENSION:
Wingspan: 8m
Lenght owerall 13.75m
Heigth overall 4.87m
foreplane span 3.55m
Wheel track 2.42m
wheelbase 4.20m
Wing cross area 30.000 sq m
Empty weigth (equip) 6,247kg
Max fuel weigth; ext, int 2,565kg , 4,500kg
MAXTOW 13,400 kg
MAX wing loading 446.67 kg/sq m
Max speed Mach 1.85
Max rate of climb 15,000m/min
T-O and landing run (close air support ordn.) 750m
Tactical radious ------"---- 400-1,000km
Ferry range 3,765 km
So if enybody knows even more about it, please, post it here! Cos i have also heard that it migth have been totally diffrent desing like MiG-29 whit engines closer together and belly mounted intake!
This is the one of the most common pic you can find of Novi Avion from internet...
Yugoslavia remained an unallyed and neutral state after its 48's expelition from cominform and other pro-moscow organisations. Under srtong leadership of marshal Tito, they managed to keep their rather innoative and visionary sosialistic system intact and workable untill late eightyes, when nationalistic proplems and ethnical disstrupitions finally doomed the idea of Yugoslavia, a single nation to all southern slavs to feel as their motherland.
Yugoslavian military was along whit rest of the non-alligment nations, wery diverse and consisted weaponory from both superpower blocks and very visible domestic arms section. In aviation field, Yugoslavians were long soldiers of basic MiG-21 fishbed which soldiered along whit older US F-84 and F-86 well into late 70's. By then, Yugoslavians had managed set up an indegenious aviation industry which produced rudimentar ligth utility planes and jettrainers as well as attack version of the latter.
At the end of that great decade, yugoslavians and pariah warsaw-pact neighbour Romania came to devolp an indeginious attack plane to statisfy needs of both air forces. The end result was some what 'unremarkable' j-22/Iar-93 Orao ligth attack/close support plane that was basicly a Jaguar whit inferior capapilityes. This plane featured Uk build Viper engines and at least yugoslavian version was able to carry US maverick missiles. Some rumours whispers that joint sino-romanian cooperation resulted Jh-7 as derivate from orao, cant say much about that, but those two planes do share some features...
Anyway, at the end of the 80's yugoslavians were fed up whit their MiG-21 and wanted something better. As a result they launched an ambitious project to produce multipurpose fighter to replace the fishbeds, and suprass the Orao. A desing called for ligth single engine fighter of similar acpect than Swedish Gripen, Spanish A-X, Indian LCA, Israel Lavi and unborn British P.106. It was mented to be a tailes delta whit candards and powered by single engine from f-404, RBS.199, M-88 or PW1120 category, so in all acpect very similar to Griben. (and to later Chinese Fc-1 which in other hand is rumoured to be derivate of romanian Iar-95...) the were heavy involvement of western aviation firms, mostly by Dassault and all of the concepts shows similarity to Dassault Rafale.
a line drawing of Novi Avion concept
But like whit many intresting yugoslav desings (like the Lora class submarines and Vihor tanks) it fell into teeths of the civil war and brake up, and not even single prototypes were build. Sad, couse if it would have entered to aviation world, it migth have broven to be hell of a aircraft and knowing the Yugoslavian loose and unpiccky export policys, aviable to almoust all who could have afforded it.
DESING FEATURES:
Mid-positioned delta wings whit 46 degree leading-edge sweep and 3 degree trailing edge foward sweep; canrdforeplanes whit 45 degree leading edge sweep. Single fin whit insert rudder; no horizontal tail: 'Rafael' style twin kidney-shaped air intakes for high AoA performance: low set cockpit. Artes of turn: sustained, 2 degree/s: instantenious 30 degree/s
ACCOMOTION: pilot only, under three-piece canopy; 17 downward view over nose
AVIONICS: Nose-mounted radar, digital fly by wire and fligth control system
ARMAMENT: Eleven (?!?) hardpoints including wingtips for AAMs, one cannon, PGMs and missiles
DIMENSION:
Wingspan: 8m
Lenght owerall 13.75m
Heigth overall 4.87m
foreplane span 3.55m
Wheel track 2.42m
wheelbase 4.20m
Wing cross area 30.000 sq m
Empty weigth (equip) 6,247kg
Max fuel weigth; ext, int 2,565kg , 4,500kg
MAXTOW 13,400 kg
MAX wing loading 446.67 kg/sq m
Max speed Mach 1.85
Max rate of climb 15,000m/min
T-O and landing run (close air support ordn.) 750m
Tactical radious ------"---- 400-1,000km
Ferry range 3,765 km
So if enybody knows even more about it, please, post it here! Cos i have also heard that it migth have been totally diffrent desing like MiG-29 whit engines closer together and belly mounted intake!
