The majority of Soviet fighter jets, from the MiG-9 on, had the jet engine air intake positioned in the nose of the aircraft. Almost no fighter jets developed in other countries had this. Why the difference?
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There are two conflicting issues in fighter design:
1) The best place, aerodynamically and mechanically, for the air intake is centerline in the plane’s nose.
2) The only place that its practical to put forward looking radar on a fighter is in the nose.
If you want radar in a plane, it needs to go in the nose and you have to put the air intake somewhere else. If you don’t want radar, there’s no reason not to put the air intake in the nose.
The first Soviet plane to have any form of radar was the MiG-27 in 1975. Conversely, the US never made a jet that had no radar whatsoever. Even the F-86, which had a nose intake, had a very limited gunsight radar positioned just above the intake. Every US plane after the F-86 had a full, forward looking radar set that took up the entire nose of the plane.
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