The aircraft featured an innovative but unproven double delta wing, which led to the creation of a sub-scale test aircraft, the Saab 210, which was produced and flown to test this previously-unexplored aerodynamic feature.

The Saab 35 Draken was a Swedish interceptor developed and manufactured by SAAB (Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget) between 19. Indeed, even the Saab J35 Draken, a fighter plane manufactured in the ’50s (and retired from active service by its last operator – Austria – in 2005) could perform the Cobra as the following video (that has been around for a few years but was revived on FB lately) shows: Most modern planes with thrust vectoring are capable to perform an even more effective and spectacular maneuver: the Kulbit.Īctually not only modern thrust vectoring or canard control surfaces give a plane the pitch control authority required to perform the Cobra.

The Cobra, that can be somehow useful during a dogfight to suddenly slow down the speed (more or less as Maverick does in Top Gun movie), is not only performed by the Su-27 and subsequent variants: even the MiG-29 and the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor are able to perform such maneuver, with the latter highly facilitated by thrust vectoring engines. In a Cobra, the plane suddenly raises the nose to the veritical position (or beyond) before dropping it back to the normal flight, maintaining more or less the same altitude through the entire maneuver. The Sukhoi Su-27 became famous all around the world for doing an aerobatic maneuver, named after the Soviet test pilot Viktor Pugachev, who performed it publicly in 1989 at the Paris Le Bourget air show: the “Pugachev’s Cobra” (or simply “Cobra”). The Swedish Cobra Take a look at the Swedish Cobra Maneuver.

Air combat maneuvers su 33 pdf