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It’s an established fact that design details of the Concorde were leaked to the Soviets. My uncle worked for de Havilland and it was pretty much common knowledge in the design teams that people were being touched up for details of whatever they were working on, in pretty much all of the industry.
jj72-
design details...were leaked to the Soviets
Nobody is arguing that the Soviet Union didn't spy extensively through all areas of industry in the west, and presumably the east too. We're just saying that in aerodynamics particularly, which is the field which generates the external profile of air vehicles and thus gives rise to inevitable similarities of outcome when the design requirements are similar, they are unlikely to have learned much if anything which they didn't already know.
The weak areas of Soviet industry are still the weak areas of Russian industry, no amount of espionage has allowed them to catch up. The conclusion we might reasonably draw from this is that espionage is a rubbish way of getting technology compared with native invention.
Every time you properly examine the details of one of these so-called "Productski", you find the best elements are those in which Russia is natively strong, and the worst elements are those in which Russia is natively weak. Sometimes the strengths are so strong and the weaknesses so weak that Russia builds a radically different solution which the west says cannot be done, but only because she is incapable of building the thing which the west has mastered.
gbj_tester
'This accusation ...'
Nicely put, gbj. It is tiresome how often this comes up.