Did the US Steal VTOL Technology from Russia to Make the F-35B?

An F-35B Lightning II aircraft assigned to Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron (VMM) 262 (Reinforced) lands on the flight deck aboard amphibious assault carrier USS Tripoli (LHA 7), Aug. 4, 2022. Tripoli is operating in the US 7th Fleet area of operations to enhance interoperability with allies and partners and serve as a ready response force to defend peace and maintain stability in the Indo-Pacific region. (US Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Malcolm Kelley) Public domain

I read an article over the weekend at Eurasia Times that claimed the US may have stolen critical vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) tech from the Soviet Union and… wait for it… that the tech was incorporated into the US Marine Corps version of the F-35 (the F-35B variant with VTOL).

Now, I love laughing at a good conspiracy theory as much as the next skeptic. So let’s dismantle the idea that the US needed to steal Soviet tech to build the F-35B — because, frankly, the argument folds under scrutiny like a cheap lawn chair in a Michigan snowstorm.

No, the F-35B Didn’t Steal Soviet VTOL Tech — It Evolved from the Harrier, Not the Yak

Every few years, someone rediscovers the Yak-141 and tries to Frankenstein it into the origin story of the F-35B. And it usually comes wrapped in Cold War intrigue — spy novels, black ops, shadowy contracts, and the myth that US defense contractors couldn’t design their way out of a paper bag without help from the crumbling Soviet Union.

This line of thinking fundamentally misunderstands both the history of Western VTOL development and the long evolutionary arc of the F-35 program. The F-35B is not a Soviet remix — it’s a Western remix of Western ideas.

And that remix started decades earlier.

So, let’s walk it back and follow the actual bloodline of the F-35B, which doesn’t run through Moscow — it runs through Dunsfold, St. Louis, and Patuxent River.

The Harrier Was Flying Vertical Before the Yak Was Even Born

Let’s start with the Harrier jump jet, because if you’re talking about VTOL fighters and you skip the Harrier, you’re already lost.

God, I love the AV-8B Harrier II. It’s just a sexy-looking strike aircraft. Remember that movie True Lies with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis — directed by James Cameron?

There is an incredible Harrier scene in that movie that captivated me as a kid when I watched it in theaters in Dallas in 1994.

Just watch this one scene, which is, by the way, better than 99% of today’s action movies:

Developed in the UK during the late 1950s and first flown in 1967, the Hawker Siddeley Harrier was the world’s first successful vertical/short takeoff and landing jet aircraft. And when I say “successful,” I don’t mean “completed a prototype test flight.”

I mean fully operational, carrier-capable, and used in actual wars.

The Harrier’s breakthrough was its vectored-thrust Pegasus engine, which redirected jet exhaust through four rotating nozzles. This gave it the ability to hover, take off vertically, transition to forward flight, and land without needing a full-length runway.

It was elegant in its simplicity, deadly in execution, and — unlike its Soviet counterparts — reliable.

While the Yakovlev Design Bureau was still struggling to build a vertical jet that didn’t incinerate itself on landing, the Harrier was flying from aircraft carriers and blowing up Exocet launchers in the Falklands. It saw decades of operational service with the RAF, Royal Navy, US Marine Corps, and others.

Compare that to the Yak-38, the Soviet Union’s first production VTOL aircraft. It was underpowered, couldn’t fight its way out of a paper bag, and had so little range and payload that it was essentially useless for anything other than show-and-tell.

It lacked radar, couldn’t operate in bad weather, and had serious reliability issues. Soviet pilots were notoriously skeptical of it. Think of it as the Pinto of VTOL jets — dangerous to drive and prone to bursting into flames if you looked at it sideways.

The Yak-141 (later redesignated Yak-41) was a significant technological leap forward for Yakovlev, sure. But it never got past the prototype stage. It managed to hover, fly supersonic, and land on a carrier deck — but only after years of development hell and a catastrophic crash that effectively killed the program in 1991.

Yak-141 By Ken Videan — http://www.myaviation.net/search/photo_search.php?id=00166077&size=large, GFDL 1.2

Meanwhile, Harriers were already being upgraded into the AV-8B Harrier II in the United States — adding modern avionics, radar, night-vision capabilities, and more thrust.

The Yak never made it to that point. It never deployed operationally. It never saw combat. And it certainly never gave the West anything it hadn’t already figured out decades earlier.

The F-35B: A Marriage of Innovation and Evolution

The F-35B didn’t just drop out of the sky. It was the product of years of research, decades of operational experience with the Harrier, and a clear need for next-generation capability.

Let’s look at propulsion because that’s where most of the Soviet-theft conspiracy theories anchor themselves.

The F-35B’s vertical flight is powered by a shaft-driven lift fan system developed by Rolls-Royce in the UK — yes, the same people who helped build the Harrier. Essentially, a drive shaft connects the massive Pratt & Whitney F135 engine to a vertically-mounted fan just behind the cockpit. This fan provides cold lift thrust during vertical operations.

Simultaneously, the rear exhaust nozzle rotates downward to vector thrust, and a pair of roll posts in the wings stabilize the aircraft laterally.

This is nothing like the Yak-141.

The Yak used a single engine with a vectoring nozzle and two auxiliary lift jets in the fuselage. The lift jets were dead weight during level flight — inefficient, dangerous if one failed, and a serious design compromise. The Yak’s rear nozzle used a mechanically complex multi-segment rotation system, whereas the F-35B’s design is more integrated, durable, and stealth-compatible.

What the F-35B has is a clean-sheet redesign that learns from the Harrier’s strengths while fixing its limitations — like poor payload and range. The lift fan allows for shorter takeoffs and vertical landings while minimizing thermal signature (a huge deal in the age of infrared-guided weapons). It’s stealthy, networked, and fully interoperable with 21st-century battle networks.

In short, the F-35B is what you get when you mix the Harrier’s DNA with fifth-generation fighter design — and sprinkle in a few billion dollars in R&D funding.

About That Lockheed-Yakovlev Deal…

Part of this conspiracy comes from a tech-sharing deal Lockheed Martin signed with Yakovlev as soon as the Soviet Union went to hell — where it belonged.

Yes, in 1991, Lockheed Martin signed a technical assistance agreement with Yakovlev, right as the Soviet Union was collapsing into a sea of ruble-backed IOUs. The agreement provided small amounts of funding for Yakovlev to display the Yak-141 at the 1992 Farnborough Airshow. It also gave Lockheed a look under the hood.

But let’s not get carried away.

This was the post-Cold War aerospace clearance sale. Western companies were poking around former Soviet design bureaus, not to copy their ideas, but to see if there was anything worth salvaging.

Sometimes, they found interesting stuff. Most of the time, they didn’t.

The idea that Lockheed Martin, Rolls-Royce, Pratt & Whitney, and the entire JSF consortium needed Soviet help to figure out VTOL is laughable.

These companies had been designing VTOL-capable aircraft for decades. They had working prototypes, operational history, and a long trail of test data from Harriers and other VTOL experiments like the XFV-12.

If Lockheed took anything from the Yak-141, it was probably more about what not to do — like trusting auxiliary lift jets or using segmented exhaust nozzles that barely held together in testing.

There’s no trace of Yak-style architecture in the final F-35B design. The thrust paths, thermal load management, control systems, and flight software are all original to the F-35 program.

And if we’re being brutally honest, if the Yak-141 tech had been so revolutionary, the Russian Federation would have built it themselves. They didn’t. They shelved it. And 30 years later, they still don’t have a fifth-generation VTOL fighter.

That tells you everything.

Bottom Line: If You’re Going to Accuse the US of Tech Theft, At Least Pick a Better Donor

An AV-8B Harrier from Marine Attack Squadron (VMA) 214 performs a vertical takeoff from the flight deck of the amphibious assault ship USS Boxer (LHD 4). Boxer is underway conducting training off the coast of Southern California. (US Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Oscar N. Espinoza/Released) Public domain.

The Yak-141 was a bold experiment. Credit where credit is due. But that’s all it was — an experiment. It never entered production. It never flew operationally. And it certainly didn’t birth the F-35B.

The Harrier, by contrast, was fielded, tested, and iterated over five decades. It saw combat on multiple continents and proved — again and again — that vertical flight could be not just viable but a game-changer. The F-35B is the Harrier’s successor, not the Yak’s. It took what worked, added stealth, fused sensors, and built a fighter that can hover off a ship and then kill a target 500 miles away — all while feeding real-time battlefield intel back to a global coalition.

So no, the F-35B is not some Cold War relic reverse-engineered from Soviet scrap. It’s a Western marvel, built on British ingenuity, American engineering, and decades of real-world combat data.

If you’re still convinced Lockheed “stole” the F-35B from the Russians, ask yourself why the Russians still don’t have anything remotely like it.

Want to see what real VTOL lineage looks like? Track the Harrier to the F-35B, not the Yak-141 to a Pentagon garage sale.

Let the conspiracy theorists have their fun. The rest of us will be watching the F-35B hover, pivot, and strike — with a pedigree built in Bristol, not borrowed from Moscow.

That’s it for today, friends. Like military technology with a dash of cavilier sarcasm? That’s my jam. Subscribe for more stuff like this in your inbox.

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