What was the quality of the soviet jet engines?

Posted by ElectronicDegree4380@reddit | aviation | View on Reddit | 7 comments

I heard in one video and read in some other posts that the soviet turbojet/turbofan engines were worse in terms of the quality of the manufacturing (which thus resulted in worse technical characteristics and performance). I am wondering what those quality issues were and what was the reason soviet engines were made this way.

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smartguy96@reddit

One of the main weaknesses of Soviet engineering was in high temperature metallurgy. For example, the MiG-25 was built primarily from steel and would melt its own engines at top speed because the Soviets couldn't match the things America was doing with titanium on the SR-71

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justlurkshere@reddit

Well, technically the USSR helped build the SR-71 by helping out with titanium. :p

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Goodspeed137@reddit

If you look at the thrust in afterburners of most of their engines, they burn a hotter blue than ours orange/red. USSR had massive titanium deposits and build everything out of it, getting a lot more power from the equivalent weight. We actually still use their rocket engines on our Atlas V. What they had issues with were computer controls, like FADEC and DEEC type systems, so they were much less fuel efficient and the aircraft’s range significantly suffered as a result.

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