Espionage Against and Influence of Concorde
The development of the Tu-144 is closely related to industrial espionage against the French company Aérospatiale, which was developing Concorde. Sergei Pavlov, officially acting as Aeroflot's representative in Paris, was arrested in 1965 and was in possession of detailed plans of the braking system, landing gear and the airframe of Concorde. Another agent named Sergei Fabiew, arrested in 1977, was believed to have obtained the entire plans of Concorde prototype in the mid-1960s. However, these were just early development versions and would not have permitted the USSR engineers to come up with their own aircraft, but could have served as an indication of the work of Concorde design team. An espionage theory involved the Anglo/French Concorde team which, knowing that the Soviets were planning to steal the plans, put into circulation a set of dummy blueprints with deliberate design flaws.
Read more about this topic: Tupolev Tu-144
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