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jeffreyrogers

What is the purpose of those spike things on the leading edge of the wings?

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They are Pitot tubes[1], part of the system that calculates the aircraft's altitude and speed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitot-static_system

The large ones on the ends of the wings seem way too long to be pitot tubes.

Those are the two pitot tubes. The other tubes on the fuselage forward of the canopy are cannons. Aft of the canopy are radio aerials. This [1] only mentions the right-hand pitot tube, but since they appear to be identical, I assume it was just an oversight on the document's author.

[1]https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80T00246...

It does seem they are.. the obvious reason for having one on both wings would be redundancy, pitot tubes are not that reliable.. You need to check & inspect & cover/uncover them in preflight/postflight cause bugs & dirt and such can easily clog them.

AFAICT they're so huge to get them out of the pressure effects on the wing from supersonic/transonic flight.

The Mig-21 giant spike over the nose is the same thing apparently.

Pretty interesting. It seems like a lot of US jets just have/had a different solution to this problem.

Actually reading your document the long spikes at the end of the wingtips are not mentioned as the Pitot tubes.. that document says the pitot tube is mounted on the right wing 1/4 of the distance in from the tip.

Yeah, I think that has to be a mistake, either in translation or just an error. They're obviously both pitot tubes, and there's nothing mount 1/4 of the distance from the wingtip.

The walkaround video answers that question and points out other cool features of the airframe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2-LprWf3NI

Those are pitot tubes as others have mentioned and there are two of them for the sake of aerodynamic balance.

I'm not an expert and have forgotten most of my aerodynamics classes but I believe it's related to shockwave formation on the wing tips or possibly pitot tubes to measure airspeed as a function of pressure changes

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