Category Archives: Transhuman News

A privacy rights group is suing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for answers about its use of Rapid DNA technology on migrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a Freedom of Information Act complaint in federal court in San Francisco earlier this week, asking a judge to force the DHS to share information on its use of Rapid DNA testing.

The complaint highlights how little the DHS has so far shared about its use of DNA testing at the border.

The EFF has demanded to know how many people, including children have had their DNA collected at the border, how accurate the DNA tests are, as well as what exact gene processing is being used to identify parent-child relationships.

The lawsuit also asks the DHS to hand over its training materials, consent forms and a sample of the privacy statements families are being given, in addition to demanding to know the locations of DHS's Rapid DNA pilot programs.

The bid to obtain more information about the program comes months after the DHS started using Rapid DNA testing on adults and children presenting themselves at the U.S. border.

The department had sought to use the program to identify "fraudulent" families, or adults and children who were not biologically related, but presenting as families at the border.

However, the EFF has argued that it has done so with little oversight and without sharing enough information about its process or how the program is being expanded.

"Congress has never authorized ICE to conduct Rapid DNA testing on migrant families at the border, yet DHS has deployed this privacy-invasive technology without explaining how accurate the testing is, whether families can challenge the results, or how the program may be expanded in the future," said EFF Staff Attorney Saira Hussain in a statement shared in a press release.

The organization's complaint comes amid a DHS proposal to expand the collection of DNA of detained migrants and store that information in a federal criminal database.

Already the DHS has gained widespread condemnation over that plan. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and thousands of supporters have urged the Trump administration to abandon the plan, with thousands of public comments filed in the Federal Register.

"This unjustifiable step towards full population surveillance threatens to subvert our foundational values of freedom, autonomy, and presumed innocence," said Vera Eidelman, staff attorney with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project in a statement shared with Newsweek.

"Under this dehumanizing plan, immigrants who already have no control over their movements, their health, or their futures would also lose control over their genetic blueprints," Eidelman said. "The administration should heed the calls of the thousands of people demanding it abandon this dangerous and xenophobic plan."

Newsweek has contacted the DHS for comment for this article.

The graphic below, provided by Statista, illustrates the spike in the number of family units detained at the southern border.

This article was updated to include an infographic.

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DHS Sued for Answers About Its Use of DNA Testing at the Border - Newsweek

When an undiagnosed rare genetic disease caused his young sons kidneys to fail, Professor Chris Toumazou vowed to find a way of uncovering hidden health risks.

The professor of biomedical engineering realised that, although his sons condition could not have been prevented, the family could have managed his lifestyle very differently had they known about his condition.

So, he embarked on a mission to help people change their lifestyles and avoid getting sick.

Lifestyle, he says, has a huge impact on many undiagnosed conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure. Changing behaviour could save lives.

The result of his research is a simple wristband that uses your DNA to help you make healthy choices as you shop for groceries.

By analysing the part of your genetic code determining susceptibility to nutrition-related health conditions like diabetes, DNANudge tells you which foods are best for you, and which you should avoid.

DNANudge analyses your genetic code and tells you which foods are best for you, and which you should avoid.

Image: DNANudge

The wristband scans shop barcodes and shows a green light if a product is OK and red if it may be harmful in the long run. The wristband's linked smartphone app suggests healthier alternatives when the red light comes on.

Following his sons acute illness, Toumazou also invented a microchip that can read an individuals DNA from a simple mouth swab sample. Its now used to upload a DNA profile to the new wristband a process that takes an hour instead of up to eight weeks for a conventional DNA test.

"We're not telling people they can't eat biscuits, that they should eat grapes. No, they can eat biscuits, but eat the better biscuits based upon your DNA and lifestyle," says Toumazou.

"It's using biology to nudge and guide you to have a healthier lifestyle in the long term."

The World Economic Forum was the first to draw the worlds attention to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the current period of unprecedented change driven by rapid technological advances. Policies, norms and regulations have not been able to keep up with the pace of innovation, creating a growing need to fill this gap.

The Forum established the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Network in 2017 to ensure that new and emerging technologies will helpnot harmhumanity in the future. Headquartered in San Francisco, the network launched centres in China, India and Japan in 2018 and is rapidly establishing locally-run Affiliate Centres in many countries around the world.

The global network is working closely with partners from government, business, academia and civil society to co-design and pilot agile frameworks for governing new and emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous vehicles, blockchain, data policy, digital trade, drones, internet of things (IoT), precision medicine and environmental innovations.

Learn more about the groundbreaking work that the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Network is doing to prepare us for the future.

Want to help us shape the Fourth Industrial Revolution? Contact us to find out how you can become a member or partner.

The device also helps to promote overall health by warning if you are inactive for too long. An orange light means it's time to get up and move about.

One in 10 people with pre-diabetes, a reversible condition, will go on to develop type 2 diabetes, which affects more than 400 million people worldwide. Early diagnosis can enable people to change their lifestyles and avoid developing the full-blown condition.

And what about Toumazous son Marcus? Well, his story has a happy ending. After months in dialysis he received a kidney transplant and is now in good health.

He even met the Queen at the opening of his fathers new lab in London. He told her his father was changing healthcare by making microchips for the human body.

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World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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This wristband tells you what food to buy based on your DNA - World Economic Forum

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Life on Earth uses DNA and RNA to store and utilize genetic information, but what if theres another way? A new analysis from researchers at Emory University and the Tokyo Institute of Technology suggests a plethora of molecules could serve the same basic task of organizing and storing genetic information. They estimate more than a million possible stand-ins for DNA, some of which could help us fight disease or help us know what to expect as we search for alien life.

DNA (and RNA) consist of several components that make up the familiar double helix. There are the base pairs like adenine and guanine, a sugar (deoxyribose for DNA and ribose for RNA), and a phosphate group. The sugar and phosphate give nucleic acid an alternating sugar-phosphate backbone. We already know there are many alternatives to the five bases at work in DNA and RNA on Earth, but the new study looks at how the scaffolding of nucleic acid could vary.

The team used a computer simulation to explore a so-called chemical space within certain constraints. To choose the constraints, the team had to distill what makes nucleic acid molecules distinct. They settled on organic molecules that can assemble into a linear polymer with at least two attachment points, plus a place for nitrogen bases to connect. The substructure of the molecule also needs to be stable in a polymer configuration. Since these molecules dont contain the traditional sugars and phosphorus, you cant call them DNA theyre some other kind of nucleic acid with potentially similar properties.

A few alternate nucleic acids.

The analysis points to more than 1,160,000 potential nucleic acid molecules. That number exceeded even the most extreme estimates beforehand, but researchers can now start looking at these molecules in a laboratory setting to see if they can work as a DNA alternative. The team says this shows evolution on Earth may have experimented with several different molecular designs for storing genetic information before DNA ultimately won out.

Researchers around the world are working on therapeutic drugs that resemble nucleic acid, some of which could help combat viruses and cancer. A better understanding of these DNA alternatives could make those treatments more effective. And then theres the importance to exobiology research. If were looking for evidence of extraterrestrial life, it might help to remember they could have genetic material using one of the other million possible molecules.

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Researchers Find More Than 1 Million Alternatives to DNA - ExtremeTech

The 4,000-square-foot suite, tucked into a small office park in the heart of San Diegos biotech corridor, is about as small and unassuming as a university biology-lab classroom. But the 16 people who work here at Molecular Assemblies are chasing a goal that could revolutionize synthetic biology: the ability to write DNA molecules using enzymes.

The field of synthetic biology has, for years, been promising the ability to custom-design organisms that serve as everything from new antibiotics to plastic eaters. But despite substantial advances in both sequencing and editing DNA, one of the big holdups in fulfilling this potential is that whipping up DNA to order is slow andespecially for long moleculesexpensive. In truth, the way scientists write DNA hasnt changed much since the process was first developed in 1981. Its slow, laborious, and environmentally hazardous.

But several startup companies believe they can do it cheaper, faster, and more accurately with a new method. They believe that using enzymes, which is how DNA is written in nature, is the way to go.

Molecular Assemblies recently raised $12.2 million in an initial round of funding, though its far from alone in its quest to use enzymes for building DNA. At least seven startups are trying to do it. Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, who have published the only paper so far to describe a successful enzymatic approach, founded Ansa Biotechnologies to commercialize it. Ansa, like Molecular Assemblies, is building its business model around providing DNA to customers who send in orders. But another contender, DNA Script, recently announced $38.5 million in a second round of funding for a benchtop machine that would enable labs and hospitals to build DNA themselves.

Today, commercially available DNA synthesis uses a process called phosphoramidite chemistry, which relies on toxic, flammable reagents that create hazardous waste. The process has important limitationsmost companies that build DNA this way top off at lengths of about 100 to 150 base pairs, which isnt even as long as many genes, and the harsh chemistry involved in adding each A, G, C, or T can start to degrade the already-written part as the molecule grows longer. This method also produces molecules that arent compatible with water-based biology. Thats acceptable if you want to use DNA as a form of data storage, but to be useful in biological applications, DNA made through phosphoramidite chemistry has to be put through additional processing, which increases the cost.

Its amazing that they get chemical synthesis of DNA to work, says Andrew Hessel, president of Humane Genomics, which is developing new cancer therapies by reprogramming viruses, and co-founder of Genome Project-write. GP-write, as its known, an international effort to explore the prospects of redesigning human cells, just concluded its annual meeting in New York City. The reality is that nature uses enzymes to write DNA, and that is an incredibly complex process. Every time a cell in your body divides, it has to write a whole human genome perfectly without any additional modifications.

As synthetic biology advances, researchers want longer and longer segments of DNAideally, at least the length of genes. The longer the DNA molecule, the fewer the segments that scientists have to stitch together to make a desired sequence, which should reduce the cost and the chances for errors to be introduced.

Those involved in Hessels GP-write project have their sights set on writing full genomes, which would allow them to engineer human cells (and other organisms cells) so as to better understand health and disease. For example, some scientists involved in GP-write are exploring ways of making cells resistant to viruses. Others are investigating how cells could produce essential nutrients that people now have to derive from food. But making genome-length DNAeven bacterial genomesusing chemical synthesis is currently cost-prohibitive.

William Efcavitch, chief science officer and co-founder of Molecular Assemblies, helped lead the development and commercialization of the original phosphoramidite method in the early 1980s, but now he says its clear a better approach is required. Rather than trying to push 35-year-old chemistry to make longer strands, we said: Lets start with an enzymatic process that can already make long strands and teach it to do it in a user-friendly fashion, says Efcavitch.

You have to control the enzyme and tell it what to write. And thats tricky.

The challenge is that in their natural habitat within a cell, enzymes dont create DNA from scratch. Instead, they duplicate a pre-existing strand by pulling nucleic acids, one by one, to the growing molecule. So Molecular Assemblies and most of the other companies have turned to the only enzyme known to build DNA without a template. This DNA-creating enzyme, or polymerase, is called terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase (TdT). Typically found in vertebrate immune cells, it is responsible for building the new and ever-changing antigen receptors a cell needs to fight unfamiliar viruses and bacteria.

TdT evolved to make long strands of DNA in a random fashion, but the new breed of DNA-writing startups think they can program it. All of them, however, are still working to figure out exactly how. The challenge with enzymatic synthesis from scratch is that you have to control the enzyme and tell it what to write, Hessel says. And thats tricky.

Chemical synthesis uses a computer to control a system that adds A, G, C, or Tone drop at a timein a four-step process: The DNA molecule is extended by one nucleotide held in place with an unstable bond; then the incomplete end is capped off; then the newly linked nucleotide is stabilized; and then the molecule is prepared for the next addition. Enzymatic synthesis eliminates two of those steps: the polymerase just needs to be stopped and started for each additional nucleotide. Right now, Efcavitch says, were trying to optimize those two steps.

The enzymatic synthesis startups have shown modest success. Ansa has built short DNA fragments called oligonucleotides (or oligos) of 50 base pairs. DNA Script has hit 200, and another companyCamena Biosciencerecently announced it had reached 300. Molecular Assemblies wont specify how long its oligos have gotten other than to say they havent yet reached 150.

The companies claims remain largely untested by the synthetic biology community.

There have been almost no publications, says Calin Plesa, a synthetic biology researcherat the University of Oregon. Its been very difficult to know whats beengoing on inside these companies.

Plesa himself is a heavy user of synthetic DNA for building DNA libraries, as is Sri Kosuri, a synthetic biologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and co-founder of a startup called Octant. Kosuri describes himself as a synthetic DNA addict whose lab consumes large amounts of oligonucleotides to explore the relationship between DNA sequences and their functions. He appreciates how the companies pursuing enzymatic DNA synthesis are trying to improve the accuracy of the technology. Accuracy is an issue. Its what limits even our own work, Kosuri says. But he adds that it doesnt yet appear that the DNA-writing startups have gotten the enzymatic process near the accuracy of phosphoramidite chemistry.

George Church, a geneticist at Harvard University who is a cofounder of both the Human Genome Project and GP-write, says chemical DNA synthesis methods generally induce an error every 1 in 300 bases. Error-correction methods can improve the figure to 1 in 10,000. When enzymes naturally copy a strand of DNA in cells, however, the error rate is close to one in a billion. But he agrees with Kosuri that no enyzmatic synthesis company has come even close to such low error rates. Right now, theres no evidence than enzymatics is more accurate [than chemical synthesis]. I think its likely but not proven, Church says.

Today, the longest oligonucleotides being produced are coming out of South San Francisco-based Twist Bioscience, which has miniaturized the chemistry using a silicon chip with thousands of tiny wells, creating a platform that that can make one million oligos simultaneously. They are used for screening, diagnostics, therapeutics, and genetic research. Twist can now make oligos up to 300 base pairs long in these wells, more than twice what most enzymatic companies are capable of at the moment.

But Twist Bioscience CEO Emily Leproust saysthat if a better method of synthesizing DNA presents itself, Twists method canaccommodate it. We dont really have a dog in the fight, she says. If thereis better [synthesis through] enzyme chemistry, Ill be the first customer. Oncethe approach reaches one of any number of milestoneslonger, fewer errors, orfaster productionshed be on board. Ill take cheaper but frankly Ill paymore if its faster or better or longer.

Shes confident that one or more of the companies pursingthe enzymatic approach will hit the target eventually. I dont think they haveto break any rule of physics to get thereI think its just engineering, shesays. Its a question of how much money do you need, and how much time do youneed, and can you recoup that investment in commercialization.

Church and Hessel both agree that enzymatic synthesis will start to gain traction soon. I fully expect that bacterial-scale genomes will be within anyones reach within the next 10 years, Hessel says. And that would be just the start. I dont think weve started to unlock the possibilities here. I cant wait to see how these tools and technologies change the world.

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The Dawn of Cheap and Easy DNA Writing - NEO.LIFE

After watching Ant & Decs DNA Journey on ITV, I can confidently say that one thing it failed to do for me and which genetics could definitively answer is clarify which one is Ant and which one is Dec. Alas, this mystery remains unsolved.

Aside from that, the documentary is entertaining enough. In the first episode, Ant and Dec travel around, talking to genealogists and distant relatives who have been identified by having similar bits of DNA to them like Who Do You Think You Are? but with bonus genetics. We are introduced to Dixie Carter, who is described as a genetic cousin to Dec, though I couldnt tell precisely what relation she is. The two shared an ancestor from around 150 years ago, and her presence provides light relief as she is a Texan wrestling promoter.

It is, of course, incumbent on science to spoil the fun. A common ancestor six generations into the past, like the one shared between Dixie and Dec, is one of 64 great-great-great-great-grandparents you have. Maybe Dixie was simply the most exciting relative the producers found. Without DNA analysis, the Geordie duo would not have traced her and other distant relatives, but the truth is that there is very little meaningful genetic relationship there.

Geneticists did not anticipate that the human genome would become such a saleable commodity. Its estimated that more than 26m commercial genetic tests have been taken worldwide, mainly trading on the beguiling promise of revealing something about your ancestry.

The show is sponsored by the biggest of these companies, Ancestry, who are credible, and whose data your data is put to interesting use, such as producing scientific papers that analyse the genetic structure of modern Americans. Also in the programme were Alistair Moffat and Jim Wilson, founders of another, now defunct, company called BritainsDNA, which made headlines for some absurd and ahistorical claims over the years, including saying that it had traced the descendants of the Queen of Sheba (a Biblical character who may or may not have existed) and those of Eve, sticking with the Biblical theme. It was even behind claims that climate change would make ginger people extinct.

In 2012, Moffat threatened legal action against geneticists at UCL (to which I am affiliated) who had criticised some of the companys claims. A paper in the peer-reviewed journal Genealogy documents this saga and the way BritainsDNA made a number of dubious claims both directly to its customers and in the media. Companies like that devalue the business of genetic genealogy, so it is troubling to see its key players Moffat effectively introduces the show feature so prominently in Ant and Decs show.

The marketing ploy of the genetics industry is to tell stories of belonging. This can be powerful because everyone craves autobiographical meaning. But the power of genetics to deliver narrative satisfaction is profoundly limited. All genetic genealogy companies play upon this to a certain extent. California-based 23andMe capitalised on the 2018 football World Cup finals with adverts suggesting you should root for your roots by supporting the countries that reflect your unique DNA, thus indicating that their marketing department clearly have no idea about football fandom.

Family trees may be the ties that bind us, but those trees are pollarded

Personal testimony on the Ancestry website has Mark discovering that instead of being 100% British, as he had always believed, he is only 40% British, 25% German and 35% Greek. Mark: its cool that you discovered you may have ancestry from Greece and Germany, though these results dont and probably cant tell you who those people were or how closely you are related to them. But regardless, you remain British, because thats how citizenship works.

The maths of ancestry is a bit bewildering, but there are two steadying anchors. The first is that everyone has two parents. This means that the number of ancestors you have doubles every generation into the past. The second is that there are more people alive today than at any point in history. These two things may seem at odds: the number of ancestors you have goes up as we go back in time, but the number of people alive goes up as we go forward in time. The answer to this apparent conundrum is that we are all inbred.

Sooner or later the number of positions on our family tree are filled with the same people over and over, until at some point all the branches coalesce. Everybody now is descended from everybody then. For Europe, that time is about a thousand years ago. All people of long-standing European descent have the same ancestors a thousand years ago. Whats more, due to the way DNA is chopped up during the creation of sperm and egg cells, we lose genetic information from our actual ancestors, meaning that you have no DNA in common with half of your blood relatives from only three centuries ago.

Scientists are not in the business of telling you how to spend your hard-earned cash, but if you want to find out you have Irish, Scottish or even Viking ancestors, look in the mirror. If you want to find out you have royalty in your family tree, as I show in my book A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived, you do. If you think these things matter, or reveal hidden secrets about your identity, there I cannot help. Family trees may be the ties that bind us, but those trees are pollarded. Most of your ancestry is lost and can never be recovered, not with historical certificates or DNA, despite its many explanatory powers. You, me, Ant and/or Dec we are all descended from multitudes.

Adam Rutherford is a geneticist and author

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Ant and Decs DNA test merely tells us that were all inbred - The Guardian

The quest began with a white box containing a tube and collection bag.The directions were simple. Fill the tube with saliva to the black wavy line, then replace the funnel on the tube with the blue liquid cap before you tighten to release the fluid and shake.Three weeks later, the results were in from Ancestry DNA.The first thing I saw was my DNA story, the so called "ethnicity estimate," a breakdown of where my ancestors came from.It estimated that 80 percent came from Africa, primarily Benin Togo, Camerooon and Ghana. The other 20 percent came from Europe, mainly England and Wales.The next page I looked at were DNA matches. There are 865 people identified as fourth cousins or closer, and a woman named Constance was at the top of the list.But who was Constance and how was she related to me?One clue: My biological father also appeared in her family tree.The problem was I didn't know anything about my biological father except that his name was Algie. My birth mother shared that information in 2007, six months before she died.I didn't know what to do next, so I called a cousin.Matt and I were both adopted. Our birth mothers are sisters. He suggested I call a cousin on his dad's side who knows a lot of people.Raymond didn't know Constance. But he knew Algie quite well. "Algie lived within walking distance of where I actually grew up," Raymond said. "We looked up to him because he was so suave,debonair. He owned his own cab company."Raymond offered to tell Algie's family, and soon I got a call from her sister Gwen. When I asked if she knew a Constance, she was quiet until she said, "Oh-Connie-our half sister."There were more calls and texts, this time from Connie herself. And just two weeks after our first conversation, I was on the road to Maryland to meet her in person.It felt so surreal and yet so normal. We were two sisters just being sisters.We shared stories over food and wine like we had known each other our whole lives.There was so much to talk about and so little time, but it wasn't long before Connie and her husband, Roland, came to Winston-Salem for the National Black Theatre Festival."I love you, and the more Im around you the deeper it gets," Connie told me.I could never have imagined that I would get a gift so wonderful and large at this stage of my life. I never could have dreamed this.

The quest began with a white box containing a tube and collection bag.

The directions were simple. Fill the tube with saliva to the black wavy line, then replace the funnel on the tube with the blue liquid cap before you tighten to release the fluid and shake.

Three weeks later, the results were in from Ancestry DNA.

The first thing I saw was my DNA story, the so called "ethnicity estimate," a breakdown of where my ancestors came from.

It estimated that 80 percent came from Africa, primarily Benin Togo, Camerooon and Ghana. The other 20 percent came from Europe, mainly England and Wales.

The next page I looked at were DNA matches. There are 865 people identified as fourth cousins or closer, and a woman named Constance was at the top of the list.

But who was Constance and how was she related to me?

One clue: My biological father also appeared in her family tree.

The problem was I didn't know anything about my biological father except that his name was Algie. My birth mother shared that information in 2007, six months before she died.

I didn't know what to do next, so I called a cousin.

Matt and I were both adopted. Our birth mothers are sisters. He suggested I call a cousin on his dad's side who knows a lot of people.

Raymond didn't know Constance. But he knew Algie quite well.

"Algie lived within walking distance of where I actually grew up," Raymond said. "We looked up to him because he was so suave,debonair. He owned his own cab company."

Raymond offered to tell Algie's family, and soon I got a call from her sister Gwen. When I asked if she knew a Constance, she was quiet until she said, "Oh-Connie-our half sister."

There were more calls and texts, this time from Connie herself. And just two weeks after our first conversation, I was on the road to Maryland to meet her in person.

It felt so surreal and yet so normal. We were two sisters just being sisters.

We shared stories over food and wine like we had known each other our whole lives.

There was so much to talk about and so little time, but it wasn't long before Connie and her husband, Roland, came to Winston-Salem for the National Black Theatre Festival.

"I love you, and the more Im around you the deeper it gets," Connie told me.

I could never have imagined that I would get a gift so wonderful and large at this stage of my life. I never could have dreamed this.

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Never could have dreamed this: DNA ancestry test kit leads Wanda Starke on journey to find sister - WXII12 Winston-Salem

Key point: The beginning of VTOL systems started with Russia.

For all the yelling and shouting over the Department of Defenses much-maligned F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, theres an unusual, often overlooked footnote in the trillion-dollar projects history: its origins as an experimental Soviet fighter that only fell into Lockheed Martins lap because a desperate Russian aerospace company needed some cold, hard cash.

Before the F-35, there was the Yak-141 Freestyle multi-role vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) fighter born during a tumultuous period in Russian military history. Though the Yak-141s first flight in 1987 was a revolutionary contribution to the development of VTOL systems, the hovering death bird was largely developed as the Soviet Union came apart at the seams, and the newly-broke Russian military was in no position to continue development of the new aircraft after the Berlin Wall.

The Yak-141 manufacturer, Yakovlev, suddenly was faced with the reality of capitalism: namely, you need money to do cool things. And nearly 30 years after the first flight of the Yak-141, the U.S. Marine Corps is taking off vertically from carriers with its F-35Bs. Heres how the experimental Soviet fighter gave birth to the most controversial aircraft of the modern era.

The Soviets get vertical

The Yak-141 was the supposed to be a major technological leap in Soviet Unions VTOL program, which kicked into high gear in the 1970s after the Soviet Union took note of the iconic Harriers development in the UK. But the program initially had trouble getting off the ground due to the dismal performance of the Yak-141s predecessor the Yak-38 Forger, which Soviet military officials deemed, well, a pile of flying dog dung following its unveiling in 1971.

Despite its functional VTOL system, it lacked the extended combat range of the Harrier as well as reliable radar system and appropriately lethal armament not to mention the Yak-38s terrifying automatic ejection seat that both saved lives and surprised the heck out of the pilot when it shot them out of the plane without warning. Although the National Interest argues that the Yak-38 was a concept aircraft that was pushed into service to help fill holes in Soviet Naval Aviation and never meant for frontline combat, it was the operational VTOL aircraft in the Soviet arsenal for a decade.

The Yak-141 was specifically designed by Yakovlev to address the shortcomings of the Yak-38, namely speed and range. Two flying prototypes were green-lit and flew in 1987, and the aircraft broke several records that, according to Yakovlev, make it the first aircraft to perform both VTOL flight and supersonic level flight.

But after one of only two prototypes exploded while landing on the aircraft carrier Admiral Groshev in September of 1991, the program was effectively crippled. The Soviet Union was finishing its own economic and political disaster, and the resulting tumult that swept across the Russian military establishment creating a mountain of problems for Yakovlev to overcome if they wanted to see the Yak-141 fly again.

The Cold War melts

Luckily for Yakovlev, Americas favorite plucky multi-billion dollar defense contractor raced in to save the day. As the Iron Curtain receded across Europe, defense giant Lockheed Martin started to pour money into Yak-141 program in order to glean some sweet, sweet former Soviet engineering secrets. The two companies allegedly signed an agreement in 1991 (but not revealed until 1995) that outlined funding for additional Yak-141 prototypes, including a plan to fly the remaining operational prototype the Farnborough Airshow in September 1992.

While Lockheed most likely had zero intention of helping produce the Yak-141 for export; it would make more sense that the entire contract was a cover for procuring testing data on the Yak-141 program, including most importantly any VTOL data obtained through years of testing and development. And Lockheed wasnt the only American organization looking to learn from the Soviet-era VTOL program. Consider this document from 1993 that NASA published on the Yak VTOL technology:

Military hardware that had once been highly classified and the basis for our own defense planning was now openly marketed at airshows around the world...This environment permitted a visit to the Yakovlev Design Bureau, (YAK) for a vertical/short takeoff and landing (VSTOL) technology assessment. Yakovlev is the FSU's sole Design Bureau with experience in VSTOL aircraft and has developed two flying examples, the YAK-38 'FORGER' and YAK-141 'FREESTYLE'

Its that critical data that likely helped shape the development of the engine systems that are the heart and soul of the modern F-35.

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter takes off

After the Yakovlev-Lockheed partnership was publically revealed in 1995 and formally ended in 1997, but the Yak-141s unique designs persisted. When Lockheed entered a VTOL variant of its X-35 demonstrator into the Pentagons Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) in 1994, the submitted engine design proposal was radically different from initial proposal developed prior to the Yakovlev deal. Indeed, the VTOL design was changed to ASTOVL Configuration 141; while it is possible that this name was a coincidence, its worth noting for the possible reference to the Yak-141.

It seems likely that the Yak-141 test data was most applied to Lockheeds VTOL engine design in some way, although the classified nature of the Joint Strike Fighter program makes a clear connection elusive. Air Force Magazine even mentioned the Yak connection in a 1998 feature on Joint Strike Fighter after Lockheeds F-35 was selected for production.

The swiveling rear exhaust is a licensed design from the Yakovlev design bureau in Russia, which tried it out on the Yak-141 STOVL fighter. It was all or nothing If the propulsion concept didnt work, we obviously werent going to be competitive. Daniels, the Boeing executive, said the lift fan concept was probably the single most important feature of the competition.

To be clear, the F-35s overall design is not modeled after the Yak-141: The former used a different method for stabilization (see the two jets firing on the front of the plane) and had a different aerodynamic profile. But its almost certain that the data gleaned from the old Soviet VTOL project were most likely utilized in the development of the VTOL variant of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. And that means the F-35 owes at least part of its existence to a Soviet-era weapons program that never truly took flight.

The Yak-141 Freestyle may not technically count as a predecessor to the F-35, but the JSF does seem to have at least some Russian DNA floating around its engine design and as the F-35 came to fruition in the United States, the Yak-141 Freestyle died a quiet death in Russia. However, if a resurgent Russian defense industry chooses to move forward with a carrier-based VTOL aircraft, at least one Russian legislator has called for the Yak-141 to be revived, most likely with a stealthier new look for a new Cold War.

This article by Brad Howard originally appeared at Task & Purpose. Follow Task & Purpose on Twitter. This article first appeared in 2018.

Image: Wikipedia.

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Could The F-35 Really Be American-Built (But Have Russian 'DNA') - The National Interest Online