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Foxbat defection.
The Russians still hate Viktor Belenko for stealing their most prized combat aircraft at the time.
He ought to keep an eye on the post around Christmas, and watch out for unsolicited bottles of perfume or after-shave...
Or beware of Russians bearing gifts.
Mig 31 in the book, wasn't it?
CountZero
He ought to keep an eye on the post around Christmas, and watch out for unsolicited bottles of perfume or after-shave…
Or beware of Russians bearing gifts.
What's Russian for Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes? 🙂
I can remember reading about that. IIRC military types were a little disappointed when they got a good look at it.
Bit pedantic, but Japan is geographically part of the East, not the West, surely. Although I guess he did fly west to get there.
Bit pedantic, but Japan is geographically part of the East, not the West, surely
Do they not mean 'The West' as a political / cultural entity rather than a geographical one?
Although you could still argue about whether Japan belongs in that.
For an American, everything in "The West" is to the east and vice versa.
Foxbat is basically two big engines with some flat steery things and a pilot attached to them. I seem to recall it was there to respond to the SR-71, but would burn out its engines intercepting one if it tried.
It was developed in response to the B-70 Valkyrie supersonic bomber which then got canned. It could maintain Mach 2.8 but was tracked on one occasion at Mach 3.2 escaping a missile attack, the pilot managed to land the plane but the engines had destroyed themselves.
I remember the defection and the subsequent "s****ing" at the use of valves rather than transistors in the circuitry until someone pointed out that they would survive the EMP from a nuclear blast.
I seem to recall it was there to respond to the SR-71
They were built to intercept the XB70 Valkyrie, but obviously after that never made it out of the prototype shed, the MiG25 was used as photo recon and sort of a fighter. Interestingly (or not) they were all essentially hand built, Intelligence thought that 1. they had large wings to make it manoeuvrable, and was made from titanium, but it turned out it was actually steel, and it needed big wings as it was so heavy. Having said that it did influence the design of the F15, still one of the best A2A fighters in the last 30 years
Read more about the defecting pilot's experiences on resettling in the US - he bought cat food in a supermarket, by mistake (as I recall) and thought it was some kind of meat paste and rated it!
I assumed he thought the cat food was canned cat, which probably tasted better than Soviet military food.
The Foxbat is quite a piece of kit, one brought down an F-18 during Desert Storm.
Western observers made some calculations about the plane’s size and wing loading which caused a great deal of alarm, it was assumed that the jet’s structure was built from titanium in order to withstand the heat generated and to be strong enough to take advantage of the large wing. The US Air Force responded by initiating the programme that eventually became the F-15. The Soviets’ apparent mastery of titanium caused a great deal of consternation, given that they had access to strategic reserves of the metal.
In 1976, the defecting MiG 25 was found to have been built from stainless steel, making the structure strong and heat resistant but extremely heavy. The large wing couldn’t cope with much more than 2.5g.
The West just used a story about me for propaganda.
The BBC had a nice magazine piece on it 2 years ago:
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160905-the-pilot-who-stole-a-secret-soviet-fighter-jet
It's all awesome stuff though.
Oh Christ, just what we need, another steel versus titanium thread.
Mig 31 in the book, wasn’t it
The later editions. When it first came out the MIG 25 'Foxbat' was the mystery fighter from the USSR.
When one actually turned up, they needed a new 'unicorn' to be frightened of. Hence MIG 31 and Firefox
outgeeked.com
There was, of course, a real MiG 31 - the Foxhound. It was basically a MiG 25 foxbat with a back seat added.
Both were big **** off fast planes that needed to deliver big air to air missiles over a long range at high speed and high altitude. See also the Su15 Flagon. All were pretty unsophisticated and needed massively long (comparatively) runways, but that was a small price to pay to defend a country the size of the USSR.