From The Archives: MiG-25 Based On Technology Spinoffs

The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25 Foxbat debut at the 1967 Moscow air show shook U.S. experts of airpower. Grainy photos and film from the event appeared to reveal a breakthrough in the Soviet Union’s aeronautical engineering skills. In a stroke, the makers of the MiG-25 seemed to leapfrog all of the next-generation fighter concepts still on the drawing boards of U.S. aerospace companies. 

When military leaders attempted to downplay the Foxbat’s advantages during a July 1968 hearing that was closed to the public, they infuriated Sen. Stuart Symington (D-Mo.), a former Secretary of the Air Force. “You all [military witnesses] compare something we may have in [REDACTED] years with something we know they have now,” Symington said, according to a transcript obtained by Aviation Week. 

They only needed to wait until Sept. 6, 1976. On that day, Lt. Viktor Belenko, a disaffected Soviet pilot, took off in a MiG-25 from Chuguyevka air base and flew east, across the Sea of Japan. Belenko was defecting with the prize of the Soviet Union’s aircraft industry. When he landed at Hakodate airport on Hokkaido, 330 nm away, he presented his Mach 2.8-capable fighter as a gift for Japanese and U.S. analysts to study, which they did. 

A month later, on Oct. 11, Aviation Week reported on a Pentagon briefing that detailed the team’s findings. What the analysts assumed represented a breakthrough in Soviet metallurgical capability turned out to be a mostly steel airframe only slightly improved from the already-obsolete MiG-21. Pentagon officials also were surprised to discover a cockpit avionics system based on vacuum tubes instead of the solid-state circuits crafted for the then-McDonnell Douglas F-15A and Grumman F-14.

Read the full article and the complete issue dated October 11, 1976.

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