I find the MiG-25 interesting because it's the perfect example of Cold War intelligence gone wrong.
In short, the Soviets built a plane to counter a plane that we never built. We in turn completely freaked out and built something to counter the Soviet counter to the plane we never built.
In other words, business as usual during the Cold War.
MiG-25 sporting four R40 (AA-6) missiles.
The origins of the MiG-25 go all the way back to 1959. American U-2 spy planes were making high altitude overflights of Soviet airspace with impunity. Even worse, we were working on super fast high altitude bombers like the proposed XB-70 Valkyrie. The Russians were scared, and rightly so.
The XB-70 Mach 3 bomber never made it past the prototype stage. Don't worry, it will get its own diary.
The Kremlin put out a requirement for a new interceptor capable of reaching 88,000 feet and speeds of 3000 km/hr (1600 knots). Design bureaus Sukhoi and Mikoyan-Gurevich both responded. This was out of character for the MiG design bureau, which specialized in building nimble little fighters like the MiG-17 and
MiG-21. Big, fast interceptors were more
Sukhoi's specialty, but the MiG design got the go-ahead.
To build the MiG-25 they took two of the biggest jet engines they could make and wrapped an airplane around them. At the heart of this aircraft are two massive Tumansky R-15 engines capable of 22,500 pounds of thrust each with afterburner. Pretty hot stuff for the early 1960s.
Sometimes brute force is the best answer. The Tumansky turbojets provide plenty of force.
The aircraft itself in a case study in Russian "make do with what we've got" engineering. In a perfect world they would have built it out of titanium, but titanium is expensive and hard to work with. To handle the extreme heat associated with sustained high speeds, they used
steel. Is strong, comrade. They used aluminum where they could get away with it and titanium only for the most critical areas. The plane was 80% steel, 11% aluminum and 9% titanium.
What's all that mean? It means it's freakin' heavy! This thing is a brick, with an empty weight of 44,000 pounds and a loaded weight in excess of 80,000 pounds. Compare that to an F-15, considered to be a very large fighter, and its loaded weight of 44,500 pounds. Hold that thought. We'll get back to this.
The first prototype flew in 1964 and the MiG-25 (NATO code name Foxbat) went operational in 1967.
It's performance was spectacular for the day. It set a total of 29 records including, time to climb, speed, and altitude. Several of these still stand. One was zoom-climbed to 115,000 feet altitude! They got one up to mach 3.2 but this was a one-time good deal. They burned up the engines doing it. Realistic top speed was closer to mach 2.8, still extremely fast. Anything faster than that and the engines start cannibalizing themselves.
Another great shot of the R-15s doing their thing.
So what we've got is a big, heavy jet with an incredible climb rate, blistering top speed and pretty good range for a Soviet fighter. Russia has a lot of real estate and they need long range interceptors to cover all that square footage.
This gives you a good idea of just how large this plane is.
It also sported an incredibly powerful, although primitive, radar that used
vacuum tubes. Just like your family's old Sylvania TV set. Why tubes? They're more resistant to heat than electronics. They're also more resistant to electromagnetic pulse and they have the benefit of being easier for untrained conscripts to maintain. The radar's enormous power gave it the added benefit of being able to "burn through" jamming.
Looks like a standard Soviet mid 60s cockpit. The avionics were nothing special although I believe it did have a data-link to the GCI controller.
Now what to arm it with? A fighter without weapons isn't good for much except airshows. They gave it four of the largest air-to-air missiles ever built. The R40 or AA-6 "Acrid" in NATO code speak. These were optimized for high altitude intercepts, with very large control fins capable of working in the very thin air.
R40 Missile. The largest air to air missile ever built. It has a 175 pound warhead that will ruin your day.
In typical Soviet fashion the R40 came in two flavors, heat-seeking and radar guided. Standard doctrine was to fire a salvo of two missiles at 2/3 of their maximum range. The heat-seeker would be fired
first to keep it from locking on to its radar guided partner.
They also built an unarmed reconnaissance version that carried cameras where the radar would have been. Operationally the reconnaissance version has probably had a bigger impact than the fighter version. While not as sophisticated, it served the same role as our SR-71.
Big airplane, big radar, big missile made for shooting down big bombers. Everything's big. This would have been a perfect counter to our B-70 which by then we'd decided not to build. Good job Ivan, you came up with a solution for a problem that no longer exists.
To prove that we can be just as foolish, we got one look at this thing and totally freaked out (sounds familiar). We saw the large wing area on the MiG-25 and assumed it was an incredibly maneuverable air-superiority fighter (it's neither).
Holy Karl Marx! This thing's going to eat our F-4s for lunch! We'd better come up with something quick or we'll all be eating borscht!
Our answer was the F-15 Eagle. Our counter to their counter for a plane we never produced. In the process we came up with arguably the best air superiority fighter ever made. While they look superficially similar they are very different aircraft. The Eagle is a highly maneuverable air superiority fighter and even to this day is still a formidable aircraft. The MiG-25 is a specialized interceptor built to shoot down high altitude bombers and reconnaissance aircraft.
MiG-25 and F-15 side by side. The resemblance is purely superficial. They were made for very different jobs.
We got our first close look at the Foxbat in 1976, when Victor Belenko flew his MiG-25 to Japan and defected. The Russians eventually got it back - in pieces. That's when we realized we had all wrong. The Foxbat is terribly heavy and in addition is only stressed for 4 G's compared to 7 G's for an F-4 and 9 for most third-generation fighters. Basically it's a lead sled and it can't turn. It's purely a straight line machine.
So of course we concluded that the Soviets weren't nearly as advanced as we thought and that spending ourselves broke on the Cold War was a really dumb idea.
No silly! We elected Ronald Reagan in 1980 and started the largest peacetime arms buildup ever.
Meanwhile the Soviets, knowing that the design was compromised, began work on an improved version - the MiG-25PD. The "PD" version had a much more advanced Pulse-Doppler radar plus some other improvements.
The reconnaissance version was later upgraded to "RB" reconnaissance-bomber and given limited bombing capability. I can't imagine it was very good in the bombing role and I don't know if one ever actually dropped a bomb in combat.
There was even a Wild Weasel (Air Defense Suppression) version built. This makes some sense because it's a large airframe with plenty of room for electronics. It's high speed would have been a benefit in that mission. There are tales of MiG-25s actually outrunning missiles. Not as far-fetched as it sounds. The missile's rocket motor only burns for a few seconds and it coasts the rest of the way. A fast jet with enough of a head start can outrun it.
Soviet MiG-25s never saw combat but the export versions have seen combat service with various countries.
Egypt operated the reconnaissance version of the Sinai in the 1970s, much to the annoyance of the Israelis.
Israeli F-15s managed to shoot down 2 or 3 Syrian MiG-25s in the 1980s. Some sources claim that a Syrian Foxbat managed to kill an Israeli F-15 but it's unconfirmed. We claim that no F-15 has ever been lost in air-to-air combat so it depends on which story you want to believe. Fog of war and all that.
It's hard to get good data about the Iran-Iraq war. Depending on who you listen to, the Iraqis scored several kills against Iranian F-4s with the MiG-25. The Iranians may have shot down as many as 10 Iraqi Foxbats with their F-14s. Nine out of those ten were unarmed reconnaissance versions. The Soviet advisers were very protective of the MiG-25s and only let the best Iraqi pilots fly the Foxbat.
"Iraqi Ace" sounds like an oxymoron but they had at least one. Their most successful fighter pilot, Mohommed Rayyan, was credited with eight of his ten kills while flying the MiG-25. He was later killed by an Iranian F-14.
On Night One of the Gulf War, an Iraqi MiG-25 managed to kill a Navy F/A-18 with an R40 missile. This was the only Iraqi air-to-air victory of the Gulf War. US F-15s claimed two MiG-25 kills in the early days of the war. One Iraqi MiG-25 supposedly drilled a large hole in the desert while trying to make a night intercept on a low-flying F-15E.
There were several other inconclusive engagements between US aircraft and MiG-25s but no kills were recorded. Usually the MiGs would fire missiles at long range and then turn and run. Unlike the Vietnam War, almost all air-to-air engagements during Desert Storm involved radar missiles fired beyond visual range.
One strange incident involves an Iraqi MiG-25 killing a Predator drone in 2002. The MiG fired an R40 missile at the drone, which shot back with its own Stinger missile (which missed). This is the first recorded dogfight between a manned and an unmanned aircraft.
India made great use of the recon version during their various skirmishes with Pakistan. The Pakistani Air Force had nothing that could intercept the high flying Foxbats.
While I never wanted to meet one in a dark alley, we didn't fear this guy too much in the B-52 community. He didn't have much of a look-down shoot-down capability. If he wanted to come down in the weeds after us I think we could have scraped him off on a rock.
We did worry about him in the tanker community. All that speed made this thing perfect for "High Value Asset Attack". Let's say you want to go after something really valuable like an AWACS or JSTARS and you're willing to sacrifice a couple MiGs to do it. The bad guys might send in one flight of MiGs to draw away the escorts. While the F-15 drivers are busy trying to become the next Ace, a second flight of MiGs comes screaming in from low level and pops up underneath the AWACS. Hijinks ensue.
The Iraqis tried to play this game with us when we were flying Northern Watch. Every once in a while they'd send a MiG-25 up towards the No-Fly Zone at high speed. He'd be detected the moment he took off (maybe sooner) and the F-15s would promptly chase him back to Baghdad. Meanwhile we would execute Tanker Tactic #1 - Run away!!!!!
Mind you their entire air force only had 10 flyable aircraft on any given day in 2002. During the 2003 invasion they didn't bother to launch any. In fact they buried their MiG-25s in the desert, presumably hoping to salvage them after the war.
All that was left of Saddam's Air Force in 2003.
The Russians had hoped that the MiG-25 would keep our SR-71s out of their airspace but it was never able to. It wasn't quite fast enough to catch the Blackbird and it couldn't go fast for long enough. The R40 missile was also not quite up to the job. Theoretically it could have shot down an SR-71 but the MiG would need to have been in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.
SR-71 spy plane. The MiG-25 never could quite match it.
In the real world it just didn't work that way. Its follow-on, the MiG-31
was able to take on the SR-71 and we kept them out of Soviet airspace once the "Foxhound" started showing up. That, however, is a story for another day.
SR-71 intercept profile for the MiG-25.
There are still a handful of these in service. The Russians replaced the interceptor version with the more capable MiG-31 but they still operate the MiG-25RB recon version. Algeria has 11, Syria has 11, Azerbaijan has 10 and Armenia has........one. What they think they'll accomplish with
one MiG is beyond me but they have one. Maybe it's the Prime Minister's personal plaything. If I was Prime Minister that's exactly what it would be.
I can find very little information on what the actual handling characteristics were like. What I've been able to glean is:
Rotation speed is 135-145 knots
Liftoff speed is 165-175 knots
Touchdown speed is around 135 knots
So far it sounds most mid 1960s fighters. I would guess that low speed handling was pretty poor. A jet designed for Mach is going to be a handful at traffic pattern speeds.
Climb performance is reported to be exceptional. Stick forces at supersonic speed are reported to be very tiring and the autopilot was normally used for supersonic flight.
Want to fly in one? For a mere $20,000 the Russians will gladly put you in the back seat of a trainer version and take you up to 82,000 feet. Not quite space but I don't think Virgin or Space X will be offering $20,000 space flights any time soon.
I like this thing. It's a great example of Russian "brute force" engineering. If finesse won't do the job, then we need more power comrades! It's big, powerful, fast and looks sinister as all get out. If the Prime Minister of Armenia needs someone to fly his MiG-25 I'm available on a part-time basis.