Word: 23s
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Soviets have been equally generous in providing more conventional arms to the Syrians. Since the Lebanese conflict began, the Soviets have supplied Syria with about 100 fighter aircraft to replace those lost in dogfights over the Bekaa Valley. The bulk of the new aircraft are advanced MiG-23s. Some 300 to 400 T-62 and T-72 tanks have been added to the Syrian arsenal, well in excess of the number of older and smaller T-54s and T-55s lost in Lebanon. The Soviets have also provided about 200 armored personnel carriers, and between 600 and 800 trucks...
...intelligence network around the globe has picked up fragments of Soviet anguish about how come the Israelis, flying American F-15s and 16s over Lebanon, shot down Syrians flying MiG-23s at a ratio of 83 to zip. And how come those SAM-6s and 8s in the Bekaa Valley, the same kind of missile that devastated the Israelis in the 1973 war, could hit only one enemy plane this time...
...traveling toward the Israeli plane at 2,000 m.p.h., the jet's ECM would have singled it out for intense electronic jamming, trying to overcome the SAM'S own antijamming system to send the missile veering off course. If one of the Syrian MiG-21s and MiG-23s had fired a Soviet Atoll missile at an Israeli attacker, the same ECM beaming might have "spoofed" the weapon and forced it harmlessly off course...
Syria's MiG-21s, MiG-23s and MiG-25s, although relatively stripped-down export models, do have ECM gadgets, early-warning systems and air-to-air missiles. But their electronics are not as precise and powerful as the U.S.-Israeli counterparts. Israel also had available an even more powerful electronic back-up system: four U.S.-built E-2C Hawkeye surveillance planes, each able to track 250 enemy aircraft up to 300 miles away. In addition, Israel's pilots are among the best in the world. No fighter pilots have more intensive training-in ground practice with computerized simulators...
Ugly plumes of black smoke hung over the huge Iranian oil refinery in Abadan last week. Just two miles away, Iraqi artillery units kept firing shells into the besieged port at the head of the Persian Gulf. Iraqi MiG-23s swooped overhead in bombing raids, drawing intense antiaircraft fire. One MiG-23, spewing smoke, crashed near Basra, inside Iraq. Huddled behind sandbags or in the ravaged interiors of buildings, the Iranians are conducting an incessant artillery duel with the enemy. Although Iraq held a long strip of Iranian territory (see map), the situation was different toward the north, where Iranian...