Word: belenko
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...that he wanted to defect. It was the first such move by any of the estimated 85,000 Soviet military personnel who have occupied the country since last winter's invasion. Before long, the mysterious enlisted man had become the most prominent Soviet military defector since Lieut. Viktor Belenko flew his MiG-25 to Japan in 1976. The defection sparked off an international row and added an unpredictable new irritant to already testy U.S.-Soviet relations...
Country Tinker. The plane turned out to be a crude, early version of the Foxbat, which the Russians designed 15 years ago to bring down the supersonic B-70, a U.S. bomber that never became operational. Belenko's MiG was equipped with obsolescent electronic targeting and radar systems. Its maximum range of 1,200 miles was short compared with the American F-4 Phantom fighter's 2,100 miles. Belenko's plane was also vastly inferior to the reconnaissance version of the Foxbat, which the U.S. has tracked over much longer ranges in the Middle East. Perhaps...
Though beat-up and even rusty in spots, Belenko's plane nonetheless had two immensely powerful Tumansky engines that are as advanced as anything made by General Electric or Rolls-Royce. U.S. experts were impressed by the engines' lubrication system and by the Soviets' highly sophisticated forging techniques. But one crucial element of the MiG-25 was missing: the four air-to-air missiles the plane ordinarily carries. Probably to increase his speed, the Soviet pilot had flown his plane to the West while on a training flight without the heavy weapons that experts need to calculate...
Angry Soviets. Some Washington analysts were even speculating that Belenko and his rough-and-ready flying machine might have been a deliberate Russian plant, designed to show that the U.S. Air Force has been overresponding to an imagined Soviet threat in weaponry. Others speculated that the Russians wanted the Japanese to let U.S. experts examine their plane. According to this scenario, such anti-Soviet action provided Moscow with an excuse to postpone indefinitely an agreement with Tokyo over the four strategic Kurile Islands, which were seized by the Russians in 1945. "It's far out, but that...
Apparently unperturbed, the Japanese prepared last week to return the Foxbat to the Russians. The angry Soviets will send a freighter to take delivery of their aircraft at the port of Hitachi. The Japanese coolly demanded that the Russians compensate them for facilities damaged when Belenko overran the runway on Hokkaido and for the expense of dismantling, crating and transporting the plane from Hyakuri airbase, 90 miles north of Tokyo, to Hitachi...