Word: foxbats
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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However, the whole affair seemed extremely easy, almost planned Could be the Russians slipped us a bogus plane? Maybe our name-"Foxbat" -applies very well. The Russians...
Soviet jet experts faced a serious problem: despite the use of grain alcohol, an old but effective deicer, the windshields of MIG-25 Foxbat interceptors were icing up. What had gone wrong? The answer, according to Lieut. Viktor Ivanovich Belenko: Soviet crew chiefs on the ground were drinking the grain alcohol to relieve Siberian boredom and surreptitiously replacing the liquid with water...
That is only one of the fascinating tidbits about the Soviet air force that U.S. intelligence debriefers have gleaned from Belenko since the 29-year-old defecting pilot flew his Foxbat to northern Japan's Hakodate airport last month (TIME, Sept. 20). Meanwhile, as the Soviets fume, American aeronautical experts have been examining the MIG-25 inch by eager inch, learning everything they always wanted to know about the one plane in the world that can outclimb and outfly the hottest U.S. fighters...
...Belenko, 29, last week pulled off one of the most daring escapes of the cold war. In the view of U.S. Air Force and intelligence experts, it was also one of the most significant; Belenko was flying the MIG-25, which has never been examined by Western specialists. Called "Foxbat" in the NATO code, it is the world's fastest weapons-carrying warplane, having attained a record speed* of 1,852.6 m.p.h. and a test altitude of 118,000 ft.-outrunning and outclimbing even the newest U.S. fighter planes. Thus a study of the MIG-25's complex...
...rely on the neutral Swedes for so important a component of their national arsenals. This left the French and Americans, whose planes are comparable in size, speed and cost. All three compete favorably with the Soviet Union's new MIG-23 Flogger and even with the MIG-25 Foxbat at altitudes up to 50,000 ft. Still, there are major differences (see chart...