Word: foxbats
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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...
...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 the Foxbat's true military capability. Belenko himself was of less help than intelligence had hoped. Although he was apparently cooperating with his U.S. interrogators in a "safe house" near Washington, it seemed unlikely that he knew anything more than the mechanics of his plane...
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...