Word: mig-23s
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...June 1982, the Syrian army lost more than 390 tanks, including 34 of the modern T-72s. The Syrian performance in the air was no better. Flying U.S.-built F-15s and F-16s, Israeli pilots downed 96 Soviet-built jets; one-fifth were newer-model MiG-25s and MiG-23s. Israeli pilots also wiped out 23 batteries of Soviet-built surface-to-air missiles. The official Soviet press dismissed the reports as CIA disinformation, but the Kremlin took them seriously enough and quickly dispatched several high-level military delegations to survey the destruction...
...from Anchorage over the Bering Sea in the early-morning darkness, came under the watchful eye of Soviet radar. For the next 2½ hr. the blip moved into and out of Soviet airspace. When it crossed over the eastern border of the Kamchatka Peninsula, the Soviets scrambled four MiG-23s and Su-15s from the Petropavlovsk airbase on Kamchatka to search for the intruder. Just after 3 a.m., over the Soviet island of Sakhalin, where another six interceptors had given pursuit, the hunters found their quarry...
Whether he knew it or not, Captain Chun and the other 268 innocent travelers on his airliner soon were in trouble. Somehow, Flight 007 had passed those lines, invisible in the sky but so clearly etched on maps, that mark forbidden airspace. The Soviets scrambled MiG-23s, their widely deployed supersonic jet fighter, and Sukhoi-15s, a slightly older but nonetheless lethal interceptor, to follow the 747. Japanese and American intelligence sources later figured that at least eight of the single-seat fighters pursued the relatively slow-moving airliner...
...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...