Word: mig
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...main considerations is the vast Soviet air defense network, largest in the world. Some 6,000 radar installations stretch from Murmansk to Vladivostok for early detection of a U.S. attack. The Soviet force of 5,000 interceptor aircraft includes 200 formidable MiG-25s, known as Foxbats, which have a top speed of 1,800 m.p.h. and a maximum altitude of close to 80,000 ft. In addition, the Soviets have about 12,000 surface-to-air missiles-low-level SA-3s and SA-6s and high-level SA-2s and SA-5s-at more than 1,000 sites...
Meanwhile, on the Arab side, the Syrians have added new squadrons of advanced Russian-made MiG-23 fighters, and even the Egyptians?despite the loss of Soviet supplies since Cairo-Moscow relations cooled?have managed to get quantities of the highly mobile SA-7 Strela, one of the world's most effective antiaircraft missiles...
...south, their garrisons in the bush are isolated, and roads linking them are constantly harassed by UNITA forces. The Luanda government has launched an all-out assault in southern Angola in an effort to finish off the resistance. So far its main achievement has been to terrorize innocent civilians. MiG fighter-bombers have napalmed entire villages near Angola's border with Namibia (South West Africa); herds of cattle have been slaughtered, not only to feed the attacking forces but to punish the pro-UNlTA tribesmen...
Sizing Up Carter. In foreign affairs, the new Premier confronts both a Moscow that is still seething because Tokyo allowed the U.S. to dismantle and examine the MiG-25 that a defecting Soviet airman flew to Japan in September, and a Peking miffed because negotiations for a Japanese-Chinese peace treaty have bogged down. It is unlikely, however, that Fukuda will take any new foreign policy initiatives until he has had the chance to size up the diplomacy of Jimmy Carter's Administration...
Clearly, the bonanza had turned into something of a bust for the Pentagon. The once legendary MiG-25 no longer provided so strong an argument for obtaining more appropriations for the U.S. fighter fleet. Michigan Democrat Robert Carr, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, declared that "as a demonstration of technology [the MiG-25] calls into serious question the Pentagon claims of mushrooming Soviet military gains...