with a capacity to attain air superiority over the West? Was the MiG-25 already the best interceptor in the world, as Secretary Seamans said and doubtless believed? Did it already give the Russians a measure of air superiority? If the answers to such questions were affirmative, then the West was in trouble from which it could extricate itself only through costly and urgent efforts, that large segments of the public, disgusted by Vietnam and enamored with detente, might not support. If the answers were negative or largely so, then the United States could allocate resources more efficiently and intelligently to counter real rather than nonexistent threats. So one of the greatest gifts Belenko brought was the opportunity to answer definitively these long-standing questions.
To safeguard Belenko and talk to him securely, the CIA established what appeared to be a medical laboratory in a large office building. People could enter and leave the building without arousing curiosity, no one from the general public was likely to wander into the «laboratory,» and anyone approaching could be observed while walking down a long corridor that led to the one entrance. There was, however, a second, hidden exit. And in keeping with the practice of compartmentation, very few people in the CIA itself would know where he was working.
Belenko rose early and made breakfast in time to receive his English tutor, Betsy, who came daily to the apartment at seven. To him, she was a happy sight — stylishly dressed, slender, bright, and eager to teach. They were the same age, liked each other, and worked hard.
After traveling different routes from day to day and periodically checking against surveillance, Belenko and his escort, sometimes Nick, sometimes Gregg, arrived at the office to begin interrogation and debriefings around nine- thirty. No matter how lacking is the evidence to support the conjecture, there always are those willing to speculate that any Soviet defector is actually a controlled Soviet agent dispatched to confuse and confound by purveying false or deceptive information. In any case, prudence dictates that counterintelligence specialists satisfy themselves as to the authenticity and veracity of the defector. One means of so doing is to ask a variety of questions, innocuous, sensitive, arcane, to which the answers are already known, and the initial interrogations of Belenko were heavily laced with such test queries.
«By the way, how do the Russians remove snow from the runways?»
«We use a kind of blower made from a discarded jet engine. If it doesn't succeed or if there is ice, the whole regiment turns out with shovels and picks.»
That was correct. So were all of Belenko's other answers, and they corroborated the conclusions of Anna and Peter. Not only was Belenko keenly intelligent, highly knowledgeable, and ideologically motivated, but he was telling the truth. And once the CIA certified him in its own judgment as bona fide, the excitement of unraveling the mystery of the dreaded MiG-25 began in earnest, in America and Japan.
The Americans needed to ascertain first what the MiG-25 Belenko delivered represented. Was it an obsolescent aircraft whose production had been discontinued? Were more advanced models than he flew extant? Was the MiG-25 being superseded by a newer, higher-performance aircraft?
The Russians first flew a MiG-25 prototype in 1964 and began assembly-line production in the late 1960s. After the commanding general of the Soviet Air Defense Command was killed in a MiG-25 crash in 1969, they halted production for about a year but resumed it in 1970 or 1971. Periodically they modified the aircraft, eliminated flaws, and upgraded capabilities. Far from considering the plane obsolete or relegating it to a reconnaissance role, the Russians in 1976 regarded the MiG-25 as their best high-altitude interceptor. And MiG-25s along with MiG-23s were replacing all other aircraft assigned to the Air Defense Command (MiG-17s, MiG-19s, SU-9s, SU-15s, and YAK- 28s).
The MiG-25 Belenko landed in Hakodate had rolled out of the factory in February 1976, and the date of manufacture could be deciphered from the serial number stamped on the fuselage. The plane thus was one of the latest models and embodied the highest technology then in production. It was the plane on which the Russians intended to rely as a mainstay of their air defenses for years to come.
Meanwhile, dozens of American aeronautical, electronic, and metallurgical experts from the United States and elsewhere joined the Japanese in scientific exploration of the plane itself. The initial, critical task was to ferret out the explosive charges planted to destroy sensitive parts of the plane the Russians were determined no foreigner should ever see — the radar, fire control system, electronic countermeasures, computer, automatic pilot. With difficulty, the Americans located and removed the explosives — «something of a cross between a cherry bomb and a stick of dynamite.» Then the Japanese and Americans painstakingly removed the wings, horizontal tail fins, afterburners, and pylons and loaded them, together with the fuselage, into a giant U.S. Air Force Galaxy C-5A cargo plane. Some of the Japanese technicians lettered and strung on the fuselage a large banner saying, «Sayonara, people of Hakodate. Sorry for the trouble.»
Soviet fighters still prowled the skies around Hakodate, and fearful that they might interfere, the Japanese cloaked the C-5A within a formation of missile-firing F-104s and F-4s while it transported the MiG to Hyakuri Air Base sixty miles north of Tokyo on September 25. There, in a large hangar guarded by Japanese soldiers, the real unwrapping of the «present for the Dark Forces» began. Some of the Americans had devoted much of their careers to dissecting captured or stolen Soviet equipment, and they, along with their Japanese colleagues, approached the hangar much in the spirit of eager archaeologists allowed temporary entry into a forbidden tomb full of rare and glittering riches which might be surveyed but not kept. They had to analyze swiftly and urgently, yet carefully and thoroughly, so the labor was divided among teams which focused day and night upon separate sections or components.
As the entire MiG was disassembled and the engines, radar, computer, automatic pilot, fire control, electronic countermeasure, hydraulic, communications, and other systems were put on blocks and stands for mechanical, electronic, metallurgical, and photographic analysis, the specialists experienced a succession of surprises and shocks.
My God! Look what this thing is made of! Why, the dumb bastards don't have transistors; they're still using vacuum tubes! These engines are monsters! Maybe the Sovs have a separate refinery for each plane! Jesus! See these rivet heads sticking out, and look at that welding!
They did it by hand! Hell, the pilot can't see a thing unless it's practically in front of him! This contraption isn't an airplane; it's a rocket! Hey, see what they've done here! How clever! They were able to use aluminum! Why didn't we ever think of that? How ingenious! It's brilliant!
The data Belenko supplied in response to the first quick queries also seemed surprising and, at first, contradictory.
What is the maximum speed of the MiG-25?
You cannot safely exceed Mach 2.8, but actually we were forbidden to exceed Mach 2.5. You see, at high speeds the engines have a very strong tendency to accelerate out of control, and if they go above Mach 2.8, they will overheat and burn up.
But we have tracked the MiG-25 at Mach 3.2.
Yes, and every time it has flown that fast the engines have been completely ruined and had to be replaced and the pilot was lucky to land in one piece. (That fitted with intelligence the Americans had. They knew that the MiG-25 clocked over Israel at Mach 3.2 in 1973 had landed back in Egypt with its engines totally wrecked. They did not understand that the wreckage was inevitable rather than a freakish occurrence.)
What is your combat radius?
At best, 300 kilometers [186 miles].
You're joking!
I am not. If you use afterburners and maneuver for intercept, you can stay up between twenty-two and twenty-seven minutes at the most. Make one pass, and that's it.
We thought the range was 2,000 kilometers [1,240 miles].
Belenko laughed. That's ridiculous. Theoretically, if you don't use afterburners, don't maneuver, and stay at the best altitude, you can fly 1,200 kilometers [744 miles] in a straight line. But in practice, when we were ferrying the plane from base to base, we never tried to fly more than 900 kilometers [558 miles] without refueling. Check it out for yourself. I took off from Chuguyevka with full tanks and barely made it to Japan. You can calculate roughly how far I flew and how much fuel was left when I landed. (The point was convincing. Although Belenko expended fuel excessively during the minutes while at sea level, he used afterburners only briefly and otherwise did everything possible to conserve. Even so, of the 14 tons of fuel with which he began, his flight of less than 500 miles consumed all but 52.5 gallons.)
What is your maximum operational altitude?
That depends. If you carry only two missiles, you can reach 24,000 meters [78,740 feet] for a minute or two.
