With four missiles, 21,000 meters [68,900 feet] is the maximum.
What is the maximum altitude of your missiles?
They will not work above 27,000 meters [88,580 feet].
Then you cannot intercept the SR-71 [the most modern U.S. reconnaissance plane]!
True; for all sorts of reasons. First of all, the SR-71 flies too high and too fast. The MiG-25 cannot reach it or catch it. Secondly, as I told you, the missiles are useless above 27,000 meters, and as you know, the SR-71 cruises much higher. But even if we could reach it, our missiles lack the velocity to overtake the SR-71 if they are fired in a tail chase. And if they are fired head-on, their guidance systems cannot adjust quickly enough to the high closing speed.
What about your radar?
It's a very good radar. Jam-proof. But it cannot distinguish targets below 500 meters [1,640 feet] because of ground clutter.
A MiG-25 cannot intercept a target approaching below 500 meters then?
It cannot.
Maneuvering. Tell us about maneuvering. How many Gs can you take in a turn?
If the tanks are full, there is so much weight in the wings that they will rip off if you try more than 2.2 Gs. Even if you're almost out of fuel, anything above 5 Gs is dangerous.
The Americans were stunned. Why, you can't turn inside even an F-4!
You can't turn inside anything. It's not designed to dogfight.
Partially because the leaks to the press emanated from sources that had concentrated on individual facets of the aircraft rather than on the plane as a whole, published reports about what was being discovered in Japan were confusing and also contradictory.
A Japanese investigator was quoted: «The comparison of the fire control system of the F-4EJ and the MiG-25 is like that of a miniaturized, modern, precision audio kit and a large old-fashioned electric Gramophone.»
Newsweek reported:
The Japanese experts who gave the plane a preliminary once-over were astonished to find the body and wings covered with spots of brownish rust. Clearly, the MiG wasn't made of the strong lightweight titanium used in U.S. interceptors. But what was it made of? The Japanese pulled out a magnet, and a loud «thunk» confirmed their suspicions: The Foxbat was plated with old-fashioned steel.
That was just the beginning…. The welding and riveting were sloppy. It appeared that the plane would be difficult to control in a tight turn, and that at top speed its missiles could be torn from the wings.
Representative Robert Carr wrote a lengthy article suggesting that the Pentagon had deceived the American people by purposely and grossly exaggerating the might of the MiG-25:
In fact, as a fighter, the Foxbat is barely equal to our 15-year-old McDonnell F-4 Phantom and it is hopelessly outclassed by our new generation McDonnell F-15 and General Dynamics F-16. Either of our two newer Air Force fighters can outclimb, outaccelerate, out-turn, out-see, out-hide and out-shoot the Foxbat by margins so wide that our expected kill-ratio advantage is almost incalculable. No U.S. F-15 or F-16 pilot need fear the Foxbat unless he is asleep, out-numbered or an utter boob.
Yet some American experts examining the MiG-25 were described as awed by what they saw. One said aspects of the plane were «brilliantly engineered.» Another commented, «We thought it was a damned good plane, and that's what it turned out to be. We're belittling it because it's unsophisticated or because it rusts. In fact, it can fly higher, faster, and with a bigger payload than any plane in the world.» Another: «The MiG-25 does the job well, at less than it would cost the U.S. to build an equivalent plane.» And another: «It is apparent that Soviet designers are efficient cost managers who use only as much quality as is needed to solve a problem. They seem to ask why go to the expense of developing something new when we have something proven and cheaper on the shelf. They could come over here and teach us something in the way of cost-conscious management and design.»
What was the truth? Were all the furor and alarm over the years wholly unjustified? Was the MiG-25 a «clinker,» a «turkey,» a flying «Potemkin village»? Had the Pentagon, together with its allies in the aviation industry, conjured up a phony threat to extract money from Congress, as Representative Carr implied? Did not the gift from Belenko reassuringly prove anew the superiority of the West? If so, how had the Russians nonetheless produced an aircraft whose recorded performance exceeded in several ways that of our very best?
The data collected in Japan, then analyzed by the Foreign Technology Division of the Air Force at Dayton, Ohio, and the reports of the ongoing interrogation of Belenko all were flowing into the office of Major General George J. Keegan, Jr., then chief of Air Force Intelligence. As the information was collated to form a single mosaic, clear and definitive answers emerged.
They showed that the West had been badly mistaken in its perceptions of the capability, purpose, menace, and implications of the MiG-25. The misconceptions occurred because the West evaluated the MiG in Western terms and thereby adopted false premises, which only the arrival of Belenko corrected.
Because the MiG-25 had been clocked and tracked flying at Mach 3.2 at 80,000 feet, the West assumed that the recordings reflected the plane's actual operational altitude and speed. Because, employing Western methods, the design and manufacture of an aircraft with the capabilities imputed to the MiG-25 would require an extremely high level of technology, the West feared the Russians had attained such a level. Because modern Western aircraft are designed to perform multiple missions — to intercept, dogfight, bomb — the West assumed that the MiG-25 functioned as a fighter as well as an interceptor.
But Belenko explained and his plane proved that the MiG-25 was not a fighter, not an air superiority aircraft designed to duel with other fighters. Against Western fighters, it would be, as Representative Carr claimed, virtually helpless. But the Russians never intended it to tangle with hostile fighters.
Once the false premises were rectified and the true origin and mission of the MiG-25 understood, then scientific detective work gradually unveiled a picture not so comforting or reassuring.
By 1960 the Russians had seen coming at them over the horizon a fearsome new threat in the B-70, which the United States was planning as the world's fastest and highest flying bomber. To counter the B-70, they had to build rather quickly an interceptor of unprecedented capabilities, one able to achieve Mach 3 at 80,000 feet. The problem was formidable, and the Russians were too poor, materially and technologically, to adopt an American approach in trying to solve it.
They lagged in metallurgy and particularly the exploitation of titanium, which although extremely expensive and hard to work with, is very light, strong, and heat-resistant. And the Americans deemed titanium or some more exotic metal essential to a high-altitude supersonic aircraft. The Russians lagged even more woefully in the technology of transistors, semiconductors, and integrated circuitry, the tininess, lightness, and reliability of which the Americans also considered essential. The only air-to-air missiles the Russians could count on in the foreseeable future would be big, heavy, and short-range.
The Russians lacked the time and resources to develop all the new technology Western designers and engineers doubtless would have thought necessary for the type of interceptor required. So, having no other choice, the Russians elected to make do with what they had. They decided to use, instead of titanium, heavy steel alloy; instead of transistors, vacuum tubes; instead of sophisticated new missiles, those that were available.
This meant that their aircraft would be extraordinarily heavy and could be propelled only by an engine of extraordinary power. But again, they could not afford the many years and billions that design and production of a new engine would demand. So they looked around for something already on hand.
Some years before, the gifted Soviet designer Sergei Tumansky had perfected an engine to power an experimental high-altitude drone or cruise missile. Because of Soviet metallurgical difficulties, he had had to build a big, rugged steel engine, which gulped fuel ravenously. Yet the engine over the years had proved itself highly effective and reliable at altitudes of up to 80,000 feet. Therefore, the Russians decided to create their new interceptor by constructing an airframe around two of these powerful Tumansky engines.
They realized that weight and fuel consumption would preclude the aircraft they were conceiving from maneuvering agilely as a fighter and from staying up very long. The plane could be expected only to climb at tremendous speed, like a rocket, fire missiles during one pass at the target, and then land. And that is all the Russians originally expected and designed the MiG-25 to do.
For all their ingenuity in making use of old technology, the Russians recognized they could not avoid innovating some new technology. Old-fashioned vacuum tubes could not accommodate to the sudden and extreme changes in temperature occurring as the plane skyrocketed from the ground to the subfreezing upper air. No pilot,
