Throwing some R-60s on there allows you to retain a kill capability in an ECM saturated environment, for one. Also leaves you with a “last ditch” type weapon if your radar system craps out or you need to either 1) try and take a shot at and then avoid an enemy fighter or 2) kill another target after your R-3s or R-33s have been expended.

That might be all very well but is the undersized warhead on the R-60 capable of doing much damage to a B-52? If a MiG-31 fires off all 4 APHIDS against a SAC bomber chances are, that only 2 will hit the target and that’s still no guarantee of destruction. In another thread I can recall you explaining to ‘Flogger’ that the FOXHOUND never carries the wing mounted R-40 operationally – only inert rounds for publicity shots. But if you must carry a heat-seeker for the reasons you mentioned above, why not carry a R-40TD version on the wing pylons, or, presuming there are weight limitations, why not carry the R-23T/R-24T?

Even better still, keep the wings clean and use the cannon (what sort of targets did they expect the cannon to be used against anyway? F-16s?:confused: )

First off, despite CONSTANT mislabeling of R-73 acquisition rounds as R-60 acq rounds in various publications, the FLANKER never employed the R-60. So sticking it with a WVR AAM it can’t use would have been pointless!

I wasn’t emphasising that the Flanker did or could carry the R-60, although It wouldn’t have been a technical impossibility for the Flanker to carry the R-60 if the Soviets had wanted to adapt the fighter for carriage of this missile, but, as you say, the fact that the Su-27 was never ‘ever’ slated to carry anything other than the R-73, even in PVO service, goes to show the priority the Soviets had for homeland defence. My main point was that the R-73 would have been better employed in frontal aviation units where there was in fact a dearth of WVR capability within the WP. The predominant frontal aircraft frontal aircraft in the 1980s were the Su-17 series, MiG-21s, MiG-23/27s, Su-24s and Su-25s, all of which had a very limited WVR ability

Do PVO interceptors need to carry short range missiles? What was the Su-15 and MiG-31 suppose to do with the the R-60s they are alleged to be able to carry, against SAC bombers, or P-3s anyway?

There was a Mig-31 test aircraft that carried S-300 missiles as part of testing to see if it could be used as a mobile long range ABM system with the added height and speed of launch the range of the weapon was greatly increased.

I’ve got an article from a Russian magazine, which describes the ‘Ishim’ light satellite launcher, which uses the MiG-31I as a first stage, which is being developed by Russia and Kazakhstan jointly. The ‘Ishim’ employs a lot of tech and know-how from the previous MiG-31D ‘satellite killer’, for destroying low orbiting satellites, of which two were tested in the 1980s. This system used a single ‘30P6’ missile hung directly underneath the fuselage of the MiG-31D. This missile was developed by the Almaz design bureau, which also developed the S-300, so maybe there’s a close resemblance. You can read about the two MiG-31 based launch systems here; http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/world/russia/mini.htm. Incidentally, Globalsecurity state that the ‘30P6’ was developed by the Vympel design bureau.

Has anyone got a picture of the 30P6 missile?

One thing’s for sure, the ongoing development of the’ Ishim’ system by Russia (and Kazakhstan – chief designer Borat:eek: ) should allow the Russians to maintain the ‘know-how’ to develop an air launched anti-ballistic missile system pretty quickly.

Some good pictures of the MiG-31D on these sites. Note the huge end-plates on the wingtips

http://www.testpilot.ru/russia/mikoyan/mig/31/d/mig31d.htm

http://www.airwar.ru/enc/other/mig31d.html

‘Ishim’ satellite launcher diagram from http://www.rian.ru

Since 1962 the Soviet airforces as a part of Soviet Army(SA) participated on these multinational training exercises of the Warsaw pact countries. I`m sorry the table is in Czech, I hope it doesn`t need translation anyway.

Martinez;
Thanks for the chart, it was easy enough to understand. But is still raises the question, what exactly was achieved during these exercises, which frankly may have been nothing more than exercises in propaganda, showing socialist fraternity among the workers and common soldiers of the USSR’s international partners? We know that the Warsaw Pact loved to stage large-scale highly pre-rehearsed stereotyped training exercises for the news reels. But I’m talking about ‘Red Flag’ style exercises held by NATO partners, held over specially dedicated training ranges and using various measuring and calibration equipment for post training sortie analysis and what not.

So what did WP members actually learn from those exercises anyway?

during russian invasion of Afghanistan there was rumors of dogfightings between Soviet MiG-23 and Pakistani F-16A, in which the Soviets lost some aircraft. So there is some sign of russian dogfight during the 80’s( not to mention presumed russian instructor on egypt and sirian planes during arab wars)

Another brief period when the Soviet Union gained some ‘real combat experience’ was in Egypt in the early 1970s when some Soviet MiG-21 pilots mixed it with some Israeli planes. I believe some of the Soviets got shot down and it didn’t reflect to well on their reputation either.

So why am I not surprised at all that a thread about subsonic 1950s fighters becomes about supersonic Mig-21s and the 1960s & 1970s India-Pakistan wars?

It would be nice if the obsessed partisans could stay on their own threads, if they can’t stay on subject.

How else are we supposed to discuss ‘subsonic types’ if we don’t discuss their combat histories and the wars they fought in, it would be a bit like talking about the Spitfire or the B-17 Flying Fortress with out any mention of WWII, wouldn’t it?

The point being, that in both Indo-Pakistani wars, the second generation types such as the F-104A, Su-7, and MiG-21ML did fight against subsonic types, but didn’t seem to have had any practical advantage in either A2A or A2G, compared to the other subsonic types. I’m simply trying to draw comparisons between the two different generations, first and second, that’s all!

Harry; Thanks for leading me to orbat.com. A lot of material in there to digest. You never hear much about the MiG-21’s role as an attack aircraft in the ‘71’ war, but I can’t imagine it was ideally suited for the attack role. The MiG was optimized as a high altitude bomber interceptor, and as I said had a very poor payload/range capability, what sort of navigation-attack equipment did Indian MiG-21s have?

Also; I once read that the in the 1971 war, the Su-7 was used as a short range close support aircraft, while the Gnat was used for longer range strike missions. I’ve seen a Su-7 up close, here in Moscow, it’s a huge aircraft, often compared to the F-105 in size, while the Gnat after all is just a jet trainer, with only a quarter the thrust output of the Su-7. In fact it seems that the Sukhoi doesn’t have a much improved range/payload ability compared to the tiny Gnat, and certainly no better than the Ajeet, India’s development of the Gnat – with the exact same power output. I’ve never held the inefficient Su-7 any high regard for the above reasons, what did the Indian air force think of it?

“MiG-21” (early version) and “avionic” doesn’t really go together, does it?

And not just the avionics! Even the gunsights on the MiG-21 were found to be poor quality. The Indians had already replaced them with British made gunsights just in time for the 1971 war. I faintly recall they had been swiped from some unsuspecting Folland Gnats – if they weren’t bought directly from Britain.

I always regarded the re-designation of developed versions of the MiG-15 with a new wing design as the MiG-17 to be a bit misleading – they are still basically the same airframe design, aren’t they? There seems to be less difference between the MiG-15 and MiG-17 than there is between the different variants of the F-86, and I count 5 different engine fits on the Sabre – J47, J65, J73, Canadian Orenda, British RR Avon, plus at least 3 different types of main gun armament, 12.62 mm, 20mm, British 30mm Aden.

The MiG-15/17 were all equipped with the same VK-I powerplant and were armed with the same two 23mm cannons along with that crazy ‘B-29 buster’ 37mm cannon in between them.

The MiG-15/17 design has to be considered the most important jet fighter ever built, if one considers numbers built, number of countries it served with, number of wars took part, number of aircraft it shot down (although maybe the MiG is not as adaptable as the F-86).

It was an abject failure insofar as missile defense was concerned. It failed to destroy the warheads, which is what a missile defense system has to do.

Thanks for the answer SOC

When I replied to your statement that the Russian missile systems were far superior to the American systems, I wasn’t trying to prove that you couldn’t substantiate this statement, I was more interested in finding out ‘how’ you normally substantiate this statement.

My point being, that I always thought the Patriot was in actual fact quite successful in actually ‘reaching’ Saddam’s SCUDs, only to have its job complicated by the fact that most of the SCUDs fired had their booster/rocket stage still attached to the actual warhead even in the final terminal stage of its trajectory, causing the missile to tumble and disintegrate, while confusing the Patriot system’s fire control computer. This freak scenario, after all, couldn’t have been predicted by the Patriot’s designers – or for that matter by the designers of the S-300. Why shouldn’t the S-300’s FCS also have been ‘confused’ in similar circumstances?

Or is the story/excuse of the disintegrating SCUDs just a myth?

Theoretically, but not necessarily. Combat and peacetime are two different things.

Oh, I know that there’s a big difference between combat and peacetime, it’s just that historically it’s always been found to be a greater difference for guided weapons than it has been for actual combat aircraft. Although I admit that while this was certainly true for the Vietnam war, it may be less true for more contemporary missile designs.