The Tu-128M had one in the form of the R-846 radio system, that was the reason it was retained in service until the MiG-31B was fully in service. The earliest MiG-31s didn’t yet have a datalink.

You could spot an R-846-equipped Fiddler because of the horizontal tip of the vertical fin, rather than the triangular tip on vanilla-Fiddlers.

Blackbirds did indeed fly over North Korea and Indo-China. The North Koreans raised a holler when the overflight happened. However I don’t think the Blackbird ever crossed into the fUSSR – all I find is mentions of how it flew real close to Warsaw Pact border.

Yep, the one time i saw a Blackbird was on a really, really clear day when one was on it’s way back to Mildenhall after hugging the Inner German Border – far too low appearantly, but perhaps there was a problem of some kind. Besides, one of the pleasures of LOROP photography is that you don’t actually have to overfly the area you want to take snapshots from.

Ummm Gary Powers was shot down long time before the Blackbird took to air. In fact the Blackbird design continued full throttle even as USA and fUSSR were signing treaties banning overflights over each other’s territories. But there was certainly a real dose of fear over crossing into fUSSR territory after that.

That is what i ment – the repercussions of the Gary Powers shootdown (and also when it dawned upon the White House just how aggressive the likes of LeMay were in their recon flights) made the thought of overflying the USSR an uneasy one…

Do you know how many Mig-25s were stationed far eat to track Beale take offs and landings?

The distance Beal-Soviet Territory is of course a bit different than Mildenhall-Finow (which is just to the north-east of Berlin in the fGDR), but there were a number of MiG-25 regiments from Vladivostok upwards along the Sakhalin coast, and then at least one on Kamchatka. I believe Anadyr (across the Bering Straits) never was a real Foxbat-base, but they could well have been forward deployed there.

Ummm, yeah he does say that, but then I don’t believe him – he sounds like a plant who’s been paid big bucks.

Everything i’ve read and heard from Belenko seems to point to one single issue: he’s a really, really good convert…

The nuclear reactor on the B-36 was just a proof-of-concept to make sure that an operational nuclear reactor could feasibly be carried on an aircraft. As you say, it never powered the aircraft.

The same with the Tu-95LAL, it only served as a testbed for a flying nuclear reactor but the reactor itself wasn’t used for the flying. And as with the NB-36/X-6, the bulk of the flights was carried out without the reactor even turned on.
There were plans for an operational nuclear-powered Bear, which would have become the Tu-119. Two of the four engines were to have been powered by the reactor (the inner engines, called NK-14) whereas the outer engines were standard kerosene-fed NK-12s which would only be used for takeoff. The Tu-119 was cancelled because the whole project would have been immensely expensive, and also because some security concerns were raised if it was actually a good idea to have the good Pani Atom up in the air.

I’m taking the liberty to add a bit of designation confusion…

Both the S-32 and S-54 designations (these are ‘internal’ designations from the Sukhoi design bureau) have been used before, both for variants of the Fitter. Here they are:

S-32 = Su-17 (no ASCC desginator given, this was basically an interim variant halfway the Su-7IG and definitive AL-21F powered FITTER C)
S-32M = Su-17M FITTER C
S-32MK = Su-20 FITTER C
S-32MKI = Su-20 FITTER C
S-32M2 = Su-17M2 FITTER D
S-32M2D = prototype for the S-32M2K
S-32M2K = Su-22 FITTER F (with an R29B engine)

S-54 = Su-17M4 FITTER K
S-54R = Su-17M4R FITTER K
S-54K = Su-22M4 FITTER K

None of those obviously have anything to do with the current Su-47 and the ‘single-engined Flanker’, even though the nice people at Sukhoi have thought it was a good idea to use these designations again.

For an overview of the other S-series designations of swingwing-Fitters, see a lovely example of the old quality of this forum 😉 at http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=5045

Is it? (on Germany’s sovereignty)

Yep, Germany’s full sovereignty was reinstated with the Wiedervereinigung. So that’s some fourteen years now 😉

Seems the majority here believe that France is acting altruistically. In any event, based on recent events it would appear that not all the people in Cote d’Ivoire believe France is serving their interests.

It’s all about cocoa!

Would you expect any less from a spotter, Ken!? After all, I’m sure you know we get nervous about even one digit in a Mi-24 c/n being wrong! 😀 :diablo:

Well that depends on what digit is wrong. Filling in the blanks in the first 8 or 9 digits usually is no problem. Factory, variant, quarter and year of building… 😉

Don’t forget that there is a huge difference between the use of chemical weapons in lab conditions, and their actual value as weapons. The Japanese subway attack with Sarin came probably closest to perfect conditions for using such weapons (confined space, lots of people) and had a rather low fatality rate. And the overhyped Anthrax-letters in the US were hardly effective at all.

Face it, the best way to use chemical/biological weapons is to have people panicking and trampling each other to death. There’s no better weapon than fear.

One of the destroyed Hinds was TU-VHT.