I’m not so sure you are going to get many slashing attacks on an F-5 using a MiG-23M. The engine still is relatively hard on the fuel. And its going to have to use swept position to gain any useful speed advantages. It will roll well when swept, but its not exactly going to have the greatest pitch rate; you need the latter to take advantage of the vertical. If he spreads out the wings to the wider settings he begins to lose any advantage in roll rate.

So the F-5 is going to fly low and at its optimal combat turning velocity and invite the slash attack. The R-23R, besides having a long leadout before its warhead engages, also is not so good against low flying targets. If he’s going to use guns then he’s probably going to have to get dirty, which negates his speed advantage.

So we are probably back to trying to get a slash attack with the R-23T. The seeker on the R-23T has a great wide lense but little relative sensitivity in distinguishing heat levels compared to more modern seekers and probably couldn’t pick him out ground clutter unless its a good tailshot. If the F-5 is aware he’s only as vulnerable as the MiG-23M is, which makes it a pretty even match if he chooses to tangle at all.

You must be listening to Aldo Nova, dj.

No guessing about the reason for the X in XB-70, there was no working bomber prototype. The flying prototypes were to be different than the actual bomber prototypes. The first vehicles were purely for flight test data.

Oh, a disaster.
A turbo-jet with exceptionally bad specific fuel flow and pretty bad thrust-weight when not at supersonic.
Would be as useful as equipping a B747 with J-58.

Could you be more specific. The sfc of most turbojets during that time period were between .9 and 1.1, which I have no details regarding the R-15 to say it was different. And you do realize the MiG-21 program had evolved to eventually field prototypes that used this same turbojet?

See: http://www.vectorsite.net/avmig21_3.html

YE-150 & YE-152 SUPER MIGS

* During the early years of the MiG-21’s history, the Mikoyan OKB worked on a series of designs for big, high-performance interceptors that looked like nothing more than scaled-up MiG-21s. The “Ye-150” and successor “Ye-152” designs actually owed little in specific to the MiG-21; as mentioned, the “balalaika” design of a fighter with a nose intake, mid-mounted delta wing, and full tail assembly was established by TsAGI studies and was an extremely obvious approach. The Sukhoi OKB used exactly the same configuration for its Su-9 interceptor, which as a result looked very much like the MiG-21.

As mentioned, the MiG-21 interceptor line was intended for defense of built-up regions in the western USSR, the type clearly lacking the range needed for defense of enormous empty regions of the Soviet East. Long-range interceptors were needed to provide a more thorough net to catch intruders trying to sneak in the “back door”.

The threats were becoming more formidable as well. Since 1956, the US had been occasionally flying Lockheed U-2 spyplanes over the USSR, operating at altitudes well above those that could be reached by any Soviet fighter. Work on rocket-boosted fighters had been conducted with an eye towards shooting down the U-2s, though it proved an ineffective solution since the fighters were uncontrollable once they reached such high altitudes. To make matters worse, the US was introducing the Mach 2 General Dynamics B-58 Hustler into service and looking down the road to the introduction of a Mach 3 strategic bomber, which would materialize as the North American B-70 — though in fact it would never get beyond the prototype stage.

What all that meant was that the USSR needed to have an interceptor with long range, high ceiling, and high speed. In the late 1950s, the Mikoyan OKB began development of a demonstrator for such an interceptor, with the “Ye-150” rolled out in December 1958. It performed its first flight on 8 August 1960, with Aleksandr Fedotov at the controls. By that time the U-2 was no longer an active annoyance, one having been shot down by SAMs on 1 May 1960, leading the US to cease air overflights of the Soviet Union. However, American bombers remained a threat.

The Ye-150 looked very much like an oversized MiG-21, featuring the balalaika configuration and even the same general landing gear arrangement — all single wheels, nose gear retracting forward, main gear hinging in the wings into the fuselage. There was a big, hydraulically-operated one-piece airbrake behind the nosewheel. The wing had a leading-edge sweep of 60 degrees.

The Ye-150 had a large tapered intake cone to fit Uragan-5B (Hurricane-5B) interceptor radar, and was to be armed with a single semi-active radar-guided AAM under each wing. The tapered radome ended in a long pitot tube, which led to the machine being nicknamed “Yedinorog (Unicorn)”. The machine was much bigger than a MiG-21, with an empty weight of 8,726 kilograms (19,237 pounds), 1.8 times that of the MiG-21F-13, and a length of 18.14 meters, 1.35 times as long as the MiG-21F-13.

The Ye-150 was powered by a Tumanskiy R-15-300 turbojet, with a dry thrust of 66.7 kN (6,800 kgp / 14,991 lbf) and an afterburning thrust of 99.5 kN (10,150 kgp / 22,376 lbf). The fuselage was almost a straight tube, with a prominent ring of afterburner cooling inlets around the rear, giving the aircraft something of the appearance of a “flying stovepipe”.

Trials of the Ye-150 continued into 1962, with the aircraft providing extremely impressive performance, attaining Mach 2.65 (2,890 KPH / 1,795 MPH) at 19,100 meters (62,665 feet) and featuring a blazing rate of climb. The problem was that the R-15-300 engine was very unreliable; that was to be expected with such a powerful new engine, but the bugs were proving very difficult to work out, which is why it took the better part of two years to go from rollout to first flight.

* Despite the engine problems, the Ye-150 seemed extremely promising and so development continued in parallel with the flight trials on an improved prototype series. However, the OKB engineers were smart enough to hedge their bets, building two “Ye-152” prototypes with the R-15-300 engine, plus a single “Ye-152A” prototype with twin R-11F-300 engines, proven on the MiG-21.

The Ye-152 had a modified wing compared to the Ye-150, with the wing featuring a shallower sweep of 53 degrees and squared-off wingtips with a launch rail for a K-9 semi-active radar-guided AAM. The K-9 was a big weapon with cruciform fins at the tail and midbody, guided by Uragan-5B radar in the Ye-152’s inlet cone, which had a simple conical shape. The modified wing increased the wing area by a factor of 1.16. A single ventral fin was added and the tailfin height was increased.

The Ye-152A had a similar forward fuselage, but the wings retained the 60 degree sweep of the Ye-150 and in fact were smaller than the Ye-150’s, with the wing area reduced by a factor of 0.92. A K-9 AAM was carried on a pylon under each wing. The tailfin height was raised still further and twin canted ventral fins were fitted under the tail.

The Ye-152A was completed first, with Georgiy Mosolov performing the first flight on 23 November 1960. It was an impressive machine, capable of 2,500 KPH (1,552 MPH) at 20,000 meters (65,600 feet). It performed a flypast at the 1961 Tushino air show, with over-imaginative Western observers believing that it was — of course — the “MiG-23”. It was assigned the NATO codename of “Flipper”. The Ye-152A remained in service as weapons system testbed until 1965, when it was lost in a crash that killed the pilot, A. Kravtsov.

The first Ye-152 prototype performed its initial flight on 21 April 1961, once again with Mosolov at the controls. The performance was downright blazing, with the aircraft capable of 2,650 KPH (1,646 MPH) at 16,200 meters (53,150 feet) — even when carrying two big dummy K-9 AAMs. Flying clean, it could reach 22,680 meters (74,409 feet). The aircraft, camouflaged as the “Ye-166” for the record books, set a number of world speed records, including a flight at an average of 2,681 KPH (1,665.2 MPH) over a 15/25 kilometer (9.3/15.5 mile) course on 7 July 1962, with Mosolov at the controls.

The second Ye-152 prototype performed its initial flight on 21 September 1961. While the first prototype was fitted with Uragan-5B radar, the second featured an improved radar, the RP-5 Smerch (Tornado) system. This required another change in radome configuration.

Unfortunately, the R-15-300 engine continued to be troublesome and balky. Further work produced a supposedly “improved” R-15B-300 engine, which was installed in the second prototype. This machine was also brought up to something more like a production specification, with a “fat” spine like a late model MiG-21 for more fuel, plus a small streamlined “racing” canopy. The afterburner cooling vents around the tail were eliminated, having been found to be unnecessary.

The R-15 is the engine of the MiG-25.

Yes, that’s exactly why I used it in my thought.

Iraq deployed underwing jammers on their F.1’s in the gulf. They may not of needed them to be successful in the 1972-1976 time frame against most opposition. No other fighters used underwing jammers in those years except for maybe the F-4’s.

Never paid much attention to corporate jets. From the size in the pictures I’m guessing the Citation is bigger. Other than size how much different are they?