vanirYes you would have thought that might be more appropriate – although F-106s hardly left the USA – they might have used F-4, F-104 or F-102 radar sets thinking of what also went down in SEA.
Oh no no, please excuse me, I was comparing the airframe finishing rather than avionics suites as a general industrial guideline. The avionics fitment at the time mirrored air force doctrinal approaches of Frontal Aviation operating under mobile EWR networks attached directly to Army ground divisions and PVO operating strictly under GCI bases or else in concentrated formations with very specific mission protocols.
This was probably the main reason for the particular development of radar sets the Soviets embarked.
J-band really made no difference for the Flogger force in the way they were going to be used, but if you put that same set under NATO doctrine its independent search functionality is inadequate. For tracking though they’re virtually jam-proof, the Smerch didn’t even have doppler but it piggy backed multiple frequencies for enhanced ECCM well beyond NATO mid-70s ECM capabilities. And when they realised security had been compromised by Belyenko they adapted the Flogger signal processor to the Smerch for doppler anyway, but it was restricted. Iraqi PD’s didn’t get the doppler.
F-106’s in terms of avionics suite are a funny issue. Their parallel in avionics fit is actually the MiG-21PF. From what I understand, the pilot doesn’t fly the plane until within weapons range, it’s all under GCI remote control. He concentrates on using the weapons system joysticks and barely even looks out of the cockpit. The only difference is that Russian PVO Fishbed GCI datalink also lands the plane for him, ANG-GCI doesn’t take control again after it’s been handed over to the pilot. Weapons and tracking ranges are also similar, but the F-106 has far more punch, more refinement and better overall systems.
Sure fighters fight each other, and interceptors sometimes fight fighters, but interceptors would almost never fight each other. A Foxbat’s job is to avoid escorts and take out attack models, if given the battlefield abject superiority role. And a mission kill is just as good as a downed plane. The handful of Iraqi Foxbats managed that a few times irrespective of Tomcat and Eagle top cover, they just flew right by them.
I remember reading an Israeli air force report about prioritising the destruction of Foxbats on the ground using airfield attack formations rather than allowing them to get in the air, they afforded no other combat model the same respect. It is a little bit like the USAAF doctrine about dealing with German “rocket planes” like the Me-262 during WW2.
The Israeli’s are probably the most combat experienced air force in the world, and they treat the Foxbat with genuine respect despite being equipped with Vipers and Eagles.
vanirMy favourite quote about the Foxbat in combat I never get tired of reposting for prosperity, I personally find it incontravertable objectivity.
Did you know that a MiG-25PD recorded the only Iraqi air-to-air kill of the Gulf War? It dropped an F-18C on the first night of the war–then went on to fire another missile at an A-6 and buzz an A-7, all while avoiding escorting F-14s and F-15s.
An isolated incident? How about the single Iraqi Foxbat-E that eluded eight sweeping F-15s then tangled with two EF-111As, firing three missiles at the Ravens and chasing them off station. Unfortunately, the Ravens were supporting an F-15E strike, and the EF-111’s retreat led to the loss of one of the Strike Eagles to a SAM. Oh BTW, the Foxbat easily avoided interception and returned safely to base.
There’s more. When F-15 pilots were fighting for the chance to fly sweeps east of Baghdad late in the war, itching for a chance to get a shot at an Iraqi running for Iran, they weren’t expecting the fight that a pair of Foxbats put up. Two Foxbats approached a pair of F-15s, fired missiles before the Eagles could get off shots (the missiles were evaded by the Eagles), then outran those two Eagles, four Sparrows and two Sidewinders fired back at them. Two more Eagles maneuvered to cut the Foxbat’s off from their base (four more Eagles tried, but were unable to effect an intercept), and four more Sparrows were expended in vain trying to drop the Foxbats.
The Iraqis had a total of twelve MiG-25PDs at the beginning of the war, of which maybe half were operational at any given time. Imagine what trouble they would have caused if there had been more. The Foxbats, when well flown, proved capable of engaging allied fighters and avoiding them at will. Only the limitations of their weapons proved a problem.
vanirBasher, a couple of corrections.
The regular MiG-23M radar set is the Sapfir-23D, J-band with doppler and demonstrated lookdown/shootdown. Its problems were reliability of tuning and weight, so detection/tracking range varied dramatically between individual examples in practise and those early Floggers were nose heavy with half a ton just for the set. The unit was improved and retrofitted in the mid-70s.
The Sapfir-23ML you are right was a modernisation and redesign, most significantly it was 30% lighter which dramatically increased the nose authority of the Flogger ML/P/MLD. It also featured improved signal processing for better target discrimination against clutter using the J-band (which has a low detection range to begin with so is really handicapped in lookdown mode, but tracking range is comparable with NATO).
Keep in mind the backbone of the Flogger force was Frontal Aviation which is designed very specifically to work only in close conjunction with present ground forces.
Only 23P and MLD handed to PVO are equipped with GCI radio sets. But Frontal Aviation is meant to work with mobile EWR attached to ground forces, which achieves the same effect as a ground based AWACS. Naval Aviation uses cruisers the same way, which is why most of those are listed as having a secondary battlefield command/control function. They just put their AWACS on the ground with the Army forces or Navy ships and use it in the same fashion NATO uses AWACS to support aerial forces. Cons are range, pros are relative invulnerability to anything but a custom dedicated strike mission against the battlefield controller. AWACS are vulnerable to regular fighters with AAMs.
The PVO will support Frontal Aviation but was completely independent in organisation and doctrine. They used GCI stations and when venturing outside those would do so only in concentrated groups with a specific list of mission priorities, such as defence of high value targets in the combat zone before protection of major troop concentrations at the battlefront both before support of Frontal Aviation and finally top cover for reinforcements.
The development of the airborne unit datalinking system was to enhance this so that concentrated formations could zip out as a centralised unit to achieve the listed priorities. It doesn’t really function anything like a mini-AWACS but allows the target information of one fighter to be used for missile launch and guidence by another, which maybe closer to the lethal range of the missile than the tracking aircraft but should not give away his proximity to the enemy with radar emissions. It also improves detection range by providing signal interception across a wide front and therefore picks up more reflection than a single antennae, whilst that signal’s processing is being datalinked between all aircraft in the formation, so it functions pretty much the same way as a field of radio telescopes trying to pick up distant interstellar emmissions.
It’s more like airborne GCI than AWACS, being the same way GCI can use its datalink to fly the pilot’s plane for him until within weapons range, the Russian datalink allows one aircraft to guide missiles from another. It should not be underestimated especially in the present climate of Stealth sensationalism, since networking datalinked radar antennae is the natural enemy of low RCS.
The MiG-25 has been discussed before at length. It’s not at all bad and is very dangerous to aircraft like the Eagle, given favourable circumstances. Due to propaganda of the past however it remains controversial at discussion forums unfortunately, which inhibits rational discussion.
Yes the Eagle is quicker than the Foxbat at sea level, it drops off very quickly however. The MiG gets very fast as soon as it starts getting air under the wings and has a phenomenal sustained climb rate. From about 15,000ft and up the Eagle’s got nothing on the MiG and go much higher and it just can’t catch one. It was tried.
Interestingly the ML/P/MLD Flogger with the monster engine of the series and dartlike profile are the fastest accelerating combat aircraft in the world. They can be outdone in climb but in level acceleration they outspeed an F-16 at all heights and are much faster at higher altitudes.
Also, with the exception of the Fulcrum and Flanker, Russian aircraft speed characteristics are given as armed. US/NATO ones are given flying clean. In the 70s the consensus is that Russians had speed, Americans had transonic superiority, which is important since virtually all aerial combat with supersonics is in the transonic realm.
Also of course Americans had electronics superiority. You can’t say they had abject technological superiority though because the industrial priorities between the two were different. Russians had perfectly suited technology for their doctrine. It was a different doctrinal approach, but not inferior. Cosmetically different. Russians demonstrated technological parity with models like the Su-15 which among contemporaries like the F-105 is a very well finished and finely tuned model. It is nothing like the MiG-21 which was very roughly finished because it was meant for Frontal Aviation which functions with the doctrine of numbers over quality, rough field performance over refinement, maximum performance over combat sustainability. The Su-15 which was designed for the PVO achieves the same performance but with as much refinement as any western contemporaries of its design period.
vanirOnly a small portion of that figure were fighter types though, including fighter bombers.
Including Hungarian formation the Luftwaffe had anything from 200-350 fighters at Kursk.
They had every close support aircraft they could muster though, same as the Russians, I didn’t include about 6 schlachtstaffeln which were flying Fw-190 I think, but they strictly operated as fighter bombers attached to the army from what I understand.
In practise the Kuban was a bigger aerial melee for fighters, but the Soviets had abject superiority from the beginning. Actually because they finally got a significant number of lend-lease fighters together in one place and it coincided with the latest Yak and Lavochkin types finally sorted for quality and coming in strong numbers from Ural production.
So this pretty much marked the winning of the industrial war against Germany on the Eastern Front and they were really on the defensive in aerial warfare after the Kuban. According to the General Staff they could no longer even win local air superiority (this changed for the first day or two at Kursk though).
Hey want to hear something funny, at the height of Stalingrad there was often just about 15 Luftwaffe fighters in the air, about 5 to 1 down against Russians in new La-5s at that point (but flown by fresh cadets still in training) and most of the work was done by Wilcke himself, shot down something like 22 in one month.
From my readings that seems to be the general theme of Luftwaffe operations on the Eastern Front, a lot of the time an administrative expression of an air army detachment to say, the Don region in practise actually meant about 30 servicable fighters were available there and about 80 bombers flying missions, plus about 30 attack aircraft when close support was the order of the day. Not so much the say, 650 aircraft listed on paper. If it says there were detachments from 2 gruppen with 24 fighters each, the first thing you do I’ve been finding is halve the figure for serviceable aircraft actually flying missions any given day, when it says luftflotte detachment with say 250 aircraft the first thing you do is knock off about a third for non-combat models, spotters, army communications, HQ birds. Another good chunk for transports. Then start halving the formations by type from there gives a fairly accurate result.
vanirI think the adage “the good old days were never the good old days” is appropriate here. Boelcke, Richtofen, Hartmann, Bakhorn, all said the romanticism associated with aerial combat was a fictional product of authors and not the reality of piloting a fighter.
Marsielle even stressed the secret of becoming an ace for a 109 cadet is low speed handling, not fancy manoeuvres. The biggest danger for a pilot who thinks he can dogfight is himself and his own plane.
Hartmann said to hide in the clouds when possible and use Boelcke’s dictum of letting your enemy fill the windshield before firing.
Rall says just do your job and don’t be stupid or delusional. A dogfight is where you made a mistake and have to spend a few minutes trying to shake an enemy who should’ve already killed you.
When asked how an Me-109 dogfights against a P-47 that dives on him, Rall gave a frown with some genuine confusion and replied, you shoot him down. I think that characterises the illusion of dogfighting nicely.
Media, including documentarians do like to sensationalise. It is misleading. From what I gather famous dogfights just worked out that way by chance and happenance.
Our modern view is confused I think because of the distinction since the advent of AAMs that we have BVR and CWC phases of engagement. We now tend to use dogfighting as a generic term to characterise CWC combat. Considering prior to 1950 all aerial combat was seeking gun kills, that would make every engagement by modern reckoning a dogfight.
But surprise and pack tactics were always the preferred method, the majority of kills never knew what hit them, or went down in the opening phases. Others were lucky, and usually because they ran. Successful aces were accurate shooters, not necessarily phenomenal pilots. It was always that way, since WW1 pilots talk about exactly the same thing.
vanirI’ve got a great documentary on a recent Red Flag, fascinating watch and very inspirational to get simming. There was almost a mid air collision in that on the first day, between two groups of F-15s iirc.
One of the points they’re fairly clear on is the primary value being large force coordination and combined units organisation. Apparently with all the Top Gun training in the world, if the first time you go out in a mixed force of strike units, CAS, escorts, fighter sweeps, SEAD, EW, tankers and AWACS all in the air at the same time, all working together, happens to also be your first combat mission, the survivability rate plummets.
Red Flag was described as working at instructing combat conditions for good pilots rather than instructing good pilots from average pilots so to speak. More about the force unit as a whole than individual capabilities, although certainly there were some great dogfights between F-16 aggressors and F-15C. Man the Eagle is impressive, just watching something that big turn the tables on a little Viper right down on the deck, flying through canyons and the like, that was amazing. Real life Hollywood stuff.
At the same time on the best DACT projects that functioned for a time by repute was the Luftwaffe with their MiGs. But the US has bought quite a large number of MiG-29S (from Moldava I think) since then anyway, so in most recent years aggressor squadrons probably have these and not just F-16s.
Also again, according to documentaries the F-5 was a good simulator for the MiG-21 in CWC at low-med alt. Agree for the Flogger you’d want something more like an F-104 but this doesn’t get close to an MLD, which can out accelerate an F-16 Block 30 and has the Sapfir-23ML set rather than the Jaybird analoguous to the Starfighter (the export Flogger’s set). It is J-band though so would have problems with target discrimination, but is doppler (can track at something like 30km in lookdown/shootdown or 50level/60up or thereabouts). At least so says my Janes.
Interestingly enough Kelly Johnson always claimed the F-104 later variants and proposed developments (the Lancer) would’ve been a viable alternative to the F-16 with similar or better performance. Dunno myself, he might’ve just been getting senile.
vanirI’ll hazard a guess but more experienced pilots would know better. His approach was too slow, so he used a steeper glidepath, but that would’ve been too hard on the gear with a missile slung so he lessened the glideslope towards the end there just before the flare, which extended the touchdown, but now it had the extra airspeed from the sharp initial glideslope so there was still air under the wings after the flare.
He should’ve done a touch and go around, come back in more concerted, either a hard landing or a faster approach and shallower glideslope, you want to lose lift after flaring.
I think basically he flared appropriately for the initial glideslope but changed it towards the end so if he couldn’t delay the initial flare to compensate safely, he should’ve done a go around pretty much when he realised he was going to change the glide angle just short of the runway.
I do this in LOMAC a lot but am still what I consider a beginner. I’ve only a handful of hours on real world aircraft too, so really I’m probably a worse pilot than most simmers.
It is quite possible I haven’t the slightest idea what I’m talking about 😀
vanirWhy were they phased out anyway? Did or do the Russians even have a better SEAD/DEAD platform than the Foxbat-F?
Technically it has some quite powerful jammers replacing the recon gear in the nose, working on the frontal hemisphere, and of course it has great speed performance, whilst the Kh-58 seems a pretty good HARM with around 100km max standoff range. It doesn’t have the same extensive RWR antennae as something like an EF-111 or EA-6, but my guess is it being a shade above an F-4G.
Historically it was deployed for the second half of the Iran-Iraq war, which is after advantage had shifted to the Iranians who had air superiority for most of the defensive war. I’ve no idea what its combat record was like.
In any case the failings of the IQAF were lacking penetration long range strike aircraft to make effective use of gaps created in defensive air coverage, not lacking the ability to make gaps which is a matter of record.
The Su-24 was an intended recipient of the Kh58 so I’d guess that’s its only real contemporary, it’s also very fast at low altitude but at medium height the Foxbat runs rings around it. Still it has a second crew member, at the same time I’m guessing the Foxbat-F was single purpose designed to counter Hawk systems and has better jammers, but they’re less ubiquitous and NATO uses Patriots now.
I’d say in the modern RuAF the job would be for Su-30M, Su-34 and Su-35 as they come on strength. Sorbitsaya (sp?) jammer pods and six Kh31P slung ought to do it.
My guess is the Su-34 is the intended replacement of the Foxbat-F and the Su-24M (probably operating in mixed groups with Su-30M), but then comes the question of money.
Su-27SM can carry four Kh-31P and Sorbitsaya. – what I mean is the capability is there, dunno if they’ve the databuses for it.
vanirIt’d be super funky if we had one of those Heinkel flying boats the RAAF operated in the PT in WW2, ach, deutsche flugzeug in den verbündeten Luftwaffen.
vanirI know that RAAF aerobatics displays at major events tend to have some conservative operating procedures, which is a matter between the aero safety authorities and the RAAF admin, I don’t think the individual pilots get to play much of a role in it.
Personally I was always bored after seeing the F-111 “pig” do a dump and burn for the upteenth time, I’d much, much rather see it do a low supersonic acceleration on full afterburner, but the authorities are adamant everybody loves the dump and burn and supersonic flight low over high population density areas is illegal.
About the only, really the only impressive manoeuvre you ever get to see is a Hornet cruise in from between the skyscrapers of the city apparently close enough to touch, then turn end up and climb vertical so fast you literally lose sight of it within seconds to a tremendous roar. Gives you a real, and real scary, idea of just how impressive the combat performance of these types is at low altitude. That climb is phenomenal.
Rest is kinda boring. But I do love seeing combat aircraft acting like they’re in combat in front of a crowd.
vanirIt is possible that global security org wrote this… 😀
But I’ m familiar with all the Soviet PVO and VVS regiments from the late 60’s till today
The 164th regiment only flew MiG-25BM between 1984 and 1990. They confuse it with the 47th regiment which fly with MiG-25RB in Shatalovo.
Are you sure about retirement by 1990, because I’ve got release notes from Mikoyan OKB that says they were still rolling off the production line in 1985. That means roughly that year’s production block was cleared for operations at about the start of 1987 and it just seems weird to me that anyone received Foxbat-F’s brand spanking new and then retired them three years later. Seems, kinda off the wall.
vanirIf DSI is necessary to keep it cheap then go all out for cheap and aim for something in the F414-class. I’m not talking F-20, I’m saying hold a competition for our world class engineers to compete at the design with a cost ceiling in mind. Keep it single purpose, like the F-106A was, and see what they come up with. The ANG needs a fighter that can patrol the skies around our country. There will be drip down assets from the USAF for years to come to fill the multipurpose roles. If you eliminate stealth, exotic materials, and the need for carrying out non-interceptor tasks from the competition they should be able to come up with something in the sub-$25 million range.
I like this idea, as an outsider (aussie, no grass roots idea on how things run economically within the US defence industries). But it sounds smart to me, to offer a design forum for tenders and then compare the results to something like a Block 60/65 (?) viper with all the bells and whistles.
Blocks are production blocks, right, so the block 60/65 (presumably, GE and PW engine variants yeah?), that’s new build isn’t it, for airframe lifetime purposes?
I mean if that can do the job why mess with a good thing? Block 60 are schlem aren’t they? Radar’s pretty good on the Block 50, low range but pretty trick, why does it need to be aesa? Schlem was all that was lacking, add the latest processor/software upgrades for Block 60 and what more do you need?
But it’d be smart to run an open forum for engineering tenders just to see some options. I wouldn’t go leaping into expensive or dramatic grounds though. No need.
vanirMiG-25BM’s are still in service?
Are you positive about this vanir? The fairly recent article in Combat Aircraft Monthly only mentioned that one squadron of MiG-25RB’s was in the process of being decomissisoned while one other squadron remained in service alongside some Su-24MR’s at another base (forget which one at the moment, but possibly Shatalovo?).
No mention of MiG-25BM’s…..where did you get your information from?
Not so sure anymore, I’ve been scouring the web for the OOB I saw the notation in (iirc operating in a mixed regiment with Su-24), it might have been the 164th GvBAP operating in the Moscow District (had mixed MiG-25 and Su-24), but I’ll have to find the original OOB since this one at global security org isn’t the one I was referring to, which I think is a later one (ca.2002 compared to 1998), I was pretty certain there were at least two mixed regiments operating the Foxbat-F listed, one a ShAP.
vanirFlankers totally.
vanirWar stocks are usually mothballed as surplus then tested and issued for second echelon work, like shore bombardment (like the New Jersey or whatever that shelled at the Gulf, that was using WW2 stocks). The Russian Federation actually keeps a massive stock of old wartime 122/152 howitzers and guns to make use of WW2 ammo surplus when newer stocks run low. This actually happened in Chechnya and they retired newer smoothbores and whatnot, dusted off ancient artillery and started using the old war surplus.
For these major powers, who produced so many armaments and materiel you kind of expect this, even over half a century later. They just made that much, which is a testament of how destructive WW2 really was.
Hey did you know more ordnance was dropped by the USAF in the last year of the war than for all the other years by all the other nations combined, well at least that’s what it says in Clash of Wings but sounds about right.
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