The job to square off with NATO over Europe (and dealing with AWACS) was for the VVS, by late eighties, that meant huge numbers of mig23’s, several hundred mig29’s, a few units of mig25’s and a handful of Su27 ‘s(a great big chunk of the first batches of Flankers were delivered to the PVO).
talking numbers I like it
per 1988 military balance
VVS has 450 mig-29 , 700 mig-23MF/ML no mig-25 and no su-27
PVO has 100 + mig-31 , 150 su-27 400 mig-25 A/E and 600 mig-23P
does that sound about right ?
Of the several AAM’s described by several posters in this topic only the R33 was available and only for the PVO.
what about R-40 ? has decent range at high altitude
The only anti radiation missile available for tactical work by the Soviet forces was the KH31P, it had no ATA mode, is target were the massive numbers of Hawk, Patriots, Bloodhounds, etc, NATO units, it only entered in 1988, a few months before the Berlin wall came crashing down.
ARH was carried by Tu-22 and Tu-16 of strategic aviation not sure if it would work in A2A mode
From what’s publicly available, for the most of the Cold War, the Soviet plan to deal with NATO air forces over central Europe (and the Awac force) seemed to be a variation of what DJCross described above, but instead of using mortars they would go directly to tactical nukes, what remained (if anything) would be swarmed and dealt by superior numbers.
Although quantitatively USSR was outnumbered by atleast 2 to 1 in OVERALL numbers by NATO in aircraft
They had the quantitative edge only in 3rd gen fighters by mid 80s , approx 1800 mig-23Mf/ML ( pvo + vvs)+ 400 Mig -25 vs 400 + F-16 ( early versions ) and 800 + F-4s of NATO
but then NATO has a 4 to 1 edge in 4th gen fighters
and NATO has hundreds of mirage 5/f-104/F-5 which are quite superior to limited numbers of Mig-21 available to VVS , even if we count the su-15 of pvo NATO still has the numeric advantage
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