The MiG-25 was mainly made from high-temperature steels (80%), titanium (8%) and high temp aluminium. It used 5kg of pure silver to line the engine bays…

Melting point of such steels is around 1480 deg C.
Melting point of titanium is about 1800 deg C.
Melting point of aluminium is about 650 deg C.

Titanium is more resistant to high temperatures than steel, but steel is a hell of a lot better than aluminium in this respect. Steel also is much easier and cheaper to produce than titanium. The A-12/SR-71 series are certainly amazing, but they are tough to build, tough to maintain, and expensive.

A titanium MiG-25 would not have been any faster than the steel one, because the limiting factor was the engines. Rather than the advanced engine of the A-12/SR-71, it has a very simple low pressure ratio turbojet.

A titanium MiG-25 would have been lighter, probably a bit more agile, but cost would have been very high.

What part of “unofficial designation” did you miss, Gary?

IF the Russian airforce had ordered the “MiG-35”, they might have called it MiG-29BM, MiG-29Bis, MiG-33, or whatever. The point is, the designation wasn’t made by Mikoyan, but by the airforce. Given that we are asking what the designation of the 1.42 would have been IN SERVICE, you cannot reasonably claim it would have been MiG-37 because -33 and -35 were taken, because these designations were never officially given out, and if the MFI project had continued then there would have been no need for the “MiG-35” design anyway.

I simply don’t believe this.

The MiG-29M was called MiG-29M. The next free designation was MiG-33, and thats what the 1.42 would have been.

Thats “Short Snort”, not “Sneaky Pete”- Sneaky Pete was a stealthy tailless delta.

The swing wing design I am pretty sure is a General Dynamics design undertaken in the ADF program. I think the picture below is a closely related design, retaining the twin podded engines, while the design below that is clearly smaller, single engined and ancestral to the eventual F-16. I know these two are General Dynamics for sure, I’ve scanned them from an article 🙂

There was a strong German section who favoured a lightweight, 25,000lb fighter in the ND102 mould. Don’t forget the Germans were after a pure air superiority aircraft at the time. The ND102 design was notable for using two non-afterburning PW1120 engines of about 13,000lb thrust each, and was supposed to reach speeds as high as Mach 2.

MBB TKF90
Bae P110
BAe P106
Northrop-Dornier ND102