His book, “MiG Pilot” is pretty doggone interesting.
Wow.
One thing I’ve noticed is that the West ALWAYS over estimates the enemies capabilities. I guess that is a good thing, but it is getting too expensive to continue that.
Boy this was an interesting story! Thank you for the post :)
I’ll go with Lou gehrig.
I was at Dover AFB at the time, and when this happenef, the ‘oh crap’ was so thick, you could butter bread!
I met him in passing one time. He flew into transient alert one weekend while flying across country. Of course he was in a T38.
I read his story in the Readers Digest back in the 1980’s..
When they took him to the grocery store he couldn’t believe all the food that was available to buy.. Back in Russia he would think about America when the Russian government would show them videos about America, He thought if America was so bad how come there is so many cars on the road.. He thought that the Russian Government was lying to the Russian People..
The number of defections has greatly decreased of late. Not too many pilots would trade Mother Russia for Dylan Mulvaney Trannyland.
In the public sector the government with the money always gives the money to the people who say and do the government approved agenda.
For most people not in the government, they just want the goveernment to do their agenda rather than the other guy’s agenda.
There are a large nuber of people who just want the gvernment to leave them, and everybody else, alone. But they are not a maority. So they form coaltions with those who want the government to be BIG GOV on immigration, or big gov on national Defense, or big gov on Poverty... or big gov on ....
and each of them says “But my agenda is different. My agenda is a good agenda for Big Government.
I remember taking a military strategy class in college only about five years after this incident. The topic of Soviet technology and their strategy came up and the teacher, Edward Luttvak, commented that a lot of defense analysts were laughing that the Soviets used vacuum tubes in the Foxbat, arrogantly thinking that we were /9-30 years ahead of them. He, on the other hand, Knew what that meant. Quite simply, it meant that this fighter, which was designed for the sole purpose of shooting down the B-70 bomber that we never built, was equipped to fight in a nuclear environment, as the vacuum tubes were immune to electromagnetic pulse, whereas the integrated circuits that we were using were not (and still aren’t). Further, the same analysts laughed when they found that the Foxbat used stainless steel engines, which were far heavier and which melted to some degree when the plane exceeded Mach three. However, the Soviets were able to produce those engines very cheaply compared to the high-tech turbo fans that we were using then, and they didn’t give a damn about the expense because they only wanted the plane to be able to catch a nuclear bomber that could wipe out several of their cities. As with the circuitry, different priorities lead to different conclusions, and our strategies were, for the most part, a bunch of morons.
My father once told me that the only reason that America won wars was because our enemies were more stupid than we were, that after his experience in the Navy and half a lifetime of observing how our politicians work. I see no particular reason to disbelieve what he told me.
One of my dearest friends in the Air Force was Moody Suter who passed in 1996. Moody was responsible for the concept of Red Flag at Nellis AFB for the USAF. He came up with the idea while an Action Officer in the basement of the Pentagon. He was also the primary fighter pilot to debrief Viktor Belenko. Viktor was kept at a place in Northern Virginia called Airlie. The two got to know each other very well. At some point they went to a shopping mall to look around. I think it was Tyson’s Mall but I can’t recall. As they entered, Viktor became very suspicious of what he saw. He concluded that the CIA had created the entire Mall to make him believe what the West was like. Eventually he realized it was really how things were.
thanks for posting that. great story...
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