Posted on 04/08/2006 11:40:24 PM PDT by CarrotAndStick
New Delhi, April 7: Photographs of militant training camps across the Line of Control, images of Pakistani army and armoured corps movements, mapping of new roads built by adversaries in sensitive border regions — ever wondered how India gets hold of these pictures?
The secret, so far, was in the Indian Air Force’s MiG 25 aircraft that are to be junked from service next month. The high-altitude surveillance aircraft capable of flying at 2.8 Mach will fly its last sortie for the IAF on May 1 from the base of the 102 Trisonic Squadron at Bareilly. IAF pilots recall some of the daredevilry that the MiG 25 has afforded them.
In 1997, for instance, Pakistani air authorities went into a flutter when a MiG 25 reportedly intruded into Pakistani airspace apparently to photograph a fundamentalist base west of Lahore.
The aircraft would have gone undetected if the pilot had not broken the sound barrier. The resultant sonic boom made Islamabad nervous. By the time Pakistani aircraft could scramble, the MiG 25 had flown too high — it can fly up to 90,000 feet — and too fast and was back in India.
Later, Pakistan foreign minister Gohar Ayub Khan said the Pakistan air force did not have aircraft to intercept at altitudes of more than 65,000 feet.
The MiG 25 also doubled as a second line of combat aircraft. In the 1980s, the IAF inducted 12 MiG 25s from the Soviet Union. Only four remain. On May 1, they will be flown to different airports of the IAF where they will be on static displays.
The IAF is preparing to get better and more sophisticated spy planes and equipment. Apart from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, it is also readying to receive the Israeli Phalcon airborne early warning and surveillance system mounted on a Russian IL-78 aircraft.
You have to admit...it was a practical aircraft and made to last. It could take a heck of alot of FOD damage and still fly. For the money...it was probably the best plane of its era.
Made obsolete, yes.
Pretty fast, no.
The sat stuff made the SR-71 obsolete.
Relatively speaking.
But it did not happen all that fast and there are still lots of folks that would just love to see some, "can we take some pictures - now?" out there in the intell world.
Did you ever read "MiG Pilot" back in the 80's? It was about a pilot from the Soviet Union that flew one of those things to Hakodate in Japan and defected.
Supposedly, the Foxbat, solid a plane as it was, could NOT go Mach 2.8. It could go supersonic, but not that fast. The reason the US supposed it could was that one was observed doing so during the 1973 Arab-Israeli conflict. An Egyptian Mig-25 was clocked at Mach 2.8 while being chased from a battle area. Thing is, when the plane landed (and what US intel didn't know at the time) was that its twin Tumanskys were twin piles of slag. It COULD be taken that fast, but you'd kill the engines without fail.
Still, it was a brilliant aircraft in its day.
Some more info:
http://in.rediff.com/news/2005/apr/17mig.htm
IAF superspy plane on way out
A K Dhar in New Delhi | April 17, 2005 12:04 IST
The MiG-25, the Indian Air Force's most hush-hush plane and one of the two fighters in the world capable of flying up to the stratosphere is about to be bid a grand farewell, according to IAF sources.
The aircraft, whose appearance in the skies in the early eighties created ripples in the US-led NATO alliance and has proved to be a vital intelligence-gathering work horse for the country in every crisis, is about to be phased out.
Capable of flying up to a height of 70,000 to 80,000 feet and attain speed up to three times faster than sound, the MiG-25 codenamed Foxbat by the NATO alliance has been used by the IAF as a superspy plane.
Though IAF officers were tighlipped, the aircraft, mounted with high resolution cameras, was said to have been used for reconissance purposes when the Indian armed forces were deployed in Sri Lanka in Operation Pawan in 1987 and in the year-long forward deployment Operation Parakram in 2001-2002.
Always kept under a veil of secrecy since its acquisition in the early 1980s, the plane has never been seen in public and the exploits of its daredevil pilots, though recorded, are not allowed to hit the limelight.
The systems and cameras in the spy plane are becoming outdated and with India launching more and more sophisticated satellites, the armed forces and intelligence agencies now have much better access from the sky, officials said.
The IAF acquired four of these planes from the then Soviet Union and these aircraft still operate from Bareilly, where the squadron is based.
"The reconissance fighters would take off and mingle with normal air traffic. Then in a split second switch on their after burners to attain tri-sonic speed to reach the stratosphere," some pilots, who flew the aircraft, recalled recently.
The aircraft was only vulnerable when flying in normal atmosphere. Once it reached the stratosphere, it could not be challenged. The US Air Force is the only one force with a matching aircraft in the SR 71 Blackbird.
India had also been bidding for the Beyond Visual Range Missile version of the fighter, but the Russians did not part with this technology.
The acquisition of such a version of the MiG-25 would have given the IAF the capability of shooting down any enemy fighter from almost near outer space, the pilots said.
The MiG-25 was originally designed to be an high-speed high-altitude interceptor capable of intercepting the XB-70 as it pentetrated Soviet airspace on its way to dropping megatons of nukes. When the B-70 program was cancelled it was continued anyway. US intel saw it and thought that it was a powerful fighter. So we copied its basic design and improved on it so we could have a equal fighter to counter it in aerial dogfights and that was the genesis of the F-15, essentially the only US fighter "copied" from the Russians as most of the copying was in the other directions.
It could also be that the Indians upgraded the engines since "MiG Pilot" was written, so the speed could indeed be factual.
I hadn't thought of that until after I posted.
http://www.india-defence.com/specifications/fighters/68
Description
Although Viktor Belenko's aircraft was eventually returned to the USSR, it was first dismantled and carefully analysed by the Foreign Technology Division; now called the National Air and Space Intelligence Center of the USAF, at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. After 67 days the aircraft was returned to the Russians in pieces. The analysis of Belenko's aircraft, which was brand new, showed some surprising facts:
* The MiG-25 was built primarily of nickel-steel, and not titanium as supposed. Some titanium was used in heat-critical areas. The steel construction contributed to its massive 64,000 lb (29 t) unarmed weight.
* Welding was done by hand and construction was relatively crude. Like most Soviet aircraft, in areas that would not adversely affect aerodynamic drag, rivet heads were left exposed.
* The majority of the on-board avionics was based on vacuum tube technology, not solid-state electronics. Though the Mig-25's electronics were ridiculed in the West, many experts found it ingenious and quite practical to use vacuum tubes as they were less suceptible to radiation compared to transistor technology in case of nuclear warfare. The MiG-25P's original Smerch-A (Tornado, NATO reporting name 'Foxfire') radar had enormous power of about 500 kilowatts, allowing it to burn through hostile ECM, but requiring vast amounts of pure alcohol for cooling. Pilots were forbidden to engage the radar on the ground, and legend held that it was powerful enough to kill rabbits near runways.
* The airspeed indicator was redlined at Mach 2.8, and pilots were required not to exceed Mach 2.5. The Americans had witnessed a MiG-25 flying at Mach 3.2 over Israel in 1973, a flight that had resulted in the total destruction of its engines. The Americans were unaware of the inevitability of the destruction, which helped to fuel the myths about the aircraft's capabilities.
* Combat radius was 186 miles (300 km), and maximum range on internal fuel (at subsonic speeds) was only 744 miles (1,200 km). In fact, Belenko had only just made it to Japan without running out of fuel - without sufficient fuel for a carefully planned landing, he narrowly missed a commercial airliner taking off, and overran the available runway on landing.
* Maximum acceleration (g-load) rating was just 2.2 g (22 m/s²) with full fuel tanks, with an absolute limit of 4.5 g (44.1 m/s²). This was significantly poorer performance than the previous generation F-4 Phantom. One MiG-25 withstood inadvertent 11.5 g (113 m/s²) pull during low-altitude dogfight training, but the airframe had to be written off due to deformation.
* When the appearance of the Foxbat became known to the West, it was alleged that the design of the MiG-25 was based on the North American A-5 Vigilante. Both aircraft have the same general layout(the A-5 was also initially designed with twin-tailfins), but the Foxbat has its origins in the MiG-21, rather than the Vigilante
The MiG-25`s acknowledged combat record by the West is one F/A-18 Hornet during the Gulf War, nevertheless some F-15 have been claimed by the Syrian Air Force(however, most sources say that, to date, no F-15s have been shot down in air-to-air combat).
Bump-Ping!
But it still could go that fast. So what if it's a one time deal
Lieutenant Viktor Ivanovich Belenko
http://www.geocities.com/siafdu/viktor.html
http://www.hallstar.net/victor.html
A Story Not About A Hero
http://english.pravda.ru/main/18/90/363/11227_pilot.html
Like the SR-71 The 25 can do something satellites can’t do turn a round and take a 2nd. look. or not be on a time table.
Hey the last one is an IAF Jaguar not Mig 25!
Ping!
You may want to compare the Mig-25 specs with the Avro Arrow, a superior Canadian plane that preceded it by almost a decade...
I saw a program on the History Channel about the Canadian Arrow. Fantastic aircraft, and way ahead of its time.
Did the Canadian PM ditch the aircraft and have the jigs and tooling destroyed? What was his rationale again? I thought it was so he could spend money on something else.
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