[RayChuang88]

Isn't the Su-27 the Sov aircraft reverse-engineered around the Grumman F-14A that the KGB got an Iranian pilot to fly over to them, and thus picked up the sobriquet "Tomcatsky"?

I highly doubt it, because the Su-27 design was pretty much finalized by around 1979. However, the missiles used on the MiG-31 Foxhound may have been copied from the AIM-54A, though, which means an effective range of around 120-140 km or so.

One thing that still kind of surprises me is that the Tupolev Tu-28 Fiddler was phased out of service during the 1980's. Given that the Tu-28 had a top speed of over 1,000 mph and big enough to carry quite a lot of fuel for long-range operations, the Tu-28--had the Russians modernized it and fitted it with the AA-9 Amos missile that the MiG-31 used--would have been a potent anti-bomber platform and would have posed a very serious threat to our B-52's and B-1B's.

[lentulusgracchus]

Fiddler was in fact designed as a bomber destroyer. They were deployed aloft as a combat air patrol during the Cold War. I rather imagine, given their operational tempo back then, that the airframes are now extremely tired. See the posts upthread about the shape the Indian MiG-21 Fishbed J/U (and later) fleet is in. The Germans inherited an Eastern Bloc inventory in 1990 and junked the huge majority of the airframes, though I think compatibility was the issue there.