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Belenko had been a respected pilot with the Soviet Air Defence Forces. But by 1976, he wanted to leave the Soviet Union. At the time, he was based near Vladivostok, as part of the 513th Fighter Regiment, 11th Air Army. The unit lived at Chuguyevka Airbase. It’s worth noting that the Soviet Air Defence Forces were a separate aerial branch from the Soviet Air Force, and that its members were an elite and trusted band. As such, Belenko, too, would be trusted. So much so, that when his blood pressure was elevated on the morning he planned to escape, the...

Moscow [Russia], November 25 (ANI/Sputnik): The combat effectiveness of Russia's MiG-31 interceptors will triple after repair and upgrade, representatives of the Sokol aircraft plant reported to the Deputy Defense Minister Aleksey Krivoruchko. On Thursday, Krivoruchko, during a working trip to Nizhny Novgorod, visited the Sokol aircraft plant, where he examined the production facilities of the enterprise, checked the progress of repair and modernization of MiG-31 fighters, and also held a meeting on the implementation of the state defence order. The overhaul makes it possible to achieve practically trouble-free operation of the aircraft in service, the plant's representative said. "And the...

qi pilot with the MiG-25PD that Lt. Dawoud flew on the night of Jan. 17, 1991. A.T. photo via Tom Cooper On the morning of Jan. 17, 1991 — the first night of Operation Desert Storm — the U.S. Navy suffered its first loss of the conflict, when Lt. Cmdr Scott Speicher was shot down in his McDonnell F/A-18C Hornet, bureau number 163484, around 100 miles west of Baghdad. For years, it was unclear whether Speicher was dead or a prisoner of war. Politically-motivated changes in the pilot’s official status significantly contributed to the resulting controversy. The day after the shoot-down, the military declared...

On 6 September 1976, an aircraft appears out of the clouds near the Japanese city of Hakodate, on the northern island of Hokkaido. It’s a twin-engined jet, but not the kind of short-haul airliner Hakodate is used to seeing. This huge, grey hulk sports the red stars of the Soviet Union. No-one in the West has ever seen one before. The jet lands on Hakodate’s concrete-and-asphalt runway. The runway, it turns out, is not long enough. The jet ploughs through hundreds of feet of earth before it finally comes to rest at the far end of the airport. The pilot...

When the F-15 was created, it was created to be a pure air-to-air fighter, with the philosophy of “not a pound for air-to-ground” guiding designers. So how did Israel end up turning their F-15s into deadly long-range multi-role strike aircraft well before the F-15E Strike Eagle became a reality? Here’s how. In Need Of A Game Changing Fighter Israel’s love affair with the F-15 began out of the need to procure a fighter that could trump the increasingly complex fighters that surrounding Arab states were amassing from Russian and French sources. Both the F-14 Tomcat and the F-15 Eagle were...

Soviets planned to turn a legendary fighter into a passenger plane The Soviet MiG-25 Foxbat was many things. An interceptor, reconnaissance aircraft and a fast, high-altitude, record-setting bogeyman that scared the pants off Western air forces in the 1970s. But a MiG-25 business jet? Coffee, tea or vodka served by an Aeroflot stewardess at 60,000 feet, the Earth below hurtling past your window at three times the speed of sound? Forget being imprisoned in cattle class on a Boeing 747, your knees jammed into your face for eight hours. Think New York to London in two. That’s traveling in style....

Mig-25 defection: How a Soviet Pilot Brought a Secret Warplane To The West Viktor Belenko, is a Mig-25 pilot who defected to the United States via Japan on Sept. 6, 1976. The then Lieutenant Belenko was a pilot with the 513th Fighter Regiment, 11th Air Army, based in Chuguyevka, Primorsky Krai, in the east of the country. When he brought his Mig-25 “Foxbat” to Hakodate he gave the Western intelligence officers the opportunity to give a first close look at one of the most secret airplanes of those years: a supersonic interceptor featuring a powerful radar, four air-to-air missiles and...

The four MiG-31E fighter jets that Russia will deliver to Syria will be without offensive capabilities and used for intelligence gathering alone, according to reports that reached Jerusalem from Moscow this week. According to these reports, Russia did not sell more planes to the Syrians for the simple reason that Damascus does not have the ability to pay for any more. The reports said that two of the planes would be operational, and the other two would be purchased for "cannibalization" purposes, amid a Syrian realization that Russia would not provide effective "after-sale service," and that these planes would be...

Pakistan would have attacked India in 1998: Gohar Ayub Khan Apr 18th, 2009 Islamabad, April 18 (IANS) Pakistan would have launched a full-fledged air attack had India attempted to prevent its 1998 nuclear tests, maverick politician and former foreign minister Gohar Ayub Khan says in a new book. In the book titled “Testing Times as Foreign Minister”, Khan claims that in the event of an attack by India on the nuclear test site at Chagai in Balochistan, the Pakistan Air Force would have launched attacks on pre-designated targets in India, The News reported Saturday. Pakistan had conducted its nuclear tests...

Foxbats Did Fly over Dimona August 24, 2007 In their sensational historical detective work, Foxbats over Dimona: The Soviets' Nuclear Gamble in the Six-Day War (Yale University Press, 2007), Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez have challenge the widely-accepted idea that the Six Day War happened without anyone wanting it. Instead, they present a theory that the U.S.S.R. instigated the war as a way preemptively to destroy the Israeli nuclear facilities. I was drawn to the argument (in an analysis at "The Soviets' Six-Day War) but dared not quite fully endorse it, wondering if all the evidence would hold up under...

Russia confirms Soviet sorties over Dimona in '67 By DAVID HOROVITZ The chief spokesman of the Russian Air Force, Col. Aleksandr V. Drobyshevsky, has confirmed in writing for the first time that it was Soviet pilots, in the USSR's most-advanced MiG-25 "Foxbat" aircraft, who flew highly-provocative sorties over Israel's nuclear facility at Dimona in May 1967, just prior to the Six Day War. Gideon Remez and Isabello Ginor, who co-wrote the recent book Foxbats over Dimona, which asserts that the Soviet Union deliberately engineered the war to create the conditions in which Israel's nuclear program could be destroyed, on Thursday...

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...

An Iraqi jet, an advanced Russian MiG-25 Foxbat, was found in August 2003 buried in the sand after an informant tipped off U.S. troops. The MiG was dug out of a massive sand dune near the Al Taqqadum airfield by U.S. Air Force recovery teams. The MiG was reportedly one of over two dozen Iraqi jets buried in the sand, like hidden treasure, waiting to be recovered at a later date. Contrary to what some in the major media have reported, not all the jets found were from the Gulf War-era. The Russian-made MiG-25 Foxbat being recovered by U.S. Air...

On 6 July 2003, the US troops deployed to Iraq found a large number (between 30 and 40) of Iraqi Air Force (IrAF) aircraft, dug in into the sand near the al-Taqaddum AB, some 250km west of Baghdad.

Iraqi aircraft 'buried in desert' The planes might never fly again US forces in Iraq have discovered dozens of Iraqi fighter aircraft buried in the desert, US officials have said. A Pentagon official told the Associated Press news agency that several MiG-25s and Su-25 attack planes were found hidden at al-Taqqadum air base west of Baghdad. The planes were unearthed by teams hunting for alleged weapons of mass destruction. The discovery comes as America's weapons inspector in Iraq say they are making solid progress in the search for banned weapons the US says Saddam Hussein was hiding. Poking out of...

PRINCE SULTAN AIRBASE, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - U.S. warplanes were within two minutes of firing at an Iraqi Mig-25 fighter jet when it sneaked into Saudi airspace in an intensifying cat-and-mouse game between Western and Iraqi warplanes, U.S. air force pilots say. The daring probe on Thursday by Iraq's fastest warplane -- a move apparently rarely attempted since the 1991 Gulf War -- indicated Baghdad was willing to take risks to test U.S.-led forces rapidly building up planes and troops in Saudi Arabia. "He came 15-20 miles into Saudi airspace and went nose-to-nose with us at 70,000 feet," F-15C...