[HN Gopher] The Soviet Union's Lethal MiG-25 Foxbat: A Business ...
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The Soviet Union's Lethal MiG-25 Foxbat: A Business Jet?
Author : aww_dang
Score : 57 points
Date : 2022-04-08 13:41 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nationalinterest.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (nationalinterest.org)
| jp57 wrote:
| > The MiG-25 was a maintenance hog (not least because pilots and
| ground crews partook of its alcohol de-icing supply, leading to
| the nickname "The Flying Restaurant").
|
| Leave it to the Russians to de-ice with vodka.
| dharmab wrote:
| Was actually methanol, very dangerous:
| https://warontherocks.com/2015/09/boozing-through-the-soviet...
| robocat wrote:
| > Boot polish, for example, would be spread on a hunk of
| bread, which was then toasted. The alcohol in the polish
| would soak into the bread; the polish itself would crisp on
| the surface of the toast. You'd scrape off as much as you
| could, then eat the bread. The same could be done with some
| ethanol-based toothpastes. Alternatively, take that polished
| bread, sit it on top of a glass of water over night, and then
| drink it, as a certain amount of alcohol will have infused
| it.
|
| How much alcohol would just evaporate in these scenarios? To
| me the above sounds unlikely, unless there is something I am
| missing?
| trhway wrote:
| all those are very edge cases. Normally anybody anywhere
| would easily make "braga" - a precursor to moonshine - you
| just need anything with sugar-like carbohydrate (bread,
| sugar, sweet fruits, berries or even cabbage, etc.) and a
| bit of yeast and in like 3 days you have it, a wine-like
| level of alcohol which is already consumable though taste
| isn't for everybody. If you have a couple hours more and
| several pots of varying size and access to a boiling heat
| (gas/electric stove, camp fire, etc.) you can make
| moonshine out of that "braga".
|
| In that Netflix Mars-flight show the most hard to believe
| to me moment was when supposedly experienced Russian
| cosmonaut failed to repair water filter and they were going
| to die because of this - a Russian cosmonaut would have
| known about "braga"/"moonshine" distillation and would have
| been able to build a distilling device out of anything like
| it had been happening across all the USSR back then.
| dharmab wrote:
| You're missing the boredom and desperation of a deployed
| soldier
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| So unlikely true, as they would have just gone to the cantine
| and used real vodka.
| dharmab wrote:
| Likely true for soldiers stationed in Afghanistan who would
| not have had access to alcohol otherwise.
| cellularmitosis wrote:
| Fun fact: this jet was designed to survive an EMP by using vacuum
| tubes, one of which was the 6C33C. This tube was a Russian
| military secret until a Foxbat defected to Japan, who then
| invited the USA to "inspect" (completely disassemble) the plane.
|
| That tube lives on today among HiFi enthusiasts.
|
| https://blog.thetubestore.com/emp-its-np-for-the-6c33c-b-tub...
| rob74 wrote:
| I think the EMP resistance was more of a welcome side effect,
| the main reason for using tubes was probably that tubes were a
| proven technology, while transistors were still new for
| aeronautic applications in the late 1950s/early 1960s when the
| plane was designed.
| hwillis wrote:
| Development started mid 1959, when transistor radios were
| already very widespread. It also used Nuvistors, which were
| only announced in 1959. Cars were being sold with transistor
| radios in 1955. Many planes worldwide at the time (eg
| cancelled BAC TSR-2) were using transistorized avionics, and
| for a cutting-edge jet tried-and-true is less of a priority
| than it would be in a strategic bomber or something.
|
| It seems like a very conscious choice to use _only_ nuvistors
| and tubes in the whole system, particularly for such a
| powerful radar. They were much larger and needed much more
| cooling, which gets harder the faster you 're going.
| wil421 wrote:
| They lacked the capacity to build transistors due to
| communism and scarcity for certain resources/skills. They
| relied on electronics from overseas. Since they had tons of
| vacuum tubes already they could build jets. It was a
| welcomed side effect it was emp resistant.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| America relied on electronics overseas too. They kept
| strong-arming vacuum tubes from Czeckoslovakia during the
| Cold War, they couldn't make them anymore. It's one
| World.
| ben7799 wrote:
| Radar has high current/high voltage implications that may
| very well have favored tubes at that point.
|
| Not the same low power electronics.
|
| If the plane needed to have a high power radio transmitter
| tubes might have been superior at that time too.
|
| It was still pretty early in the history of the transistor
| and active radar and radio transmitters are very different
| than consumer radio receivers.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| This is true, powerful radio transmitters (to the tune of
| tens of kilowatts) used tubes for their final amp in the
| 90s. Perhaps still do even.
| trhway wrote:
| >Western observers were amazed when MiG-25s flew over Israeli
| positions in the Sinai desert in 1973, at a speed of Mach 3.2.
| Only later did they learn that to fly at that speed, the Foxbat's
| engines had to be replaced after each flight.
|
| interesting that USSR kind of missed an opportunity here - it was
| the compressor that got damaged and thus switch to ramjet intake
| bypassing the compressor at those speeds, similar to SR-71, would
| have made that 3.2+ Mach a normal mode for MiG-25 (USSR did have
| 2.5 Mach ramjet missiles so the technology wouldn't be completely
| new)
| dharmab wrote:
| "Mustard" did a video about this as premium content for Nebula
| subscribers: https://nebula.app/videos/mustard-the-
| mig25-business-jet
|
| If you don't have Nebula, check out his main video on the
| fighter: https://youtu.be/W1L1sU0uI0o
| geocrasher wrote:
| That is a surprisingly excellent channel. Great content.
| kingcharles wrote:
| Mustard is top-notch content, just their name is weird.
| rob74 wrote:
| Such military-civilian crossover projects seem to have been
| fairly common in the Soviet Union - one I remembered when reading
| this was the Tu-114, the fastest propeller airliner, which was
| derived from a bomber:
|
| > _The Tu-114 used the basic wing, empennage, landing gear, and
| powerplants of the Tu-95 bomber, mated to a totally new
| pressurized fuselage of much larger diameter._
|
| (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-114)
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The problem is that when you do that you usually end up
| sacrificing something for one case or the other.
|
| In the case of Russian planes, they weren't ever really
| competitive on noise, fuel efficiency, range, or reliability.
| It's why they (at least until recent events) switched
| overwhelmingly to Airbus and Boeing for civilian use.
| jbay808 wrote:
| > Still, while the idea sounds crazy now, it must have seemed
| possible in the heady 1960s when supersonic airliners were the
| holy grail of air travel. It was an era that spawned Europe's
| Concorde and America's abortive SST
|
| Given the context, the Tu-144 seems like a glaring omission here,
| and perhaps was one more reason why the government wasn't
| interested in a supersonic passenger MiG.
| IMSAI8080 wrote:
| "equipped with a passenger compartment providing basic comfort"
|
| You get a seat.
| thrill wrote:
| "Da, comrade, to close the business deal you must think it in
| Russian."
| hackeraccount wrote:
| Excellent call back.
| w0mbat wrote:
| We were making an educational CD-ROM at the BBC in London back in
| the mid 90s and it had a section about planes. It included some
| facts about MIG and their jets, which we needed to verify.
|
| We had a russian programmer on staff and he said "Oh, my cousin
| works for MIG, I'll just ask him.". So he uses his desk phone to
| call his cousin who designs planes or something at the MIG
| factory, they have a short conversation in russian, and he gets
| the info we need.
|
| Later that day, MI5 phones our boss to ask what the hell is going
| on, having intercepted the call. Apparently it looks really bad
| to make an international phone call to a secret russian military
| facility and talk in russian! We tell the MI5 guy on the phone
| the story, which luckily he believes, so it all turned out OK.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| > Apparently it looks really bad to make an international phone
| call to a secret russian military facility and talk in russian!
|
| I doubt MI5 would not be able to find anyone to translate it :)
|
| Also, if they really thought you were a spy they wouldn't have
| called your boss. They're not in the habit of tipping off
| spies. And I don't think there's anything illegal in the story
| anyway. You were getting info from the Russians, not the other
| way around.
|
| Perhaps they were fishing for more info to see if your Russian
| colleague could be recruited to obtain more info?
| lumost wrote:
| exact operational parameters of aircraft are a closely
| guarded secret as the exact numbers allow an opponent to
| train against the craft as well as develop countermeasures
| for it.
|
| I'd imagine that if MI5 saw that a random encyclopedia
| company could verify this info, they would be quite
| interested in getting more.
| w0mbat wrote:
| We were just fact-checking our fairly mundane page about
| MIG the company and the planes they had made, which was
| written from publicly available info at the time. No secret
| plane details were asked for or given.
|
| It's really good to go to primary sources if you can, you
| catch a lot of mistakes that way.
| 7952 wrote:
| I guess the alternative to just phoning up is building an
| operation that would take time and money. In all likelihood
| the boss is honest and wants to protect the company. A lot of
| traditional intelligence did rely on the discretion and help
| of normal people. And in that cold war era spy's were not
| going to go on a murder spree like a terrorist might if
| tipped off.
| renewiltord wrote:
| The page w/ photos linked from the article appears to be
| suffering some traffic slowdowns. Here are the images archived:
|
| https://archive.ph/GEp9S
|
| https://archive.ph/7kpzV
|
| https://archive.ph/8m4AC
|
| And the article itself https://archive.ph/ekjAq
| geocrasher wrote:
| An interesting look at an absolutely _insane_ idea! The Foxbat
| was an interesting design because as the article mentioned,
| flying at Mach 3+ required essentially destroying the engines.
| The Foxbat was supposed to be able to catch the Blackbird, which
| is why it had giant engines and had skin with a high nickel
| content for enduring bursts to high Mach numbers.
|
| Even so, the Blackbird could crank it up to about Mach 3.4- the
| Foxbat didn't have a chance to catch it. One could wonder- did
| the MIG design bureau know this, and suggest the biz jet version
| as a way to save the project? Either way, it was a success for
| the Soviet Union if nothing else as a propaganda machine.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| I seem to remember having read in a German print magazine
| (https://www.fliegerrevue.aero/) that Mig-25's stationed in
| East Germany (or was it Poland?) were supposed (and trained) to
| intercept incoming Blackbirds over the Baltic Sea, which could
| have theoretically worked even if the Mig would be slightly
| slower by using the right "approach path" and coming in behind
| the Blackbird in weapon range for a short time window.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The MiG-25 doesn't need to be faster than the SR-71. It just
| needs to have a certain fraction of the speed to be able to
| intercept it at an angle.
|
| At the high altitudes and speeds the Blackbird would have to go
| to evade a MiG-25, it would have no hope at all of evading a
| missile.
| MegaButts wrote:
| > At the high altitudes and speeds the Blackbird would have
| to go to evade a MiG-25, it would have no hope at all of
| evading a missile.
|
| I thought the SR-71 was faster than missiles?
|
| https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/forget-
| stealth%E2%80%...
| sudosysgen wrote:
| It was too fast for surface-to-air missiles, because by the
| time they got to it's altitude and caught up, they would
| have lost most of their kinetic energy. Of course, modern
| SAMs would be able to hit it.
|
| The Soviet Union at the time had the R-40 series of air-to-
| air missiles, that could got Mach 4.5 at very high
| altitudes if launched by a fast enough, high altitude
| aircraft, which is much higher than the Mach 3.4 the SR-71
| could hope to achieve. The reason it could go that fast is
| because it didn't have to expend its kinetic energy to
| climb much, and because it already started up at Mach 3.
| zip1234 wrote:
| Missiles are faster but start in a far disadvantaged
| position. The missile has to start from 0 speed and 0
| altitude. By the time the missile is at speed and altitude,
| it is too late given the speed of the SR-71.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| SAMs have to start at 0 speed and 0 altitude. An R-40
| launched from a MiG-25 would start at Mach 3+ and 30km
| altitude.
| rtkwe wrote:
| From your own article:
|
| > In effect, by the time it took a SAM system could lock
| onto an SR-71 traveling at Mach 3 and launch a missile, the
| Blackbird was already moving beyond the effective range of
| the missile.
|
| It wasn't purely faster than the missiles, it was fast
| enough to get out of range of radar and tracking for ground
| based missiles and beyond the effective range of the
| missile before it could reach the jet. Fired from an
| already moving jet at altitude missiles would have a longer
| effective range as it would spend less fuel getting to
| speed and gaining altitude.
| wil421 wrote:
| As many other people pointed out a slight change in direction
| would be able to put the SR-71 way off course of a MiG-25
| intercept path.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| No, it would not. The SR-71 is only very slightly
| (~200km/h) faster than the MiG-25, and if it were to make
| any sizeable turn, it would have to slow down
| significantly, perhaps even to a lower speed than it's
| pursuer.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Bit it would also put the SR-71 of course by quite a bit.
| If that happens early enough any hypothetical MiG-25
| mission would have been a success either way.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| Actually, the MiG-25 was designed to catch the XB-70 Valkyrie,
| which is why top speed and cost were the priority requirements.
| Speed because it needed to catch it, and cost because there had
| to be a lot of them built if they wanted to protect the entire
| territory from supersonic nuclear bombers. And it should've
| been able to catch the supposed mach 3.1 speed of the XB-70.
| The Valkyrie was cancelled of course, but the Soviet Union kept
| using (and selling) the jet.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Didn't the XB-70 become the B-1?
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| Kinda not really? The XB-70 cancellation left a hole (next
| generation strategic bomber) that was eventually filled by
| the B-1. But the initial B-1(A) was envisioned to be
| somewhat lower speed, but still fast (Mach 2), and
| specifically a low altitude penetrator (XB-70 was a high
| speed, high altitude plane). It then got reworked into the
| B-1B which is uh... weird role. It's even slower than the
| B-1A, somewhat more stealthy, and really supposed to be
| used as a cruise missile truck. Arguable how much value the
| B-1B really provided.
| rjsw wrote:
| The B-1B seems to be a really good smart bomb truck.
| geocrasher wrote:
| Oh, my memory did not serve me well in this case. Thanks for
| the correction! The XB-70 is an amazing aircraft.
| quercusa wrote:
| The remaining XB-70 would be reason enough to visit the US AF
| Museum (Dayton, Ohio) - it's a stunning plane. That said, the
| museum is easily worth two days.
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| Foxbat project predated Soviet knowledge of the Blackbird. High
| speed, high altitude intercept was a role they anticipated
| needing based on American bomber evolution (B-58 and planned
| B-70) and extrapolating from U-2.
|
| The Foxbat doesn't necessarily need to be as quick as its
| targets. In one way you could imagine the Foxbat as a gigantic
| first stage for missiles. Soviet missiles were technically
| capable of outspeeding even the Blackbird, but the challenge
| was the time and energy it took to get to altitude. High speed,
| high altitude interceptors could help mitigate those problems.
| ben7799 wrote:
| It's more complex than this though. At those speeds there is
| no margin for error for the intercepting aircraft and
| missile.
|
| There are lots of accounts from SR-71 pilots about this. At
| Mach 3 slight changes in course result in large changes in
| position very quickly. Mach 3 at SR-71 altitudes is > 30
| miles per minute. The pilots could make course changes that
| would put the plane off the original intercept by miles
| within seconds and it was very hard for a missile to adjust
| for that, missiles run out of fuel very quickly and have to
| burn their energy to change course. And they weren't very
| smart in the cold war.
|
| The Soviets never managed to intercept an SR-71 even to scare
| it off by most accounts. The Swedes apparently claimed to
| have done it but only because they were friendlies and the
| SR-71 wasn't changing course to evade them.
| netjiro wrote:
| The Swedes also "almost" developed a small fast business
| jet from a military airplane. The SAAB 105 "SK 60" military
| trainer had a development branch for a five seat civilian
| model [1]. I recall hearing it got cut sometime around the
| oil crisis back then.
|
| It is a quite good plane, and surprisingly silent.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_105
| sudosysgen wrote:
| There is ample margin of error. You forget that _both_
| airplanes are going at Mach 3+. The SR-71 might be going at
| Mach 3.4 and the MiG-25 at Mach 3.2, and this difference in
| speed is not anywhere near sufficient to prevent the
| interceptor from compensating.
|
| >The pilots could make course changes that would put the
| plane off the original intercept by miles within seconds
| and it was very hard for a missile to adjust for that,
| missiles run out of fuel very quickly and have to burn
| their energy to change course. And they weren't very smart
| in the cold war.
|
| No, that's not true. By the time the missile is fired, at a
| distance of, say, 30km, the SR-71 has anywhere between 10
| seconds and 2 minutes before being hit.
|
| From the SR-71 flight manual, we can find a turning radius
| of 105 nautical miles at Mach 3.2, and extrapolate to 140
| nm at Mach 3.4. That means a 259km turn radius, and a
| 1700km turning circumference, meaning that every degree of
| rotation translates to, at 1180m/s, _4 entire seconds_
|
| So, the missile would have a very easy job. At a turn rate
| of 1 degree every 4 seconds, even in pure pursuit ("not
| very smart"), the missile would not have to expend much
| energy at all.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Indeed, if launched at a high enough altitude and velocity,
| something like the R-40 would have been significantly faster
| than the SR-71 at over Mach 4. The other part of the equation
| is that at high speeds such an aircraft would be an easy
| target - any serious evasive action would require it to slow
| down unrecoverably, or simply destroy it. Meanwhile, the
| massive heat signature would mean any use of ECM or stealth
| characteristics would be unlikely to succeed, as each plane
| carried both radar and infrared versions of these missiles.
|
| Most likely, unless the Soviet air defences didn't manage to
| detect the SR-71, it would have been shot down, which is
| presumably why it never overflew the USSR.
| zip1234 wrote:
| The reason it didn't overfly was political. The Gary Powers
| incident being the main initiator of that policy. It
| overflew Vietnam and had loads of missiles shot at it by
| Soviet SAMs with Soviet SAM operators. Mainly it flew too
| fast and too high for those to hit it.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| As far as I'm aware, the MiG-25 is not a surface-to-air
| missile. There were no MiG-25s in Vietnam either.
|
| The SR-71 was fast enough to avoid surface-to-air
| missiles, but it was much too slow to avoid the air-to-
| air missiles carried by a MiG-25.
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