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Icons of Aviation History: The Soviet MiG-25 Foxbat [1]

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Date: 2023-06-13  

The MiG-25 was designed as a high-speed interceptor against American nuclear bombers.

"Icons of Aviation History" is a diary series that explores significant and historic aircraft.

MiG-25 undergoing restoration at US Air Force Museum photo from US Air Force Museum

By 1960, the US Air Force was desperate for a supersonic strategic bomber that could replace the slow lumbering B-52. The futuristic B-58 Hustler was expensive and had proven to be vulnerable to new Soviet air defenses. So now the Americans made plans for an entirely new six-engined bomber, capable of speeds of Mach 3 (three times the speed of sound) at altitudes above 70,000 feet where Russian SAM missiles could not reach. The new bomber would be called the B-70 Valkyrie.

The prospect sent the Soviet military into a panic: they had nothing in their current or planned inventory that could touch such a bomber. So they launched a series of crash programs to improve their defensive capabilities. Several new SAM missiles went into development, and a new high-speed interceptor/fighter came under consideration.

The proposed new interceptor was designated “Ye-155”. As conceived, it would be capable of Mach 3 flight and would carry new long-range air-to-air missiles. Its sole mission was to take off upon warning, fly as rapidly as it could to intercept the incoming B-70s as far away from their targets as possible, and shoot the bombers down before they could release their stand-off nuclear weapons. The Ye-155 was, in effect, a specialized Valkyrie-killer.

In the end, the US government solved the Valkyrie problem for the Russians. The B-70 project ran into one cost overrun after another and fell behind schedule, and as word leaked out of newer Soviet SAM missiles in the works, there were concerns raised about the vulnerability of the bombers. The Americans canceled the Valkyrie program in 1961.

The new Soviet Ye-155 design, therefore, now found itself without any clear purpose. But the Russians had already invested so much effort into the research that they were reluctant to cancel the program, so they modified their aims and turned the Ye-155 into a more generic point-defense interceptor which could also be utilized as a high-speed reconnaissance platform, as well as pose a potential threat to the new American SR-71 supersonic reconnaissance aircraft.

This presented the Soviet engineers with several difficulties. At such high speeds, the aircraft encounters tremendous friction from the surrounding air, which can heat and distort the plane’s skin. The Americans, in their high-speed SR-71 reconnaissance plane, used titanium metal, which was heat-resistant. The USSR had large supplies of titanium ore available, but they lacked the specialized technology necessary for machining it. So, the Ye-155 designers decided to use titanium only on the areas of the airframe where the frictional heat would be highest, and to use ordinary nickel steel for the rest of the skin.

This, in turn, would mean more adjustments. Steel was significantly heavier than titanium, so the resulting airframe would require powerful engines to drive it at high speeds. The Russians had the Tumansky R-15B-300 engine available, with over 22,000 pounds of thrust, and two of these would be capable of giving the desired performance. But these engines were huge, which would in turn require a very large airframe to hold them. The proposed Ye-155 would therefore be immense for a fighter—it would be 9 feet longer than a World War Two Lancaster heavy bomber and weigh over ten tons more than a B-17 Flying Fortress.

In its role as an interceptor, the new fighter would be equipped with the best Soviet technology. A Smertsch-A radar set was capable of detecting and tracking targets up to 60 miles away, and this was later upgraded with RP-25 radar with look-down, shoot-down capability. The Ye-155 could carry standard Russian heat-seeking or radar-guided air-to-air missiles, but could also be fitted with four of the new AA-6 “Acrid” missiles, which came in both infrared and radar versions. These were the largest non-nuclear air-to-air missiles ever carried by a fighter, measuring some 20 feet long, weighing over 1000 pounds, and delivering a 220-pound warhead to a range of up to 50 miles. The Acrid had been specifically designed to destroy the large American Valkyrie bomber.

The first prototype flights were in September 1964, and quickly set several speed and altitude records. The fighter entered combat service in 1972 and was designated the MiG-25; NATO gave it the codename “Foxbat”. Reconnaissance versions, equipped only with cameras and automated inertial navigation systems, soon appeared. Later, the Soviets introduced specialized ground-attack variants with automatic bombing systems, and an electronic-warfare platform armed with anti-radiation missiles similar to the Wild Weasel F-4 Phantoms being used by the Americans in Vietnam.

At first, Western analysts had little information about the MiG-25, but when they saw the performance capabilities and its immense size, they assumed that the new fighter must at least have had the same air-to-air dogfighting ability as existing NATO aircraft, and therefore the Russians must have had some very advanced technology to get such performance out of such a huge airframe. Afraid that the USSR had pulled significantly ahead in the race for air superiority, the panicked US launched a crash program to develop a new generation of air superiority fighters using the most cutting-edge technology available to counter the perceived threat posed by the Foxbat. This would result in the F-15 Eagle and F-16 Falcon fighters. Fear of the MiG-25’s presumed capabilities also prompted the US to initially forbid any SR-71 flights over Soviet territory.

The West did not get a good look at the Foxbat, however, until September 1976, when a Russian pilot named Viktor Belenko flew his frontline MiG-25P interceptor from a Soviet air base in Vladivostok to Japan and defected. The Japanese returned the aircraft to the USSR, but not until after American technicians had taken two months to systematically dismantle the entire jet and examine each part. What they found was a surprise: the Foxbat was nowhere near as sophisticated as they had thought, and its incredible speed performance had been purchased by sacrificing capability everywhere else. The heavy airframe with its powerful engines was blazing fast when flying in a straight line, but was unmaneuverable and could not tolerate turns more than 4g—not at all suited for air-to-air dogfighting. The Foxbat also had no cannon for close-in air combat. The avionics used old-fashioned vacuum tubes to better withstand the heat of high-speed flight, and the early Smertsch radar system would lose low-level targets in the ground clutter. Most of the frame was crude steel which had been welded by hand, and was riveted together in any areas that would not produce drag. The engines were delicate and wore out quickly, and tended to self-destruct above Mach 2.8 speeds. They also gulped fuel and had a limited range: Belenko had arrived in Japan with barely 30 seconds worth of fuel remaining. The MiG-25 was a sprinting thoroughbred, not a work-horse.

In all, some 1200 Foxbats of various models were produced before the assembly line was closed in 1984. A number of these were exported to a variety of Soviet allies and to Third World neutral countries. Today, an upgraded and modernized version of the Foxbat, known as the MiG-31 Foxhound, remains in service with the Russian Air Force. (The newest version is the MiG-31I.)

During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, MiG-25s in the Iraqi Air Force managed to score a few air victories against UN forces led by the United States. But an intense Coalition air campaign destroyed most of the Iraqi aircraft on the ground.

When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, a number of Iraqi MiG-25s were found buried in the sand near the Al Taqqadum Air Base, where they had apparently been hidden to protect them from air strikes. These were taken back to the US for evaluation, and in 2006 one of these—minus its wings—was given to the US Air Force Museum in Dayton OH, where it is currently undergoing restoration.

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