The author has collected the opinions of American experts on the possible modernization of the Soviet MiG-31 fighter. Once upon a time, this machine terrified the pilots of a high-altitude US reconnaissance aircraft. Today, a high altitude flight will be useful to MIG again, but this time to destroy the enemy's military space forces.
There is a famous Russian saying: "Everything new is well-forgotten old." As an example, the MiG-31 fighter can be cited here. This seemingly outdated workhorse, which is 40 years old, can get a second or even a third life.
The MiG-31, which in the 1980s carried out tasks to chase American SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft in the skies over the Soviet Arctic at a colossal altitude of 19 kilometers, was officially redesigned and became a means of delivering a hypersonic Dagger missile, thanks to which, according to Vladimir Putin, Russia will return to the global arms race.
But there is little intrigue in this. In fact, military aviation experts have been extremely excited over the past two years by a photo posted online by unofficial spies who like to poke their noses everywhere. On it, the MiG-31 flies with a mysterious missile, which in appearance is even larger than the Dagger, although the Dagger itself cannot be called small. It weighs half a ton, and can fly almost 2,000 kilometers.
Observers have suggested that this new and larger rocket is designed to be launched into low Earth orbit, where satellites of the United States and its allies fly. In April 2020, British scientist Bart Hendricks published a hypothesis based on an analysis of Russian military contracts and harsh official statements in the online edition of The Space Review. His conclusion is that the MiG-31 is actively involved in the implementation of the Kremlin's secret plan to combat satellites called "Burevestnik". For reference: the petrel is a bird that despises storms, which Maxim Gorky immortalized in his epic poem written in 1901.
Why did the choice fall on the MiG-31? First of all, it's big. You could even say it's huge. For the first time it took to the air in 1981, having a mass of 42,000 kilograms, that is, one and a half times more than the Soviet contemporary Su-27. He had four R-33 missiles, which are only 10 kilograms lighter than the Dagger. The MiG-31 is also one of the fastest aircraft today. It performs cruising flight at a speed of M = 2.4 (this is 2,960 km / h), and during the pursuit of a target it can reach speeds above M = 2.8. Its fuel range was 1,250 kilometers, and then, from the mid-1980s, it began refueling in the air.
The MiG-31 achieves this speed due to the fact that it flies at a huge altitude of 20 kilometers, where air resistance is minimized. Closer to the surface of the earth, it flies slower, but still develops a speed of M = 1.2. Its R-33 missiles can hit targets (theoretically) at a distance of 300 kilometers. Thanks to this combination of speed and deadly firepower, the Foxhound (according to the NATO codification) at that time won the respect and authority of a likely enemy from the North Atlantic Alliance. A group of four MiG-31s was enough to drive away an annoying adversary from a 900-kilometer section of the Soviet border.
Again, this is theoretical. No one has ever checked.
The main disadvantage of the MiG-31 was the lack of versatility. It was designed to prevent an air attack on Soviet territory, which was unlikely even in the tense 80s, and allegedly did not allow American SR-71s into Soviet airspace. But with the advent of multi-purpose fighters such as the Su-27 and their American contemporaries F-14 and F-15, the MiG-31 began to look decidedly narrowly functional against their background. "It looks more like a surface-to-air missile than an airplane," says Michael Kofman, who heads the Russian research program at the Center for Naval Analysis, a Washington-based think tank.
Being too large and clumsy for use in air combat and in local conflicts, after the end of the Cold War, the MiG-31 remained unclaimed, while other Russian weapons began to earn money for the country by going for export. For four decades, the MiG-31 has not made a single launch in a combat situation - and has not earned a single ruble for the Kremlin due to export supplies.
Today's conflicts are a completely different story, since "blinding" the enemy in the sky has become the most important task to achieve superiority on the battlefield. Shooting down satellites from fighter jets is also not a new idea. The US Air Force successfully did this at least once during the "star Wars" days in the 1980s, destroying a false target with an ASM-135A missile launched from an F-15 aircraft. In response, the Soviets intended to adopt a modified MiG-31 with a 79M6 missile. This aircraft passed several flight tests, but then perestroika came, and all these plans were put under the carpet. According to Russian propaganda, the Dagger rocket has a range of 1,930 kilometers, which corresponds to the maximum altitude of the satellite in low Earth orbit. Therefore, it can be stated with a certain degree of confidence that the huge rocket X in Zhukovsky is a relative of the Dagger, converted to strike in space.
If someone is aiming at orbital objects located at such a phenomenal distance, using a mobile platform located at an altitude of 20 kilometers provides significant advantages. Launching a rocket from such a height saves a huge amount of energy (and money). Equally important, the MiG-31 can destroy satellites 24 hours a day and seven days a week, says Todd Harrison, who works as director of the Aerospace security project at the Washington Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Ground-based systems have to wait for the moment when the satellite will fly within their reach," he explains. "Launching from an airplane provides more opportunities."
Many of the most important satellites of the United States and NATO make an orbital flight beyond the reach of the Dagger and the X rocket, while in geostationary or medium Earth orbit (where the GPS satellite constellation is located). But even in low-Earth orbit, there are many satellites that need to be closer to the theater of operations in order to get high-resolution images of it, says Kofman. Troops on the battlefield, as well as ordinary citizens using the home Internet, are very dependent on such satellite communications today. "We are very dependent on space-based systems, as they help to direct high-precision weapons, provide real-time tracking of targets, and this is extremely important in modern conflict," he notes.
The Russian military will have to work hard and spend a huge amount of rubles before the MiG-31 can solve the tasks of neutralizing these targets. But the ability of this aircraft to carry heavy new missiles on board has given this aging machine another reprieve in the execution of the death sentence. In 2015, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced its intention to modernize 130 such aircraft by 2030, bringing them to the level of the latest modification of the MiG-31BM. So, this monster keeps growling.
By the end of the 1970s, internal stagnation and decline began in the USSR. But he had both the will and considerable means to keep up with the United States in the powerful arms race of superpowers. "The Soviet Union collapsed at the peak of its technological might," Kofman notes.
The immediate accelerator of the MiG-31 creation process was the fact that the West took possession of the MiG-25 predecessor aircraft in 1976, when pilot Viktor Belenko flew to Japan and requested political asylum there. Belenko revealed many secrets about the disadvantages of this car, as well as its strengths. Analysts of the free world were awed by the incomprehensible speed of this aircraft, which was M = 3. But it turned out that it was nothing more than a show. "At a speed of M = 2.8, the engines overheated, and four air-to-air missiles under the wings of the car began to vibrate dangerously," says a historical narrative on the Russia Beyond the Headlines website . (And the windshield of the plane froze because the technicians drank ethyl alcohol, which prevented such freezing).
The MiG-31 was prepared for flight tests three years after these revelations, adding major improvements. His engines had less thrust, but they began to work much more reliably. The body of the aircraft was lengthened to accommodate the second crew member, who was engaged in navigation devices and weapons. But the most impressive innovation was the Zaslon radar, which was the first radar with a passive scanning antenna array mounted on a fighter. At the screening in 1991, when the peaceful atmosphere gave the MiG-31 the opportunity to appear in Paris at an air show, the Zaslon radar aroused the envy of everyone who met it. Test pilot Valery Menitsky wrote about this in his memoirs.
The Zaslon could track six targets simultaneously (although the MiG-31 carried only four missiles on board). Most importantly, the radar provided detection and destruction of targets in the lower hemisphere using R-33 missiles, which were installed on the MiG-31 to combat targets at lower altitudes, say, with cruise missiles. The MiG-25 could launch missiles only upwards.
© RIA Novosti Grigory Sysoev / Go to the Photo bank of the MiG-31 multi-purpose fighter with the Dagger hypersonic missile
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| A multi-purpose MiG-31 fighter with a hypersonic Dagger missile. |
| Source: © RIA Novosti / Grigory Sysoev |
However, the rush to create the MiG-31 and exorbitant ambitions took their toll. Menitsky almost died during a test flight when everything went wrong. The fuel gauge mysteriously pointed to zero, Menitsky made an emergency landing in Zhukovsky without traction at a speed of 470 kilometers per hour, destroyed the concrete fence on the runway and drove more than one and a half kilometers until he stopped. After getting out of the car alive and unharmed, Menitsky and his navigator nervously lit a cigarette, but an alarmed firefighter snatched the lighted cigarettes from their mouths. The fact is that the plane did not run out of fuel, and they were standing right in a puddle of kerosene.
Menitsky's immediate superior, chief MiG test pilot Alexander Fedotov, was less fortunate. Russian historian Andrey Simonov wrote about this after the Glasnost era. On the modified MiG-31, which Fedotov tested in 1984, the fuel system failed again. Already in the first minutes of the flight, the sensors showed that all the tanks were empty. Fedotov also began returning to the airfield to make an emergency landing without engines. But in reality, the plane had 12 and a half tons of fuel in its tanks. With such a huge weight and in a state of free fall, the car exploded upon impact with the ground. Fedotov, who has tested all MiG models since the early 1960s and received the highest award - the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, tried to parachute out, but did not survive. The co-pilot Valery Zaitsev died with him.
The MiG-31 did not deserve due respect for its breakthrough engineering solutions, and even the death of his friend did not help, Menitsky complained. From the very beginning, he was eclipsed by the Su-27, about which commentators at military parades "crucified for six to seven minutes," and the MiG-31 was given no more than half a sentence. "Some executives from the Sukhoi company and their lobbyists from the Ministry of Defense supported the campaign launched by the chief designer, who brought the Su-27's image to shine to the detriment of the MiG-31," Menitsky was indignant in his memoirs.
There is some truth in this, says Professor Ilya Grinberg, who teaches mechanical engineering technology at the State University of New York at Buffalo and defended his thesis in the field of civil engineering at Moscow State University. Legendary designers Artyom Mikoyan and Mikhail Gurevich, who gave the MiG the letters "M" and "G", died in the 1970s. Their successor Rostislav Belyakov "believed that MiG products would prove themselves." But the boss of Sukhoi Design Bureau, Mikhail Simonov, "was a master of fraud and lobbying." But the lighter and more agile Su-27 was better suited for the new era that began after the Cold War. Russia exports this aircraft and its Su-35 modification to almost a dozen countries, and has also sold China a license to manufacture its J-11 counterpart.
But there was one task that only the MiG-31 could handle: to chase the SR-71 along the endless borders of the Soviet Union and keep the Blackbird at a respectful distance from Soviet airspace. The CIA began developing this reconnaissance aircraft at the famous Lockheed Skunk Works company after the Soviets shot down U-2 and Francis Gary Powers from an allegedly inaccessible height of 19 kilometers in 1960. At first, the SR-71 flew in the skies of Vietnam as part of the US Air Force, and in 1976 switched to tracking Soviet warships, flying along the northern route from Mildenhall Air Base in Britain and along the "Far Eastern loop" from the California base Beale.
The Soviet air defenses could not even hope that they would be able to shoot down the SR-71 from the ground. The new aircraft could fly and take pictures at an altitude of 24 kilometers or more, developing an unheard-of speed of M = 3.3. "This was a completely different threat," says Greenberg. The SR-71 could fly anywhere with impunity.
Well, not completely unpunished if the MiG-31 was chasing after him. He was inferior to the American from three to four kilometers in height and about 560 kilometers per hour in speed. But the interacting squadrons could well keep the flying SR-71 flying alone within the range of their missiles, especially since the Americans followed more or less the same route in order to better observe the reconnaissance facilities. "If the SR-71 had violated Soviet airspace, a combat missile would have been launched," pilot Mikhail Myagyi recalled, as described in his book Blackbird. Beyond Secret Flights" (Lockheed Blackbird: Beyond the Secret Missions) was written by Paul Crickmore. "This plane had practically no chance to get away from the P-33." The pilots of the SR-71 never tried to verify the boastful statements of the Mild. Periodically, they "tickled" the border, but never crossed it, the Soviet commander recalled.
So, at the last stage of the Cold War during the Reagan years, the world's fastest airplane staged a secret supersonic ballet twice a week in the sky over the harsh Novaya Zemlya and the White Sea. Soft once got so close to an enemy aircraft that he was able to see it with the naked eye, saving on printing data from the black box. "An inversion trail at an altitude of 22-23 thousand meters is very rare," he wrote. - But the weather was great that day, and the air was clear. I passed under the reconnaissance plane, it was higher than us by 3 000 - 4 000 meters, and I even managed to see his black silhouette."
Among other things, the pursuit of the SR-71 gave the MiG-31 crews, scattered across isolated and joyless bases from Murmansk to Kamchatka, a sense of their own need and usefulness, which bordered on the delusion of the enormity of the task being performed. In his memoirs, Menitsky imagined that his colleagues from the US Air Force lived in fear. "The appearance of the MiG-31 shocked the pilots flying the SR-71," he wrote. - They reported to all their superiors that they were experiencing psychological stress from flying along the Russian borders, and asked to change routes in the Far East. Soon these flights stopped."
More objective historians have a different opinion. It is not even clear whether the American pilots knew that they were being chased by MiG-31s. This is stated by Valery Romanenko, a Ukrainian expert on Russian military aviation, who helped Creekmore conduct research while writing a book about the SR-71. When removing the Blackbird from service in 1989, American generals referred to the high cost of the machine, as well as the appearance of intelligence information from satellites.
Having lost its main enemy and the generous financing of the Soviet military-industrial complex, which collapsed two years later, the MiG-31 faced serious difficulties. According to available information, China in 1992 thought about buying 24 cars, intending to copy them at home, but then decided to buy the Su-27. It was another blow to Menitsky and other committed MIG fans. Valery Romanenko once talked with Nigerian officials from the arms procurement department who wanted to buy a MiG-31 to perform long-range radar detection tasks. He talked them out of it. According to Romanenko, the number of active regiments flying the MiG-31 has been reduced from seven to two. Of this fleet of aircraft, 14 cars crashed and burned down between 1995 and 2016, as evidenced by official reports verified by Greenberg and Romanenko. However, in all cases, the pilots, thank God, remained alive.
The first hints of the return of the MiG-31 appeared in 2009, as evidenced by Bart Hendricks. Then the commander of the Russian Air Force announced that this machine was "being upgraded to perform the same tasks in space as in Soviet times." Until the beginning of 2017, there was almost no new information on this subject. And suddenly another high-ranking military commander declared on the pages of the military publication Zvezda that the new missile installed on the MiG-31BM "will be able to hit targets in near space."
The intrigue intensified in March 2018, when Putin announced the existence of the "Dagger". In July of the same year, the TASS news agency announced that Mig-31s with new hypersonic missiles had conducted exercises, and called these aircraft "the main carriers of the Kinzhal hypersonic missile." In September, a sensational photo of a MiG-31 with an X missile under its belly appeared, which was published by a Russian paparazzi using the ShipSash tag.
Do these scattered clues mean that the MiG-31 will become a key component of the military arsenal of a resurgent Russia due to the fact that the battlefield is moving into low Earth orbit? Space will certainly become a theater of war if the major powers get into a fight again, and destroying satellites in this case will be quite simple. After all, their orbits are constant, and it will be very difficult for them to dodge attacks.
Another question is what is the benefit of destroying an enemy satellite.
As part of the American counteraction program in space, conducted in the 1980s, only one test satellite was destroyed. The reason is the large amount of space debris after the impact, which can cause damage to any of the 1,000-plus spacecraft currently in low-Earth orbit, Harrison says. "Air-based anti-satellite weapons are a serious and noteworthy threat, and I'm not sure the Russians will use them in this orbit." He believes that the future belongs to lasers that temporarily blind satellites without blowing them to pieces. Directed energy weapons can also be used covertly, since the victimized country will not want to carry out an attack openly. "If we say something, it will be an acknowledgement of the effectiveness of the attack," Harrison explains. "Therefore, most likely, no one will know anything."
Russia may also try to blind the enemy by using the ground-based anti-satellite missile system Nudol, located at the Plesetsk cosmodrome. Since 2014, Russia has conducted at least 10 tests of this system.
If Russia really wants to disable an enemy satellite, it will be able to do so without a 40-year-old high-altitude aircraft. But it would be a mistake to underestimate the Foxhound. It is appropriate to recall the Russian proverb once again: "Everything new (and in this case dangerous) is well-forgotten old."
