Let's face it: Soviet fighters were ugly, and MiGs are probably the most disgusting to look at, says the author of Air & Space. He talks about how the Russians have modified the MiG-29 for years and how the pilots of this fighter have repeatedly shamed Western opponents. Today, Russia offers for export a new MiG-35 based on it.
A hornet's nest has grown in the nose of the MiG-29 (Fulcrum according to the NATO classification), standing near the building of the National Military Air and space intelligence center at Wright-Paterson Air Force Base in Ohio. The tires on its raised wheels cracked and tore. Bird droppings have dried on the fairing. The aircraft gives the impression of a war trophy, flaunted like a head on a spike. In a sense, this is the trophy taken as a result of the victory in the Cold War. This is one of seventeen MiG-29s purchased by the American government in the former Soviet Republic of Moldova in 1997. We bought the planes so that they would not be sold to Iran. The weak confederation that replaced the Soviet Union had no way to stop this deal, which was another act of humiliation after the collapse of the USSR. "Any military department in any country would be seriously upset if the enemy had the opportunity to study and test its most modern weapons," says Sergei Isaev, a Moscow aviation historian. — I wonder if the White House and the Pentagon would be happy if, for example, Mexico tried to sell its UH-60L Blackhawk helicopters to the Russian Federation?"
Such an acquisition also gave Western analysts, some of whom worked in the gloomy building of this national intelligence center, a chance to study the fighter they had been looking at from afar for 20 years. When the MiG-29 first appeared in 1977, it, like its distant ancestor MiG-15, became an amazing revelation: it turns out that the Soviets are catching up with the United States in the field of aviation technology!
American intelligence first learned about the new Soviet aircraft from satellite photographs taken in November 1977, around the same time the fighter made its first flight. "It was enough to look at its size and shape to understand: The Soviets are designing an analogue of our F-16 and F/A-18, says Benjamin Lambeth, who wrote the book Russia's Air Power in Crisis in 1999, and at the end In the 1970s, he worked as a military analyst at the RAND Strategic Research Center in Santa Monica, California. "Of all the numerous intelligence sources and means of collecting electronic and other information, the American government knew quite a lot about this aircraft from the very beginning, and it was clear to us that something had to be done." The Air Force has begun to design stealth technologies and electronic systems for tracking and targeting several aircraft at once. In 1981, the leadership of the Air Force issued the first official application for the development of next-generation fighter technology — a promising tactical fighter that would eventually become an aircraft dubbed the F-22 Raptor.
In subsequent years, the scattered information that was collected about the MiG-29 formed a more understandable picture, because it became possible to study 21 Moldovan MiGs. From October 20 to October 27, 1997, these MiGs (14 front-line fighters of the "C" model, six older "A" models and one two-seat aircraft of the "B" modification) were disassembled in Moldova and sent in parts to the national intelligence center in Dayton, where they were carefully studied at the facility for the operation of foreign military equipment. What happened next is not reported by the National Military Air and Space Intelligence Center. The center's public relations officer, James Lunsford, says: "We don't want our opponents to know what we know." It is possible that several MiGs that were in airworthy condition were sent for testing to Edwards Air Force Base in California. At least one specimen ended up in Nevada at Nellis Air Force Base. There he was sent to a training center, which the pilots call a "menagerie for young animals." The center has a whole exhibition of foreign-made military equipment, which is on display there for young intelligence officers to familiarize themselves with it. As for the rest of the cars and parts, the data about them is classified, with the exception of the first model "A", which got into the national Museum of the US Air Force.
Inside the museum, its curator Jeff Duford invites me to explore the Cold War gallery, which is located on almost four thousand square meters of exhibition space. To begin with, he shows me the Checkpoint Charlie exhibit. This newly acquired NASA Space Shuttle crew compartment simulator occupies the entire left side of the hangar, pushing the planes to the right, where they stand like a prefabricated hodgepodge. There, the second MiG-29 from Ohio stands nose to nose with an unattractive Fairchild Republic A-10 attack aircraft nicknamed Warthog (warthog, ugly, bogeyman — approx. transl.).
Dufford removes the guardrail tape, and we come closer to inspect the plane more closely. Unlike the Mig-29, which is rotting near the intelligence center, this copy is remarkably restored and luxuriates in comfort with climate control, enjoying the soft light of the lamps and shining with fresh paint, which feels like satin.
Let's face it: the Soviet fighters were ugly, and the MiGs were probably the most disgusting to look at. The MiG-17 and Mig-19 aircraft of the Vietnam War are a utilitarian tube with wings. They were followed by the deadly MiG-21, which is a rational sculpture of corners and a cone. But the Mig-29 is completely different. This machine, beautiful in its streamlining, resembles its two-keeled contemporary with flat sides of the F-15 Eagle no more than a ballerina from the Bolshoi Theater of a boxer from a street ring. When the gallery is ready, these two icons of aerial combat will be displayed together, says Dufford. Or Fulcrum will flaunt itself with its more sleek rival F-16. Dufford, along with his colleagues, is thinking over a plan to place the exhibits in such a way that the MiG-29 looks like a worthy opponent, which it is.
"We were very lucky to get this plane," says Dufford, running his hand over the right air intake of the MiG-29. — When he joined us, he had Moldovan Air Force paint on him. Everything was done very roughly. When the repair and restoration work began, the workers, cleaning the surface, hoped to find the flight numbers (the equivalent of a serial number in the Air Force). During the sweep, the number 08 clearly appeared."
After learning the number, Dufford realized that this MiG was not only one of the first combat vehicles of this brand located at the Air Force base in Kubinka near Moscow, but also one of the first aircraft shown outside the Soviet Union. "Some details helped to clarify its origin," says Dufford, "Plates for reflecting flames.... There are only six holes, and this indicates that our aircraft is one of the first models." Another clue was the way the numbers were applied. Unlike the US Air Force aircraft, where the size rules are very strict, up to a millimeter, "on Russian aircraft, the distance between the numbers may be different," Dufford notes. He carefully studied the MiG-29 images taken in 1986 at the aviation exhibition in Finland in Kuopio-Rissala. "It's like fingerprints. Looking at the distance between the numbers and their location, I was convinced that this car was exhibited in Finland."
In 1986, Jukka Hoffren was a photographer in the Finnish Air Force who worked at the Tikkakoski Air Base, where the Finnish Air Force Academy is located. Fascinated by the new MiG, Hoffren went to the Kuopio-Rissala airshow, where the international debut of this car was to take place. Until 1986, foreigners saw the fighter jet only on fuzzy satellite images published in Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine. "This whole airshow was built around the MiG-29," Hoffren told me by email. The Soviets were interested in selling their new aircraft to the Finnish Air Force, which had a very diverse fleet of vehicles, which arose due to the complex politics of post-war Finland, regulated by various treaties. The air Force included Soviet MiG-21 bis, Swedish Saab Draken, and British Hawk manufactured by British Aerospace. According to Hoffren, in comparison with the highly combat-ready MiG-21, which was built in Georgian Tbilisi so that the construction method can be called "hammer finishing", the new MiG was an amazing machine. "If the MiG-21 can be called a missile with wings, then the MiG-29 was a very maneuverable aircraft in aerial combat, and it seemed that it was in no way inferior, and maybe even superior to the F-16."
It was much more informative to see not a photo, but a real car, which Hoffren made in Finland; but the plane can only really be recognized in flight. And in December 1989, Lambeth got the opportunity. On December 15, at the Kubinka base in disgusting weather conditions, he became the first Western analyst to fly a MiG-29, as well as the first Western representative after the end of World War II to be invited to take off in Soviet airspace on a combat aircraft (a Canadian fighter pilot flew a MiG in August 1989 at the Abbotsford airshow).
Two years after the debut of the Mig-29 in Kuopio-Rissala, the Soviets showed this machine in England at the Farnborough Air Show, and in 1989 at the Paris Air Show. At the time, Lambeth was a senior analyst at the RAND Research Center. Previously, he worked as a specialist in Soviet military equipment at the CIA, as well as a civilian pilot. Lambeth's work at RAND, specializing in the combat use of tactical aviation, gave him the opportunity to fly many jet aircraft with excellent flight and tactical characteristics. In Farnborough, he met Valery Menitsky, chief test pilot of the Mikoyan Design Bureau, who accompanied a group of pilots, technicians and maintenance personnel at the first major Western exhibition, where the MiG-29 participated. They became friends.
"I've been writing about Soviet aircraft for many years," Lambeth says. — When I heard that the MiG-29 was being brought to Farnborough, I couldn't believe it. I couldn't even imagine that I would be so lucky to be able to fly it. It was a kind of Cold War drama — a man who worked for the CIA gets a chance to take to the skies in a Soviet fighter jet with a red star." Lambeth told Menitsky that he really wanted to fly the MiG-29. "He didn't fall off his chair laughing, but said that maybe it would work out." Lambeth chose the right time: Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had recently begun a policy of publicity, and since the Soviets hoped to sell the new fighter to other countries, they were ready to demonstrate its capabilities and characteristics in every possible way.
The weather in Kubinka that winter was disgusting, so before taking off on the MiG-29UB, Menitsky took the front seat, and Lambeth climbed into the back. The flight involved a series of maneuvers that Lambeth had performed a few weeks earlier on an Air National Guard F-15 aircraft at Hickam Air Force Base in Honolulu. Lambeth's RAND report, published in 1990, was the first unclassified analysis of a previously mysterious fighter jet. Lambeth stressed that he had not received any training as a test pilot or fighter pilot, but in his report he described in detail the impressions of flying in the cockpit of the MiG-29.
Soon the West learned all about the MiG-29, having been given the opportunity to operate it. Three months before Lambeth's flight in Kubinka, about 7,000 East Germans moved to Hungary on tourist visas and set up camp near Budapest. On September 10, 1989, Hungary officially opened its border with Austria, giving refugees the opportunity to travel to West Germany. By 1990, Germany had united, and the day after Christmas 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
The MiG-29 was the only combat aircraft in the East German armed forces that the united German government retained as part of the Air Force. "The Germans have done an invaluable service," says Rob Young, a historian at the Military Air and Space Intelligence Center. — They told us more about the MiG-29 than we could have learned anywhere else. We had majors and lieutenant colonels on the exchange program. It was similar to the MiG-15 in that we created models and conducted simulation experiments with it long before we were able to get this car." During the Korean War, the Air Technical Intelligence Center, which became the forerunner of the national Military Air and Space Intelligence Center at Wright-Paterson Air Force Base, received details of the crashed MiG-15 and examined the wreckage in order to learn as much as possible about the characteristics of this MiG that changed the balance of forces. Test pilots of the US Air Force were able to fly such an aircraft after a North Korean pilot deserted in September 1953.
In 1991, the former East Germany had 29 MiG-29s based in Preshen near the Polish border. When the Iron Curtain fell, the pilots and technicians of West Germany began to evaluate their former opponents, trying to figure out whether it was possible to introduce them into the new German Air Force. They eventually began a training program in which pilots from the former East Germany acted as instructors.
The best of the best young West German lieutenants and captains were selected for retraining on MiGs. In the following years, the 73rd fighter Aviation Wing, which was transferred to Laag on the Baltic coast, was bombarded with requests from the Air Force and Navy of Western countries who wanted to fly in a training battle against the MiG-29.
Peter Steiniger was a fighter pilot in the West German Air Force and a graduate of the prestigious European-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training courses at Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas. After returning to Germany, he flew F-4FS, which were an export version of the legendary McDonnell Douglas "Phantoms" that were in service with the German Air Force until 2013. When he was a lieutenant in 1986, he and his comrades were shown satellite images of a sobering new Soviet development. But less than five years after the unification, he found himself in surreal circumstances generated by the intricate twists of history: Steiniger not only became a well-trained MiG-29 pilot, but also an officer of the operations department of the 73rd Wing, coordinating the exchange program. "For example," says Steiniger, "I put a young, excited and overexcited F—16 pilot in a pair with a pilot of the former GDR Air Force. They take to the sky and perform several elementary maneuvers adopted in fighter aviation. We had hundreds of such flights, and thousands of lessons during debriefing with colleagues from Western aircraft, who listened to us and watched our videos... mostly with amazement."
Pilots from numerous MiG-29 enemy aircraft, who confidently challenged us to a competition and egged us on with the words "come on, show what you can do" (among them such aircraft as the F-14 Tomcat and F/A-18 Hornet of the US Navy), were shamed and often figuratively bled they broke their noses after the first collision with the 29th. "With some experience, you could out-maneuver any jet, even the F—16 and Hornet with a large angle of attack," says Steiniger. — The excellent design combined with one type of on-board armament turned the aircraft into a real killer: we are talking about the Archer AA-11 missile (the name of the R—73 missile in the NATO classification is approx. transl.)". This is a missile with a thermal homing system, which has remarkable characteristics and a longer range than the American Sidewinder. "A simple monocular lens in front of my right eye allowed me to aim the homing head at the target at a very high angle." The MiG-29's ability to capture a target for automatic tracking even when its nose was turned away from it made "a lot of people cry," Steiniger says.
But although the MiG-29 was good in close air combat, Western pilots soon discovered several flaws in it. Former F-16 pilot Mike Jaensch, who studied at the Air Force Weapons School and served in the air defense, returned to active military service in 1994 after he was fired from American airlines. Jaensch, who speaks German well, got a place as part of a group of pilots who went to Laag in 1998 for an exchange in the squadron where MiGs were. Jaensch literally fell in love with this aircraft, its power and maneuverability, but experienced certain difficulties with the onboard radar and auxiliary systems. "The Soviet system of views was such that the pilot is basically an executive mechanism of the control stick," he says. — The plane was very different from what we were used to. On-board electronics were the bare minimum. This system of thinking also meant that the Soviets did not need to pass on information to the pilot." Since the MiG systems could not transmit information about the complex combat space to the pilot, combat flights on the machine were prohibited. In 1998, NATO forces considered sending MiGs from Laage to Kosovo, but abandoned this idea. Operators of the on-board long-range radar detection and warning system (AWACS) would have to pay special and separate attention to MiGs. "AWACS provides information to three to six aircraft on combat patrol, but for us it would have to transmit additional information," says Jaensch. "We decided that in the end we would be more of a hindrance than a help." In addition, the Serbs also had MiG-29s, which would make it difficult to identify "friend or foe" in the air.
In 1996, Fred Clifton became the first MiG-29 pilot assigned to the 73rd Wing as part of the exchange program. This graduate of the Air Force Weapons school, who served on the F-16, and also flew thousands of hours on the F-15, F-5 and MiG-29, approaches the characteristics of the Russian aircraft soberly and coldly, like an analyst. "It's a great car [in terms of performing basic maneuvers]," he said. "But of the four fighters I've flown, this one is the most unruly and difficult to control." Before becoming a MiG-29 pilot, Clifton received his first instructor assignment, becoming a pilot of an "enemy aircraft" and flying an F-5 under an intensive training program for experienced pilots who honed their combat skills against known threats, including the MiG-29. Upon arrival at the 73rd Wing, he received a unique opportunity to critically review the training program that pilots in the United States were engaged in. "I got a chance to understand how well I conducted pilot training as an enemy pilot," he says. "A lot of what the intelligence gave us turned out to be correct." Yes, the MiG-29 was an exceptionally combat-ready machine in aerial combat, and its ability to launch missiles at a very large angle relative to the direction of flight was impressive (by 2002, the Russians had lost this advantage in guidance, Fred Clifton notes, because the Americans adopted the AIM-9X missile and the helmet-mounted target designation system). But the aircraft had a small fuel tank capacity, and, consequently, a short flight range, a cramped cabin with many buttons and switches on the dashboard, average radar quality and low performance in terms of versatility. His capabilities were limited by the fact that he intercepted and shot down enemy targets at a short range from his own airfield. The pilots of the eastern bloc were taught to obediently follow the instructions of ground operators, so the MiG-29 systems, including the indicator on the windshield, were not well developed, and the pilots had very little control over the situation in the air.
Doug Russell, a civil airline pilot, once participated in an exchange program and flew as part of the 73rd Wing. Even today, he periodically flies a MiG-29 registered as a civilian car, purchased in Kyrgyzstan and owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen (Paul Allen, Russell sometimes flies other MiG-29s registered in the USA in Illinois). He likes this plane, but he says that flying on it is like a weekend in Vegas: there is plenty of thirst for pleasure, but there is little satisfying result. "We were on high alert and flying with airborne weapons, but it didn't give us anything," he says of his time in the German Air Force. — It was difficult for the guy from the West to fly this car because he did not have that level of awareness about the environment.... We've never been asked to dance." Russell believes that NATO analysts were very interested in the MiG and insisted that the Germans continue to fly it.
Shortly after arriving at the 73rd Wing, Clifton learned that technical analysts in the United States would soon find out all the remaining secrets of the MiG-29. During a business trip to Ramstein Air Base, he attended a secret briefing where it was said that the US Air Force was purchasing Moldovan MiGs. Many believed that the Air Force would make up a squadron of MiG-29s so that they would participate in training pilots as enemy aircraft. But only a few of the purchased cars were suitable for flights. It took a lot of money to get the rest up in the air. In addition, it was extremely inconvenient to bargain with the Russian Federation for spare parts. Therefore, the creation of an "enemy" squadron turned out to be impractical.
Peter Steiniger has launched a website where he enthusiastically chronicles German MiGs and shares the sensations of flying them. There are a lot of amazing photos and words of praise for the MiG-29. At the same time, Steiniger says: "Would I like to fight on such an aircraft? No. If you set aside the Archer AA-11 rocket, working in the cockpit is very time-consuming. Possession of the situation beyond the line of sight is limited by the map." In other words, the pilot has to lower his head, open the map and see where he ended up.
Some MiG-29 aircraft are still undergoing further modernization: new flight computers, navigation equipment and even Rockwell Collins microwave/VHF radio are being installed on Polish MiGs. But the rest of the Air Force, apart from a small number of former Soviet allies, after the Cold War, are in no hurry to get in line to buy the MiG-29. "After the fall of the Iron Curtain, the MiG-29 was abandoned to its fate," says Clifton. — There are practically no new supplies abroad. Who buys it? No one." And regarding the expediency of upgrading this machine in order to turn it into a modern computerized multi-purpose fighter, Clifton says: "Buy the F-16. It is more economical and better."
Today, the Russians are offering a new MiG, the 35th, for export. This plane is of higher quality. "Over the years, the Russians have modified the MiG-29. They improved it, made changes," says Ben Lambeth. "The MiG—35 is similar to the MiG-29, but it has much more capabilities." So far, he has attracted the attention of only one potential buyer: India. According to available information, the MiG-35 will enter service with the Russian Air Force in 2016. But the attention of Western analysts, and certainly the compilers of curricula at the Air Force weapons school, is now attracted by the products of another aviation design bureau.
In 2010, the Russians launched an analog of the F-22 Raptor into the sky. This is a Sukhoi Design Bureau machine, which is a descendant of the Su-27. The T-50 is a multi-purpose fighter whose on-board electronics can compete with the F-22. But Lambeth notes that he is still ten years behind the Raptor. "Many people have a suspicion that it will not be so inconspicuous," he says. "This aircraft has many such features and peculiarities that will give it away on the radar screen." But from a distance, it is difficult to judge how the T-50 will perform, and whether Russia will continue to develop it at all. This is a new mystery, and in the near future, the Russians are unlikely to invite anyone from the West to ride this car to solve it.
