[jkot]

> The Soviets had not built the ‘super-fighter’ the Pentagon had feared, says Smithsonian aviation curator Roger Connor, but an inflexible aircraft built to do a very particular job.

There is no mention what MiG-25 was designed for. Its task was to intercept nuclear bombers flying over Soviet Union and it did this task pretty well.

Because it used steel it was cheap and easy to service. At that time soviets had lot of experience with titanium (space, submarines), but expensive plane similar to SR-71 would not cover entire Soviet Union.

[rangibaby]

I think a good lesson to learn is that primitive doesn't mean archaic. Most Soviet designs favored being cheap, hardy, and easy to maintain over using the latest or rare technology. The best example is of course the AK-47, but the same philosophy is seen throughout all of their designs. Their planes are all designed to use poorly maintained or damaged airfields, or even just dirt strips.

[draugadrotten]

"With the MiG-25, you could take off from a grass strip, climb to FL800 and fly at Mach 3, and land on that grass strip again. Fascinating!" http://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/7485/can-jet-air...

[arethuza]

"Most Soviet designs favored being cheap, hardy, and easy to maintain"

I think it was Max Hastings who pointed out in the context of WW2 that there isn't much point in having tanks that are six times better than your enemies if they have ten times as many tanks as you do!

[rangibaby]

Their battle strategy (slow the enemy down for as long as possible) and weapons were informed by their experience in WW2. At the beginning of Barbarossa the USSR had many wacky, complex vehicles and arms that were prone to breaking down, if they even worked at all.

[honkhonkpants]

Intercepting a B-52 sounds like just about the easiest job in combat aviation. I always thought the idea that a bomber was going to strike the interior of the USSR was a patently ridiculous idea. Cruise missiles, ballistic missiles I can definitely believe. Maybe the Soviets were afraid that the Americans would revive the B-70 program, but that program had been cancelled long before the MiG-25 ever flew.

[dingaling]

> Intercepting a B-52 sounds like just about the easiest job in combat aviation.

Not particularly. A rough rule of thumb is that an interceptor needs a maximum achievable speed twice that of the cruising speed of its target in order to close the geometry of the interception. A Su-15 couldn't quite achieve that with its full complement of missiles against a Mach 0.9 B-52, but a MiG-25 could do so. [0]

The second problem is basing the interceptor in a location that the long-ranged incoming bombers can't just dog-leg to avoid. The Mach 2.8 MiG-25 barely had enough margin to intercept supersonic bombers such as the B-58, Mirage IV, A-5 and FB-111 but those all had much shorter endurances than the B-52 and V-bombers, and so ironically made easier targets; they had to follow much more predictable direct ingress routes and weren't equipped with air-launched decoys.

~~

[0] flip the actors around and you can see why the US abandoned the Mach 3+ YF-12 interceptor. The F-106 and F-15 were fast enough to intercept incoming Tu-95s that slipped past the SAM belts, and the faster Soviet bombers didn't have the range to threaten the USA.

[honkhonkpants]

Your reckoning of the capabilities of the B-52 has me scratching my head. It can fly at 0.9 M, at high altitudes where it is guaranteed to be obliterated by long-range SAMs before it gets anywhere near a target of strategic value, and it can fly at low altitudes, at speeds where any eastern bloc fighter could have caught and destroyed it. That's why I think the idea of American long-range strategic bombers striking the interior of the USSR is just a silly fantasy. It would have required air supremacy to do that, and if you've established air supremacy over the USSR the war has already ended. Indeed, a war between nuclear superpowers would not have lasted long enough for a B-52 to get even half way to the USSR, much less for them to sit on the ground waiting for their air refueling wings to get into a forward position (and probably get annihilated, but that's another problem with the air warfare fantasy). A full-scale war between the USA and the USSR would probably not even have lasted long enough for the President to get his pants on.

[NickNameNick]

That really depends on time period. Remember, the b-52 was introduced into service in 1955, and first flew in 1952. Well prior to the introduction of ICBMs.

[honkhonkpants]

Yes but we're speaking about 1976 here.

[ceejayoz]

> Intercepting a B-52 sounds like just about the easiest job in combat aviation.

Chances are it was intended for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockwell_B-1_Lancer, which entered service around the same time.

[6stringmerc]

Your point sounds good. Also, even the XB-70 was an indicator of what the US aviation industry could get going if motivated. I've seen one up close and personal, just wow.

[nickff]

You've seen the only XB-70, prototype #1. Two prototypes were made, and the other was destroyed in a mid-air collision. There is a very good episode of the televison show "Great Planes" on the XB-70.

[6stringmerc]

Ah, so it would appear. Parked next to an SR-71 when I saw it. Many photos were taken that day. Thanks for the episode tip!

[pippy]

Just to add to your point: the titanium used to make the SR-71 Blackbird came from the Soviet Union.

[PerfectDlite]

> Its task was to intercept nuclear bombers flying over Soviet Union and it did this task pretty well.

Really? It _did_ this task? When that'd happen?

[ceejayoz]

It's possible to validate the performance of a weapons system without needing an actual full-scale nuclear war.