That Time the U.S. Created the World’s Most Advanced Fighter Aircraft to Counter Soviet Super Plane

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[jimbass]

This is one of those fun cold war competitions. The Russians heard about the Valkyrie bomber so built the MIG 25. Then the US heard about the MIG 25 so built the F-15. A plane to combat a plane that was designed to fight a plane that never existed. And that ladies and gents is how the cold war was fought.

[dbrown]

So the US built a real uber fighter to outclass a make believe uber fighter and overachieved. That's awesome lol

[silvershelbygt]

The F-15 was such an amazing design the Decepticons chose it for their seeker jet modes.

[RReese]

One factoid not mentioned about the MiG 25: When American technicians opened up Lt. Belenko's MiG to check out its electronics, they were surprised to see old-fashioned vacuum tubes instead of integrated circuits or even transistors that virtually all Western military aircraft had transitioned to years before then. The Foxbat wasn't even a paper tiger; it was a lead sled that could only gum its targets to death, but only if they were lucky enough to catch them. On top of that, there are stories of SR-71 Blackbird crews reporting seeing Foxbats and other Soviet fighter craft literally fall out of the sky as they tried in vain to intercept the 3.3 Mach spyplane on various surveillance missions at its typical (unclassified) cruising altitude of 80, 000+ feet. Just more humiliation for the MiG 25 that it will never live down.

[mattmatt]

4:45
Small correction here, but one that people get wrong all the time. The Navy F4 Phantoms never had internal guns. They did have optional gun pods, but those were seldom used for my understanding, and pretty much only for air-to-ground.

The Air Force did eventually get a gun equipped F4, but it's very debatable if that had a significant effect. What almost certainly made the difference was the increased training in air combat maneuvering that was emphasized at the Navy fighter weapons school and also Air Force training programs.

[davidbwa]

I was on US aircraft carriers in the 80s.
Possibly it was the Israeli radar story you briefly mentioned but I recall a story about the MIG saying we (US military) used to think it could go faster / higher due to having tracked it at very high speeds. Then much later we found out that while the jet that was tracked DID reach those speeds, it was a sacrificial run. As in they briefly flew over spec while intentionally doing so where they knew they would be tracked, but that in so doing they destroyed the aircraft. It was all about letting us THINK that is what the MIG could routinely do.

[seanm]

I love it when Russia and China's propaganda about their weapons of war's capabilities leads America to develop advanced weapons to counter the claimed performance of these paper tigers, but America's weapons actually work.

[herbertkeithmiller]

I'm not faulting this video but good evidence exists that Pierre Sperry didn't have much to do with the development of the f-15.
His name appears on no design documents or in any of the organizations that actually worked on the airplane.
He likens himself as being instrumental in its design but outside of his claims there's not much proof. Sperry also thinks that radars are unnecessary hindrance to the modern fighter aircraft.
Laser pig destroys the myth of Sperry's claims in this video

[TKSSLCHN]

The classic Soviet/NATO duel:
1. Soviet Union develop a weapon with crazy specifications to beat a US weapon.
2. They make huge sacrifices to do so, it's really not a terribly good weapon overall. Then proceed to overhype it for propaganda.
3. The US swallow the propaganda and build something that can beat even the overhyped dream version of the Soviet weapon.
4. The cycle begins anew.

[MMuraseofSandvich]

4:05 Slight error: the AIM-9 is the Sidewinder. The Hughes Falcon was either the AIM-4 or the AIM-47, and the latter was originally designated GAR-9. The AIM-4 was used in Vietnam and did not perform well at all (a measly 5 combat kills) especially compared to the Sidewinder, but this missile tech would eventually become the AIM-54 Phoenix.

There's also the AIM-26 Falcon which had a nuclear warhead.

[hunter]

I was stationed in Germany in the early 80's on a F-15 base. Love those birds!! Nothing more exciting than watching a mass launch!! (All flyable aircraft were launched) With 3 squadrons on base, it was quite the show.

[sodog]

My favorite failure of the CIA was when they saw the brand new Soviet bomber at an airshow in the 50s, and they claimed the Soviets had dozens of them by how many flew overhead. Problem with that assessment was the Soviets only had 3 of them, and they flew a wide loop at that show, thus giving the impression that they had many more than they did.

[geodkyt]

Some of the things that had US intelligence believing the MiG-25 was a Mach 3, long range, highly maneuverable aircraft were:

1. Reports of tests where the aircraft prototypes exceeded Mach 3 (not realizing these basically melted the engines, and damaged the airframe and wings after five minutes above Mach 2.3)

2. They assumed the aircraft was primarily built from titanium, knowing the USSR had excellent supplies of titanium and was a leader in large scale titanium manufacturing (remember, this is the era when the Alfa class subs were sidelined and built), and who would build a top level interceptor out of *steel* when they had plentiful supplies of *titanium* amd exactly the right manufacturing experience to work with it). This resulted in a weight underestimate of *15 tonnes* with resultant performance estimation errors. Hell, the Soviets had enough titanium we were able to get all we needed for the SR-71 and other US defense and NASA projects, so "obviously" the Russians had plenty to spare.

3. The planform (wing shape) is actually a very good one for maneuverability, and was basically a copy of a planform the US had been extensively testing for such since the late 1950s (that's not why the Soviets used it, as it was also excellent for the MiG-25's intended role of having to provide a buttload of lift for a *very* heavy aircraft, provide high AOA performance for the zoom climb envisioned for intercepting the XB-70, and still be good for high altitude, high speed dashing). Note that the MiG-31 uses a very similar planform (it was, after all, designed as a MiG-25 variant optimized for a role more similar to the F-15C...)

4. Shortly after the first MiG-25 fighter regiment was stationed in NW Russia near the Baltic, the Russians *also* started flying a "black project" recon drone over Western Europe and the Baltic that did long range, high altitude, Mach 3 flights.

5. And, yes, the Syrian MiG-25 that melted itself running from Israeli interception figured into the thinking. "Why would the Syrians melt down a high value, low inventory, top shelf recon platform? Besides, the radar tracks match what we've been seeing coming out of Kola for several years... where, we *know* they are operating MiG-25 and MiG-25R birds from..."

[geodkyt]

Note that the F-16 the USAF actually adopted was very little like the F-16 the Fighter Mafia wanted. They didn't want it to have radar *at all*, and only begrudgingly accepted AIM-9 missiles at all, envisioning it as a pure day-only gunfighter relying on visuals alone.

The reason the USAF agreed to the Lightweight Fighter program at all was a simple realization they couldn't afford to buy nothing but F-15s - the original F-15 wasn't intended to have *any* ground strike capability ("Not a pound for air to ground!" was literally a proud tag phrase the design team publicly used), and the F-15 was simply too bloody expensive for enev the USAF to buy and maintain thousands of them all at once.

And *two* successful fighters came from the Lightweight Fighter program - the YF-16 became the F-16, but the runner up YF-17 was eventually adapted into the F/A-18 for the US Navy (who wanted a similar strike aircraft to replace their old A-7s, but one that could also defend itself adequately in air to air so the Tomcats could be kept defending the carrier from Soviet supersonic bombers with cruise missiles)... but the Navy adamantly refused to consider a single engine aircraft if there was any viable option (due to the not unreasonable fear of an engine conking out over the ocean and too far from any land strip to glide to a safe landing - you do *not* attempt a carrier landing deadstick.)

[DannyHeywood]

''These repairs are terrible!''
Soviet Union: - What repairs? I made it with Turnips and a Hammer?

[pgwchaos]

One interesting fact about the F-15, an Israeli F-15 was able to land after having most of it's right wing sheared off in a mid-air collision during training. They were able to fully repair the aircraft.

[jmanj]

12:00, Wait, What? Moscow over-hyped the capabilities of one of their military assets?
No way...lol

[ell_kapitano]

Every time i hear someone mention the "fighter mafia" or the "reformers" I physically twitch. The fact that they were able to weasle their names into so many programs is annoying because they had barely any involvement in any of it and barely even had any qualifications to make them suitable to talk on these subjects.

[stormycatmink]

Hum, where else have we seen the Soviet Russia claim to have a mighty military war machine, yet it turned out to be nothing more than hot air? Strange how we never seem to learn.

[othgmark]

My father worked on the F-15 from the moment it left the drawing board making life size parts out of wood to make sure everything fit together properly. From the initial mock up he stayed with the project through the entire flight test program at Edwards Air Force Base. l doubt they do full mockups now as Cad systems should have rendered them redundant. The F15 had people that had as their sole job making sure the man/machine interface was as efficient as possible. This has long been a Soviet weakness in the design process, only coming into prominence decades after the United States. The Russians have never caught up to the lead the f15 established in aviation since it's introduction.