MiG-25

Mikoyan-Gurevich · Soviet Union · first flew 1964 · fighter

The MiG-25 Foxbat is a Mach 2.8 twin-engine, twin-fin interceptor and reconnaissance aircraft, among the fastest combat aircraft ever fielded.

Recognition (WEFT)

W — WingsHigh-mounted, swept
E — Engines2 × turbojet, fuselage-mounted
F — Fuselage23.82 m fuselage
T — TailTwin fin

WEFT is AircraftIQ's four-point recognition method — how it works.

Spot it by:

Identify it by the very large canted twin fins, the huge rectangular side intakes feeding two big turbojets and the high-mounted, modestly swept wings on a long fuselage.

Specifications

Figures are for the representative variant described above; marks differ. See how AircraftIQ sources figures.

History

First flown in 1964 and in service from 1970, the MiG-25 was designed to counter high-flying US bombers and the planned XB-70, using a steel-heavy structure to survive sustained high-Mach flight. A defection to Japan in 1976 gave the West its first close look.

Variants

Versions included the MiG-25P interceptor, the MiG-25R and RB reconnaissance-bombers and the upgraded MiG-25PD with improved radar. The design evolved into the heavily revised MiG-31.

Where you'll see it

Operated by the USSR and exported to the Middle East and North Africa, the Foxbat became a Cold War symbol of raw speed. It never appeared in UK skies in service, though its reputation loomed large over Western planners.

In depth

The Foxbat is a monument to a design brief taken to its logical extreme. Soviet planners in the early 1960s feared American aircraft that would fly very high and very fast, above all the planned XB-70 Valkyrie bomber and the reconnaissance aircraft that eventually became the SR-71, and they told the Mikoyan bureau to build an interceptor that could climb to meet them and catch them. Everything about the resulting machine flows from that single-minded demand for straight-line speed and altitude. The two enormous Tumansky turbojets are thirsty, brutal engines that could push the aircraft past Mach 3 in short bursts, though pilots were forbidden from doing so routinely because the engines would over-rev and effectively destroy themselves; the safe operational limit was around Mach 2.83.

The airframe that Western intelligence had feared turned out, when it was finally examined up close, to be far cruder than imagined. Because titanium was scarce and hard to work with in Soviet industry, Mikoyan built the Foxbat largely from nickel-steel alloy, welded together by hand, which is why it is so heavy and why its structure could tolerate the searing temperatures of high-Mach flight. The huge slab-sided intakes and the sheer size of the thing led NATO analysts, seeing only grainy photographs, to conclude it was a super-manoeuvrable air-superiority fighter, a misjudgement that helped spur the United States into building the F-15 Eagle. The truth arrived on 6 September 1976, when Lieutenant Viktor Belenko defected by flying his MiG-25 to Hakodate in Japan, and Western engineers who dismantled it discovered vacuum-tube avionics, riveted steel and an aircraft optimised almost solely for speed rather than the dogfighter they had dreaded. That single event reshaped Western threat assessments overnight.

Operationally the Foxbat served the Soviet air defence forces as a high-altitude interceptor and, in its reconnaissance versions, as a fast overflight platform that was genuinely difficult to intercept. Exported to Iraq, Syria, Libya, Algeria and India among others, it saw combat in the Middle East; Iraqi Foxbats were credited with shooting down aircraft during the Iran-Iraq war, and a MiG-25 achieved one of the few aerial victories against a coalition aircraft in the 1991 Gulf War when it downed a US Navy F/A-18. Its natural rival was exactly the aircraft it provoked, the F-15, and in the longer run its own high-flying reconnaissance role was inherited by the far more capable MiG-31 Foxhound, a two-seat development that kept the basic layout but added a proper radar and long-range missiles.

For the Western spotter the MiG-25 is almost entirely a museum proposition, since it never operated from friendly soil and the surviving airworthy examples are few and remote. Static Foxbats can be found at aviation museums in Russia, including the large collection at Monino near Moscow, and preserved or gate-guard examples survive at former operator bases across the Middle East and North Africa. A handful have reached Western collections over the years. A hard-won recognition note: at rest the Foxbat betrays its steel construction in the slightly rough, welded finish of its skin, quite unlike the smooth aluminium of a Western fighter, and the wingtips carry small anti-flutter fairings, sometimes housing fuel or countermeasures, that give the wing an oddly weighted look. The twin fins rake outward at a pronounced angle and the intakes are vast rectangular boxes, features that together make the aircraft look every bit as much the blunt speed machine it always was, a jet built not to turn but simply to go.

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