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A pilot who stole a secret Soviet fighter jet

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Re: A pilot who stole a secret Soviet fighter jet

#41

Post by 6stringmerc »

ceejayoz wrote: post #39
honkhonkpants wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

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.

Re: A pilot who stole a secret Soviet fighter jet

#43

Post by yaakov34 »

nickff wrote: post #40
yaakov34 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like I said - people say this all the time, but a lot of vacuum tube equipment did die in EMP testing (in the USSR in 1964), and I don't see why vacuum tubes should be less vulnerable than solid state electronics to either short or long pulses (nuclear EMP contains both). A glass vacuum tube will pick up orders of magnitude more interference than a small transistor sitting inside its grounded metal can (and it's weig…

Transistors of the 1950s and 1960s were particularly vulnerable to high voltages. Modern transistors and ICs have some resistance to high voltage discharges such as static electricity, but back in those days, you could easily destroy entire circuits with your hand. Early transistors were made with materials and processes we would consider sub-standard today, which is particularly significant because they were almost…

True, and electrostatic discharge from your finger is no joke - it can be tens of kilovolts and carries significant, if not huge, energy. However, a discharge like that going right into a very small device, and the actual die of the transistor is tiny, is very different from interference/EMP damaging said device, where the small size actually offers protection. After all, a completed transistorized device from the 1950s is not vulnerable to static discharge - otherwise, you couldn't pick it up. With everything connected to ground where it should be, it is quite robust.

Re: A pilot who stole a secret Soviet fighter jet

#44

Post by nickff »

vilhelm_s wrote: post #26
ptha wrote: post #9

Hard to believe the Soviets were using vacuum tubes instead of transistors In hindsight, the MiG 25, which the West had been so worried about, turned out to be a ‘paper tiger’. Its massive radar was years behind US models because instead of transistors it used antiquated vacuum tubes (a technology that did, however, make it impervious to electromagnetic pulses from nuclear blasts). The huge engines required so much f…

It might not be extremely out of date. According to some random wiki[0], "In 1963 Westinghouse was awarded a US Navy contract for the AN/AWG-10 to provide fire control for guns and Raytheon AIM-7 Sparrow and Raytheon AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles on the F-4B Phantom II. The first radars were delivered in 1966 and became standard equipment. The AN/AWG-10 was claimed to be the first interceptor radar to feature…

Most aircraft make their initial flights without their first avionics suite (including radar and weapons control systems). Since the MiG-25 was introduced into service in 1970, and the radar it used was a development of another first used on an aircraft that entered service in 1964, I would hazard to guess that the Foxbat's radar wasn't delivered until 1965-1969.

Re: A pilot who stole a secret Soviet fighter jet

#45

Post by varjag »

batbomb wrote: post #27
yaakov34 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The factoid about resistance to EMP gets repeated endlessly online and in print, but it doesn't really make sense, and I doubt it's true. EMP damages electrical connections which are: a) long. b) thin. c) far from a ground plane. In more detail: the induced current depends directly on the length of the conductor; a thin is more easily overheated and damaged than a thick one; and conductors running near ground planes…

The difference is that tubes saturate differently and they won't die due to high instantaneous voltages.

People underestimate the energies produced by nuclear EMP. Car magnetos were dying in the trials, power lines and telegraph wires were getting shot through. Your nice tube amp would have no chance.

Re: A pilot who stole a secret Soviet fighter jet

#46

Post by nickff »

yaakov34 wrote: post #43
nickff wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transistors of the 1950s and 1960s were particularly vulnerable to high voltages. Modern transistors and ICs have some resistance to high voltage discharges such as static electricity, but back in those days, you could easily destroy entire circuits with your hand. Early transistors were made with materials and processes we would consider sub-standard today, which is particularly significant because they were almost…

True, and electrostatic discharge from your finger is no joke - it can be tens of kilovolts and carries significant, if not huge, energy. However, a discharge like that going right into a very small device, and the actual die of the transistor is tiny, is very different from interference/EMP damaging said device, where the small size actually offers protection. After all, a completed transistorized device from the 19…

Modern ICs are much more durable and resistant to ESD than devices from those days; you can run an electronics manufacturing facility (not a semiconductor fab) without much ESD protection these days, whereas that would've been a pipe-dream in the 60s. They are sending consumer and commercial-grade semiconductors into space on satellites with service lives over 12 months these days; back in the 1960s, all satellites required rad-hard components (and had very short service lives). Semiconductors are much better these days, due to improvements in materials, processes, testing, and inspection equipment.

Re: A pilot who stole a secret Soviet fighter jet

#47

Post by blincoln »

yaakov34 wrote: post #25
ptha wrote: post #9

Hard to believe the Soviets were using vacuum tubes instead of transistors In hindsight, the MiG 25, which the West had been so worried about, turned out to be a ‘paper tiger’. Its massive radar was years behind US models because instead of transistors it used antiquated vacuum tubes (a technology that did, however, make it impervious to electromagnetic pulses from nuclear blasts). The huge engines required so much f…

The factoid about resistance to EMP gets repeated endlessly online and in print, but it doesn't really make sense, and I doubt it's true. EMP damages electrical connections which are: a) long. b) thin. c) far from a ground plane. In more detail: the induced current depends directly on the length of the conductor; a thin is more easily overheated and damaged than a thick one; and conductors running near ground planes…

I can't provide a citation, but a few months ago I spoke with a retired EE who had specialized in large-scale/high-power systems[1], and he believed that tube electronics would better resist an EMP. i.e. if that belief is incorrect, it's something even experts in the field believe.

[1] one of his example projects was city-block-sized capacitor arrays that can temporarily provide power to an entire city.

Re: A pilot who stole a secret Soviet fighter jet

#48

Post by nickff »

honkhonkpants wrote: post #35
icegreentea wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something to take note of was that analog systems could drive far more power than solid state systems at that time, especially given the USSR's relative backwardness in solid state electronics. It really is worth noting how montrously powerful that MiG 25's radar is. It could pump out 600kW. Western fighter radars top out in the low 10s of kW. (they went with raw power to burn through jamming). I think the whole EMP…

Analog is not the opposite of solid state. You can build analog systems with solid state components.

To further this point, it is often said that "at high speed, everything is analog".

Re: A pilot who stole a secret Soviet fighter jet

#49

Post by dingaling »

honkhonkpants wrote: post #38
jkot wrote: post #10

> 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 o…

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.

> 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.

Re: A pilot who stole a secret Soviet fighter jet

#50

Post by nickff »

digi_owl wrote: post #20
arethuza wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure the US and NATO had "flexible response" where they would have options other than MAD. NB I'm having a binge of reading novels about WW3 scenarios in Europe at the moment, my favourite being "Chieftans" by Bob Forrest-Webb, mind you it doesn't end well. [NB Rather hoping WoT gets to Challengers/Chieftans/M1s vs T-80s at some point...]

Maybe after the Cuban Crisis. But Kennedy basically had to tell his advisors to shut up, because they were slavishly following RAND's escalation policy.

Kennedy repeatedly dismissed other opinions and had to change his positions after being proven wrong. He accused Eisenhower of allowing the Soviets to accumulate more missiles than the USA, and found out he was wrong after getting elected. Kennedy then supported the Bay of Pigs assault, but pulled back at the crucial moment when the rebels needed support, and the whole affair was a disaster. Kennedy even refused to admit that he had agreed to all of Kruschev's terms in relation to de-escalating the Cuban missile crisis, and pretended that it was a victory of American diplomacy and intimidation.

Castro was also a troubled character who actually advocated using nuclear weapons against the USA, and had to be persuaded that it was a bad idea because the fallout would hit Cuba.

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