nah fr hes been looking for this book he keeps mentioning for over an hour
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Until you post that source it’s @Ziggy1989 and not the USAF talking.
And even then one needs to see WHO made the source.
For example an official, declassified document is a way better proof than some dude who claims he was told the things he is saying by some member in the USAF.
Not to mention they got cheap export models, the MF was probably the best example they got. They got some with used engines, and could not maintain them very efficiently. There were no compatible parts that they could use so they had to manufacture stuff on their own and jerry rig things to keep it operational. The primary purpose was to show the US pilots how the aircraft looked and to give them a basic idea of how it might perform.
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they never even got the MiG-23MF only the MS and BN so they got a more unstable MiG-23M with avionics ripped from a MiG-21 and a mostly defenseless bomber
That’s the real problem for the perception of Soviet military technology in general and the MiG-23 in particular.
Most MiG-23s that fought were downgraded into oblivion to make them cheap, from abysmal G-limit, to MiG-21 avionics… and when people see how it performed they just immediately go “MiG-23 bad” ignoring that it fought most of its battles firing freaking R-3S against top notch F4s or 4th gen fighters that costed many times more.
There’s a reason why the Soviets built (and retired immediately) about 100 MiG-23S and instead built over 2000 MiG-23ML/MLA.
Not to go off topic, but this is something I had sent to SlowHandClap when he was saying Soviet technology was never comparable to the west because the US GDP and spending were a lot higher… that’s a common misconception about the USSR economy being bad in general, as this article (declassified CIA report) proves https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000498181.pdf .
Soviet GDP was always between 55% and 70% of the US one and their military spending was often higher (especially in the 80s).
I believe in general that document is a very interesting read.
(Before someone starts freaking out, what i mean with this is that the USSR had the money and resources to support the development of advanced military projects, something that, for example, modern day Russia seems to be lacking)
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Yes, the rwr looks correct in the cockpit but I meant that it works like the spo-15 in game
It would help if Gaijin reappraised their implementation of variable sweep control autonomy. With Soviet-style manual control systems such as MiG-23/27 and Su-17/22, it’d be nice to see the automatic setting removed and replaced with keybinds to move to the indents replacing the auto setting, with switching to the manual setting keeping the set wing sweep and allowing fine tuning across the range between the indents
I.E. on indent setting inputs cause the wing sweep % to snap to a higher or lower indent, while on the manual setting it works like it currently does
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I think it works fine as-is. Just would like full manual control for sim as mentioned earlier.
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the Su-17/22 are actually different in that there is no inbetween, the wing sweep is a single switch that has 2 positions wing sweep is either fully forward or fully back. So ingame it should either be 0% or 100% and no choice for relative control
Why not the Airforce? The Airforce has no value in lying about a dead irrelevant fighter. Neither does the Airforce have and an actual military doctrine like the Soviet Union that is still place and today and practiced by the Russian Federation, that is to intentionally exaggerate and outright lie about capability in public source about any given weapon system ever. Literally every single open source you can discuss on the War Thunder forum pertaining to Soviet/Russian weapons systems is grossly exaggerated.
a video of an Indvidual who took part in the program years after? ok, so let me get this correct you have nothing to base your conclusion in actual source because you never actually tried to read about the program itself and the subprograms under it?
How the aircraft looked? Visually? and a "basic idea of how it “might” perform,
Lol look at this guy downplay a top secret program of the Cold War he never read about. This is why I like sitting on sources because you say the most hilarious things as matter of fat like you were there.
Hey silly, there was actual active duty dedicated squadron, called 4477th Test and Evaluation made up of handpicked by the CIA of pilots who then would train and study to specialize in various types of captured fighters and Chinese and served as top secret aggressor squadrons that faced off in every conceivable scenario of BVR, ACM against only the best hand selected aircrews of the Navy, Airforce and Marines and they in would return back to train and further develop their own individual squadron or wings development.
THAT was the actual program’s objective and stayed active as one of the longest active black programs in US history and only going public to cover up for the F117 which was gaining too much publicity sittings and rumor.
You really have no idea about the program whatsoever, do you? Like in all seriousness you never read a thing about it? Its ok. But be real.
There are many good things documented from the program about the Mig23. But at the end of the day and as history has proven in actual combat along with verbal written confirmation from every nation that ever purchased the aircraft are quite clear. The Mig23 a trash fighter in every conceivable for especially dogfighting. It has zero lifting qualities in the fuselage and relies completely thin pathetic wings, you can barely see out of it, and has a high propensity to immediately kill the pilot in various forms relating to the engine and lift.
crazy thing to say from you
You have nothing. That’s correct. I’ve shared proof that the constant peg pilots have no idea what they’re talking about, not a good look for a test pilot to be saying you can fire NATO 20mm vulcan from the Gsh-23.
I’ve been sharing sources, you have been sharing (really bad) opinions. That’s what’s happened so far.
Hmmm, what was one single crazy idea and reason behind it that I have provided?
That the Soviets had a doctrine in place during the cold war that was to design the harder to replace and maintain units with some captured NATO pieces as to cut down logistics in the idea that a
large scale war with the West was imminent? That the Mig23 shares various parts that can be replaced as it was in the Soviets War planning that they would capture a large number of NATO airbases?
Or that the US government had an effort in a CIA black project to secretly procure Soviet and Chinese fighters shipping them to Nevada and test and evaluate full capability as well as develop an intense years lasting training program and offered only to best pilots of each branch?
Guess I am pretty crazy yes. Maybe I should write a book with this creation.
Youtube interviews is not a source, neither is magaize interviews. I do like just typing and narrating sources in my own words. It makes me feel like I am smart and how upset you get by no having a duty to provide everything I ever known backed with a source on the spot lol.
You must really have a hard time keeping people around in your personal life with this hyper focus on the tiniest irrelevant discrepancies. In this case you are fixating on a single misspoken statement of and old pilot that was in the program?
You know how long ago the program was? My dad cannot even remember certain characteristic like round type of the M60 because he went off to live a whole life after. Same with these old pilots, they move on and get old forgetting irrelevant small details like exact round type the fighter used that had that the test pilot did not actually shoot other test pilots or trainees with lol. Give the old dude a break. You’ll get there one day.
He may have meant to say that parts can be interchangeable as that was a discovery during the cold war by captured doctrinal war planning and actual evaluation programs like constant peg.
Not a good look? To who??? Its a YouTube interview my guy. The dude is not on trial before congress.
We are all just asking you to source information, especially if it’s some wild and wacky claim like the MiG-23 uses common parts found on NATO fighters and that they 1:1 copied the Phantom’s intakes etc… which are commonly known myths.
Instead we get personally attacked, not sure what’s up with that.
All I see are a lot of words with nothing backing them up man you claimed to have a source yet you refuse to share it at this point you should understand why everyone thinks you’re just making stuff up
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The monkey models stuff is a bit of a misnomer. I wouldn’t say it’s very true that it fought “most” of its battles against non-peer opponents. Outside of the misinformation spread by US “evaluations” of the type, I think the primary reason the MiG-23 is generally percieved poorly as a fighter is due to online perceptions of the type’s K/D ratio, which, of course, idiots on the internet think matters for some reason. The online perception of this metric for the MiG-23 comes from various avenues, but it always seems to come down to the same source: MiGFlug’s combat statistics article
This article is deeply flawed in general, but there are two primary causes of MiG-23’s low ratio here.
One of them is, indeed, primarily due to downgraded export models in combination with poor tactics and planning in combination with an opponent who was both the most competent in the world at the time, and armed with the best fighters in the world at the time, both by a pretty good margin. This is the article’s “1:30” record for the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
But it’s always struck me wrong that people, because of this, claim that the MiG-23’s export history is the reason for its poor perception, because the whole “downgraded export model operated by a substandard air force against the best equipped and trained air force in the world” story repeated so often is literally only true for this one instance, which is almost entirely the result of a single highly successful SEAD operation over the course of one day, because that was one day.
It absolutely was not most of its battles, the vast majority of fights the MiG-23 was presented with throughout its career were against, relatively speaking, peer opponents; F-4s, F-5s, Mirage IIIs, Mirage Vs, and Mirage F1s. It universally showed itself well against these. Even the MiG-23MS, downgraded to apocalyptic proportions, showed itself well against Iranian F-5s. You mention “top notch” F-4 variants, but the MiG-23 at no point ever had to fight these. Invariably, outside of Recce and EW variants, the MiG-23 faced down F-4Es and only F-4Es. Even compared to an F-4S, the MiG-23’s only real disadvantage is the smaller BVR weapons load; the Sapfir-23 was broadly comparable in performance to the AN/APG-59, and the MiG-23 was generally either as agile as or more agile than an F-4, depending on which variant of which plane. Compared to the Mirage F1, the only genuine “Western” contemporary to the MiG-23, the situation was similar, outside of the fact that the MiG-23’s radar was flatly better than the Cyrano set.
The more significant reason for the perception of the MiG-23’s record is the way low-quality sources group the MiG-23 family. Without fail, sources such as the MiGFlug article group the entire family together; anything labelled “MiG-23” is a MiG-23. This is despite the fact that the MiG-23BN is not a tactical fighter, but instead is a strike aircraft with no A-A provisions of any kind unless fitted, according to some sources, with R-3S.
According to MiGFlug, the MiG-23’s record in the Iran-Iraq war was 16-56. Taking this at face value, if you remove the MiG-23BN, this figure is instead 16-5. Being as generous as possible, the MiG-23M scored a record of 20-5, while being as conservative as possible it scored 7-5 in this conflict. Either way, the effect this has to pollute the record is hard to overstate; even taking everything else on the list at face value (do not do this, it’s a horrible list), it literally doubles the MiG-23’s losses. And that’s on top of those losses already having been more than doubled by the losses over Lebanon to Israel. And that’s on top of those losses already having been significantly inflated by losses to the coalition in Desert Storm.
The MiG-23 was widely exported and very successful, and most of its service was against peer opponents. Against these, it did very well, having a markedly low loss rate and a high effectiveness in air combat. While the MiG-23MF did see good export and combat success, the MiG-23ML, MLA, and MLD all did as well, and a very significant portion of these exports was these “full spec” ML+ variants. It’s a misnomer to say it fought most of its battles in downgraded form piloted by subpar air forces against the best the world had to offer; it fought two of its battles (not counting Gulf of Sidra, which was not a battle but an unprovoked attack on MiG-23s that were not there to fight) like this, and the vast majority of the rest of them were fair fights it showed itself well in.
The perceptions run afoul of this in terms of ratio by focusing on the disproportionate losses of the fights against newer and better opponents, and then on top of that failing to recognize the MiG-23B’s distinction as a type from the MiG-23M, being better grouped in with the MiG-27.
Also I don’t think you need to be defensive about implying positive things about the USSR. The USSR saw an unprecedentedly long period of peace and stability in a region historically prone to constant violence. It was undemocratically dissolved, and its dissolution saw an apocalyptic humanitarian disaster in the region. Russia loves to pretend it was responsible for that, loves to imagine it once had an empire, but the USSR was an internationalist project, and equating Russia and the USSR does nothing but make Russian nationalists who want to take credit for its achievements happy. It especially erases the myriad scientific and industrial achievements of the Ukrainian SSR, which was a center of huge developmental efforts for much of its life
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This is a well wrote reply if I’ve ever seen one! I’ll make sure to point this out in the OP when I flesh it out.
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I will provide where is benefits me and most rewarding. You do the same even here. What is that books name btw? the “Gigantic one to this day”? See, everyone can do it.
You are right Draco, and as much as I like you, at the end of the day your belief is not worth anything to me in the slightest.
Everyone? See this where you are resorting to pettiness and now attempt speak for everyone as if you know what everyone believes. The mind reader Draco here. Yeah, some believe what I say, and some do not. I do not care to the level what other think such as you both do, and I share source with individuals I deem worthy of my time and research.
Some believe me because it makes sense or read the same sources and history. Some do not believe, as in your case where it is required that the exact documentation must be attached and conveniently placed in front of you without doing the research themselves.
You are now attempting to downplay and lump the entirety of the community in everything I ever said ever as no one believing anyway because you are upset that I refuse to provide you the exact sources as if your belief or unbelief means anything to me.
I asked you to point to one “crazy thing” I have said this evening beyond the realm of reality or possibility or any of the reasoning behind them that I explained.
If you can’t provide a source as a basis for your opinions on the design and performance of the aircraft please just stop sharing them. I think it’s not very useful to the discussion and these weirdly long rants / insults focusing on people’s character aren’t welcome.
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