It wouldn’t at 12.7 would be completely trashed. As an 11.3 or lower it would be fine depending on the weapons they give it or the mig 25 variant
MiG-25 is too much of a hyperspecialized interceptor to be particularly useful in War Thunder. The aircraft itself is designed for pure speed (a whopping Mach 3.08) at the expense of all maneuverability. Armament-wise, the Foxbat only has R-60Ms and R-40s, hulking missiles with decent range but completely unable to hit a target pulling over 4gs. In addition, while it’s marketed as having a Pulse-Doppler radar in reality the Sapfir-25 is just a modified Sapfir-23 from the MiG-23ML and the “pulse doppler” is only MTI. Not great for a high-altitude interceptor.
Its son the MiG-31, on the other hand, is a much more balanced aircraft. With an extremely fast firing (8,000RPM!) GSh-6-23 and options of R-60Ms, R-40s, R-73s, and R-33s (SARH AIM-54C equivalent, combined with multi-targetting PESA radar basically ARH) the A2A armament of the MiG-31 is extremely similar to the F-14B. While the MiG-25 ancestry is clear on the MiG-31, its flight performance is more well-rounded. Top speed is reduced to Mach 2.83 while its composite construction gives it half-decent maneuverability.
Basically, the MiG-25 is an unbalanceable one-trick pony while the MiG-31 is an F-14B that gives up CAS capability and some maneuverability for MOAR SPEED!!!
MiG-31 would be awesome to see alongside the F-14D in a future update at around 12.3.
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At a br like 12.0 it would be fine in my opinion. The F14 is a great plane to keep it in check at that br and just like any other supersonic interceptor the windows where you get to really flex its speed will be small. Top that off with all of the 12.0 and above planes being more than capable enough to deal with it (except maybe the Yak 141). I mean the F15 alone will have better acceleration and climb than the Mig 25 until altitudes so high that they’re irrelevant in War Thunder. Even in a full downtier there are plenty of F4s, J8s and more to swat it down with sarh missiles. I do agree with the other guy here that it is a one trick pony and the Mig 31 would be fun as well. But just like the F104 people will use it just because of that one trick and just because it’s a Mig 25 (me included which is saying something since I’m a toxic fighter main that can’t stand not having a gun on my plane). I don’t think every new addition has to be meta changing, sometimes it’s just about being able to fly the plane itself
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yes, now it you move this mass becausw for example your target changed course you’ll loose a lot more energy than a smaller missile
and since that is exactly what you have to expect the effective range will always be shorter than the maximum range
I find it funny how a few controversial opinions got this topic to life
by the way I don’t oppose the idea of adding the MiG-25s as I like nieche aircraft with a weird Playstyle, however I just don’t think it’ll be useful
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I think the Foxbat is in a similar situation to the F-102 in terms of how to balance it.
A highly specialized interceptor designed to shoot down bombers, only fitted with missiles, but with very high speed.
Would perhaps be a decent vehicle to add in a folder, but not much else unfortunately. It’d also be very hard to balance.
im personally seeing it mostly as a Premium or Event plane tbh
I think as an event or premium yeah, both would be good options
just dont make people have to grind it
For US it must be premium version like a “MiG-25 Belenko edition”
the cycle started in the 40s and ended with ICBMs taking over
Me 262’s engines would suffocate if the pilot pulled the throtle too fast, the harrier could only hover for like a minute before overheating, the f15a did not have flares sooo I dont see your point
Harrier heat issues are in the game
A MiG-25 has the empty weight of an F-14 and the wing area of an Su-27. It’s fuselage is explicitly designed as a lifting body.
With 7500 kg fuel (max internal of an F-15C) it STR’s an F-4E. With all 4 missiles.
It’s max internal is 15,000 kg.
In WT you would take minimum fuel, in which case the F-4E (leading edge slats version) loses in STR. The empty wingloading is equal to F-16C.
It has a low speed limit because it has fighter wings.
It’s engines are slightly larger than an F-15’s.
And an R-40 has as much boost as an R-27ER.
Fully armed it has an operational limit of m2.83, but it has acceleration well over that.
Yeah guys it’s so weak it’ll lose to XYZ. Not like it outperforms you with the functional equivalent of 100% internal.
The designed limit of overload is 11.5G (break). 5G fully armed with ~8000 kg fuel. It has 2.2G with 15 tons fuel and the 5 ton drop tank for around 42 tons takeoff weight.
The normal limit of overload is 6.5-7.5G, like an F-14.
Unlike American fighters, it actually has a better internal fuel to thrust ratio than a MiG-21.
Curious, US Fighters have less range on internal fuel AB than even the shortest legged point defense fighter. Maybe they are just “interceptors”
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it would be incredibly bad, and no one would actually enjoy playing it, that’s probably why
That’s a bad take, it wouldn’t be as bad as the F-117, at least the MiG-25PD and up.
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To be fair the aircraft really wouldn’t perform that bad it’s a fucking tank and it does pull some decent Gs as an example one of the Iraqi mig 25 managed to pull 11Gs and missiles from what I know should be able to pull around 25 G’s which wouldn’t be that bad plus the aircraft can carry double rack of r60s on outer pylons
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But it’s still lost engagement to mig 25
Smiles :)
Hopefully never