Overestimating the Rivals

Overestimated ---- The MIG-25 was not as advanced as the US thought.

         However, in a dramatic shift of events, it will reveal that US intelligence massively overestimated the technology used in the supposed advanced Soviet “fighter” Jet that is the MIG-25. On September 6, 1976, the most mysterious Soviet jet showed up at a civilian airport in northern Japan. The Jet was brought to the west by Viktor Belenko, a defector of the USSR. During a military exercise, he deviates from the set route, turned around, flew low to avoid radar detection, fleeing to Japan’s Hakodate airport.

         The west took it apart immediately and examined the aircraft. They discovered that this aircraft wasn’t remotely as maneuverable as they thought due to the stainless steel and low-tech nickel-steel alloy construction: it was incredibly heavy and wasn’t strong enough to withstand tight maneuvers. The engine was powerful, however tends to self-destruct when flying at Mach 3 it was clocked at, so a realistic top speed for the aircraft was only Mach 2.8. The radar was advanced but was severely limited in its ability to track low flying targets due to its lack of look-down ability. US has discovered all the compromises that Soviet Engineers have to make in order to create the MIG-25. The media weren’t going to wait and immediately began to mock the USSR for producing such crude aircraft compared to the cutting-edge F-15 Eagle that the US just put into production.

         But at the end of the story, both countries ended up with overengineered weapons that they have nothing to use against. The XB-70 Supersonic high-altitude bomber was never developed by the US any further and wasn’t put into production in favor of a low-altitude bomber, meaning the bomber that the MIG-25 was solely designed to take down doesn’t even exist. It was purely a prediction of the Soviet Union, mislead by the panic that the US could one day own such weapon, fueled by the fear of the invasion of soviet air space. Also, the F-15 Eagle that was developed in response to taking down the MIG-25 was vastly superior as an air-superiority fighter jet, as the MIG-25 was never meant to be a maneuverable dog-fighter that the US predicted it to be.

         Fueled by the fear of the unknown and the nature of the secretive weapons of the adversary, both US and USSR have to respond by building more superior weapons, outgunning the rival on the basis of very little knowledge of the adversary. This phenomenon is what fueled the later escalation of the tensions of the cold war.