#mig-23

MiG-23 Ukraine 🇺🇦

The MiG-23 Flogger is one of my favorite fighters (the other being the MiG-21) and its bad reputation is undeserved. I blame the Red Eagles and their experiences with it for the misinformation and misunderstandings surrounding the MiG-23.

The Red Eagles was a secret USAF program and squadron during the cold war that acquired MiG-17s, MiG-21s, and MiG-23s mostly from the Egyptian Air Force in 1977. The purpose was to evaluate the performance of the MiGs and use them to train American pilots on how to defeat them.

The Red Eagle pilots all loved the MiG-17 and especially the MiG-21, admiring their flight characteristics and ease of use. The MiG-23 on the other hand was hated by many who flew it. Some of the common complaints were the poor cockpit visibility, underwhelming avionics, and its awful maneuverability. Red Eagle pilots had such a lack of confidence in the MiG-23 that they never trained with it in a defensive position. Mock dogfights always had the MiG firmly on its opponent's six o'clock and almost always ended up with the opponent turning the tables and getting a 'kill' on the MiG. The saying was "if you can see it then you can kill it". Between these evaluations and some of its service with third world air forces in the Middle East and Africa, it had a thoroughly poor reputation. That reputation persists to this day and gets parroted whenever the MiG-23 is brought up.

But I believe its misinformation and misunderstandings that are the main cause of it. The MiG-23 is a great fighter in it's age and the Red Eagle evaluations are very flawed because of one crucial detail - they were evaluating the wrong MiG-23. What I mean by that is they had the wrong variant of the MiG-23 and based all their findings around that one. For those not familiar, a "variant" is a standardized modification of the same basic aircraft. These modifications can be used to change and/or improve an aircraft without the need to design a completely new one. The specific variant is usually indicated by a suffix letter(s) attached to the designation. For example: an F-16A is the first production variant of the F-16 while an F-16B is a modified two seat trainer variant.

The Red Eagles had acquired the MiG-23MS from Egypt and probably didn't realize at the time that it was, hands-down, the worst variant ever of the MiG-23. The MS was a downgraded variant meant to be sold to third world customers who the Soviets didn't trust with fully capable MiG-23s. This was in comparison to the more capable Soviet MiG-23M and the MiG-23MF which was exported to their close allies.

Libyan MiG-23MS (like the kind used by the Red Eagles)

Hungarian MiG-23MF

So what made the MiG-23MS so bad? It was stripped of almost everything that made the MiG-23 superior to the MiG-21, while retaining its drawbacks.

The Soviets had a lot of success with the MiG-21 and built tens of thousands of them for over 40 air forces across the world. It was small, cheap, maneuverable, and threatening enough to contest an airspace. It was basically the AK-47 of fighter jets. But it had a very high takeoff/landing speed, very low fuel endurance, a poor radar, and only short range weapons. The MiG-23 was designed to fix those issues. It had a variable sweep wing to improve takeoff/landing speeds, more fuel for higher endurance, a much more powerful radar, and medium range missiles to engage targets beyond visual range.

The MiG-23MS downgrades stripped it of its radar and replaced it with the weaker one from the MiG-21. You can see the difference in size of the nose cone (painted a different color) in the two MiGs compared above. That change also prevented it from using its medium range R-23 missiles and instead had to rely on the older and short range R-3 missiles. And the MiG-23MS retained the G force limitations of the early variants which severely impacted its maneuverability. Flaws in the construction of the wingbox (the mechanical device that changes the wing sweep and carries the aerodynamic loads) limited the early MiG-23s to under 6Gs.

Thats why it was so bad.

To flip the scenario: If you took an early F-4B Phantom II, stuck a F3H Demon radar in it, and gave it AIM-9B sidewinders as its only weapon, gave it a <6G restriction, then flight tested that against MiG-29s. You would rightfully conclude that it was an abysmal fighter. Thats what the Red Eagles were dealing with throughout their time with the MiG-23 and thats what gets repeated constantly about it. I concede that those jets were awful but they are not the whole story.

Everyone thought the early MiG-23s were lackluster, even the Soviets. Which is why after a few short years they gave it major improvements in the later variants - the MiG-23ML/MLA/MLD. These next generation MiGs can be easily identified by their redesigned vertical stabilizer and more level attitude on the ground.

The ML variant had a more powerful and more fuel efficient engine, removed an internal fuel tank due to the more efficient enginex strengthened the wingbox and increased G tolerance to 8.5Gs, improved the radar and avionics, added the improved R-24 missile, and redesigned the wing to increase maneuverability. Its almost a completely different fighter. Superior to other 3rd generation fighters of its age like the later F-4 Phantoms and Mirage F1. The ultimate variant - MiG-23MLD, was even able to gain mock dogfight victories against MiG-29s at the Soviet "top gun" program.

This is the MiG-23 that people should be considering and not the terrible one the Red Eagles got their hands on. The Cuban and Angolan MiGs that saw success against Mirage F1s in Namibia. The Iraqi MiGs that saw success against Iranian F-4s and F-5s. And Warsaw Pact MiGs that demonstrated its effectiveness in war games after the cold war ended.

MIG-23, Oshkosh 2023.

Russian Mig-23 crash site, Kortrijk, Belgium, July 4, 1989.

Source: war history on line