The U.S.'s Most Advanced Fighter Plane That was Made to Counter an Enemy Aircraft That was Made Up

In the mid-1960s, U.S. Intelligence analysts examining spy satellite photos of the Soviet Union made an alarming discovery. A new jet fighter had begun appearing on Soviet airfields, and it was a monster. A full metre longer than a WWII-era B-17 heavy bomber, it dwarfed its pilot and ground crew, while its massive engines and wings spoke of blistering speed and high maneuverability far in excess of anything in the U.S. Air Force arsenal. In July 1967, the Soviets revealed the existence of the mystery plane for the first time at Domodedovo airfield near Moscow. It was the Mikoyan-Guerevich MiG-25, better known by its NATO designation “Foxbat”. Almost immediately, the new Russian fighter began smashing aviation records, reaching a top speed of 2,963 kilometres per hour or Mach 3.2, a maximum altitude of 37,658 metres, and a climb rate of 30,000 metres in 4 minutes, 4 seconds. The MiG-25 would go on to set a total of 29 world records, many of which still stand to this day. This astonishing performance worried the Americans, for it meant the MiG-25 posed a threat to its new secret weapon: the Mach 3.2-capable Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird spy plane. Indeed, the U.S. Air Force temporarily halted SR-71 flights over the Eastern bloc while they evaluated the new Soviet fighter’s capabilities. And to counter the anticipated Foxbat menace, the Air Force turned to a new aircraft concept then in development, known as the Experimental Fighter Program or “F-X.” The F-X program grew out of a fierce debate that raged in the U.S. military aviation community during the mid-1960s. In the early 1960s, U.S. military aviation theorists and planners like U.S. Air Force Major General Arthur C. Agan began moving away from lighter, nimble, gun-equipped “dogfighter” aircraft in favour of what became known as the “missileer” concept. Agan and his followers believed that dogfighting - which had dominated air combat during the Second World and Korean Wars - would soon be obsolete, and that the next generation of fighters should be optimized for speed and range, using their payload of advanced guided missiles to shoot down enemy aircraft at beyond visual range. In this manner, the skies above the battlefield could be efficiently cleared of enemy aircraft, allowing U.S. Air Forces to swiftly gain air superiority. Following this philosophy, the new generation of U.S. military aircraft, including the McDonnell-Douglas F-4 Phantom II and the General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark, were deliberately designed without onboard guns and carried only missiles. However, combat experience in Vietnam soon revealed this doctrine to be flawed. Early guided air-to-air missiles like the Hughes AIM-9 Falcon proved highly unreliable in combat, while the rules of engagement in Vietnam called for pilots to identify their targets at visual range. Consequently, air combat devolved into close-in dogfights more often than military planners had anticipated, and U.S. aircraft began suffering high losses against cheaper and supposedly inferior Soviet-made day fighters like the MiG-17 and MiG-21. In their response to this crisis, the Air Force and the Navy took radically different approaches. The Navy called for the installation of a 20mm Vulcan automatic cannon on the Phantom and other fighters, and in 1969 established a special school to train its aviators in the lost art of dogfighting. This was the Navy Fighter Weapons School, better known as TOPGUN. Yes, that Top Gun. Talk to me, Goose… This is an abridged version of a video on our channel TodayIFoundOut which you can check out and subscribe to here:    / @todayifoundout