Now that the dust has settled, what is the /k/onsensus on the MiG-23?
>>64664229Junk
>>64664229That's a F-111
>>64664229Trash, I also genuinely love her and her sister
>>64664231>>64664246Okay. I'm a midwit. Explain to me what was so bad about it? Especially considering it was introduced in the 70's.
As usual with the soviet aicrafts:The first variant is a "demo", it retains all the bad avionics of the previous model.Only after the 'M' variant or probably newer it actually achieves the specs of the original plan.Flankers and Fulcrums were similar, they only achieved the 1980s specification during the mid 2000s.
>>64664257Well according to the Libyans it flew like 3 different planes depending on your wing setup and all of them were hard to control. Basically there was no easy way to fly it and supposedly had tons of reliability problems in service. I still think it's cool as fuck though, especially since their concept for a ground pounder was frankly better than the A10 because it could at least get the out of dodge after a run
>>64664229MIGs are a prime example of russians not being able to create anything themselves.Started with stolen german tech and the longer they had to keep developing them on their own the worse things got.
>>64664229It’s fucking awful. Maintenance hog that was a pain to fly. Russia would have been better off with a j8-esque MiG 21 development
Sexiest landing gear mechanization ever.The gsh-23 is a mistake unless it's in a defensive emplacement where a rotary cannon isn't feasible.
>>64664229Big mistake.Pathetic cosplay of F-4.
>>64664353Did you mean F-14? It doesn't look anything like a F-4.
>>64664257Maintenance was cancer, the flight characteristics were dogshit aside from acceleration (even in the MLD variants, which were introduced in '82 by which time F-15s and F-16s had already been around for around half a decade). The radar was good for a soviet set but mediocre compared to us avionics, that difference is accentuated in the later variants.It was an interceptor more than it was a fighter, introduced in an era when radar guided missiles were still not super reliable, and far eclipsed in flight performance and avionics by the time radar missiles became reliable.
>>64664521Mig-23 was development trying to get all things F-4 had and MiG-21 didn't. Radar and radar guided missiles, short take off and landing (relatively), endurance.
>>64664521Role/design philosophy, not aerodynamic design. It was the first Soviet frontline fighter with real avionics, not that that means much.
>>64664257Bad design, bad production and it basically came out obsolete out of the box.>variable-sweep wings: prone to failure and a generally maintenance disaster, especially since soviet maintenance was bad by default>shit maneuverability: had worse turning performance than the MiG-21, quickly lost energy if you tried doing dogfights, was unstable at low speeds>trash avionics and radar: unreliable radar, inconsistent missile guidance, issues with target acquisition>engines (especially the early R-29s) had short service lives, were prone to failures if mishandled
>>64664229it was good at intercepting cruise missiles and low level aircraft, large procurement made those tactics extremely risky in the 1980s
>>64664229An excellent target drone.
>>64664672Cosplay means "costume play."
>>64664229It has a so bad its good sort of vibe going for it.
>>64664229All Russian fighters are trash, but at least some of them have sexy curves. Like a good lookin trailer park girl.This one is more of a crack whore that has sucked 25 dicks today and ran out of mouthwash halfway through.
>>64664229Great plane by all the important metrics>Looks cool>Can go very very fast at treetop level >Cool ̶d̶e̶s̶i̶g̶n̶ personality flaws
>>64664998REAL plane fans learn to appreciate soviet weirdness
>>64665712And a plane that walks the razor's edge of ugly and beautiful in a 1940s comic book design way
>>64664229It's cool and that's all that matters. It's a rocketplane>but muh variable wingsIf middle easterners can maintain them, so can everyone. Anything else is a cope from the corrupt MIC. RIP F-14 you didn't deserve this.
>>64665755>If middle easterners can maintain them, so can everyoneBut they couldn't. Third world MiG23 accident rates were horrendous even by their very low standards.
>>64665755They so couldn't maintain it they called in Americans for help, to the nuclear levels of butthurt from the soviets.
>>64665712Yea, no that one I absolutely get.Straight out of a 90s sci fi movie, absolutely based desing.But this thread is about the MiG-23 and there's no way around it, she's ugly as sin.
>>64664229Was there any design or manufacturing relationship between the MiG-23/27 and the Su-24? They kinda look familiar if you squint your eyes.
>>64666190The only similar thing are the inlets, both clearly influenced by the inlets of the Su-15 and mostly the F-4. Besides that it was the usual "pipe with wings" designs of the 1950s-1960s.
>>64666230So the swing-wings of each are completely different?
>>64664229Vietnamese pilots preferred the 21 to this, apparently.
>>64666164>and there's no way around it, she's ugly as sin.That's the beauty of the MiG-23, it looks kitbashed and weird and has strange protrusions
A strong seven out of ten at the time.
>>64666190From what I've read they were both closely following the research TsAGI were doing at the time and ended up making very similar looking planes since both needed a combo of high speed and shorter takeoff rolls than their predecessors. It was much like the later situation with the MiG-29 and Su-27
>>64664229coolest looking sovok jetmost doa sovok jet in practice>redfor finally get a rough match for the phantom>enters service at the same time as f-14 and f-15>worse at pure a2a anyway because single seater with insufficient situational awareness and automationit's a shame. the MLD variant was apparently decent and could give at least the 29s a run for their money in mock combat but they never gave it to the towels and it came too late anyway, leaving its record forever sullied
>>64664998>All Russian fighters are trashMiG-25 and 31 are ok, because they don't try to do the whole airshow trick thing. High, fast, big missile, powerful radar = decent a2a combat record
>>64666767>Rough matchIt was always outmatched in avionics and maneuverability by the latest phantom revisions throughout its service life
>>64665755It had a nasty reputation even by Soviet pilots.
>>64666767This.The Americans had their eyes opened wide by Rolling Thunder and the Israeli experiences. Soviets didn't have the same conclusions.
>>64664231>shit gets destroyed in high intensity land warShocker!
>>64664257https://theaviationgeekclub.com/soviet-pilot-who-test-flew-captured-tiger-against-fishbed-and-flogger-tells-why-the-f-5-beat-the-mig-21-and-mig-23-in-every-engagement/
>>64671425The cockpit ergonomics comparison between Soviet and western is always interesting to me. I never understood why Soviet engineers never connected that a better laid out and thought out cockpit is basically a free performance boost by letting the pilot operate the damn plane better.
>>64672241Ergonomic? the MiG-23 was unstable but the pilot didn't have assistance to avoid losing control during a dogfight, he had to manually control the AoA. Even the Zero of WW2 had mechanical assistance to avoid destroying the wings during a dogfight, 30 years before.
>>64672241In virtually every instance you can find of ex Soviet air pilots trying out Western aircraft, cockpit ergonomics is brought up. somehow the Soviets never got around to that.
>>64673147Anyone who proposed ergonomics that was more modern than a 1940 setup was immediately sent to the gulag.
>>64673147>>64673800My understanding is that Soviet design tended to be very compartmentalised. You designed whatever part was your responsibility, then you broke the steps down into simple enough actions that an army of grandmas on a production line anywhere in the USSR could be shown how to do it with enough grandmas for each discrete step. It doesn't seem like it'd lend itself to the holistic approach you need to take to make a cockpit intuitive.I'm also currently reading a declassified CIA document from the 80's which has some interesting takes. Apparently Stalin felt that behavioural sciences were ideologically incompatible with the USSR, so they were basically 20 years behind on establishing engineering psychology as a field after his death, and of course it takes a long time for that to then filter down to actual decisions on deployed platforms.Apparently in the mid 80's they were looking a lot into making systems that kept metrics on the pilot to assess current mental and physical state and adjust or activate certain features in response. Maybe if the USSR had survived into the 90's, Soviet flight instruments would be monitoring you.
>>64664229Warsaw Pact pilots liked it because it was vastly superior to the Mig-21. But what mattered is whether it was superior to the then current NATO adversaries, which they had no idea how much is was not. They assumed it would be roughly comparable to contemporaries like the Phantom (more or less true), and only at somewhat of a disadvantage against newer NATOshit like F-16's (they were in for a complete shock post-1990). Turdworld operators hated it because unlike the Mig-21, it couldn't be maintained by 60 IQ illiterate circus monkeys. Hence the reputation of poor reliability.
>>64673994>Warsaw Pact pilots liked itnobody liked it because it was a total crap that not even the soviet air force wanted. and they knew perfectly well how horrible it is compared to any western aircrft.
>>64673866>Apparently in the mid 80's they were looking a lot into making systems that kept metrics on the pilot to assess current mental and physical state and adjust or activate certain features in response. Yugoslavs were monitoring the biorhythm of pilots, not having them fly on double or triple-low days. Hungarian pilots wanted it adopted after a string of fatigue-related accidents during the mid-80's (when they were pushing really high flight hours to maintain combat readiness), but it was met with resistance and never adopted. Of course nowadays biorhythm is regarded as pseudoscience. >>64674005So I guess the Flogger pilot who's memoirs I read was just flat out lying, huh?
>>64674020Does matter what you say to him, because his mind was already made up since 24 February 2022.
>>64674020>So I guess the Flogger pilot who's memoirs I read was just flat out lying, huh?Probably. The memoirs of the soviet test pilot i read contained bitching about it being such a worthless and atrocious deathtrap that it kept eating their super trained test pilots like flies in about half the pages about it. Probably the most difficult to recover from deathspins in a soviet plane ever, and you could easily enter into one in vastly different maneuvers depending on the wing angle configuration. Also some of the worst visibility from a postwar soviet plane on top of it all.
>>64674246STFU vatnik vermin.
>>64674724Sounds like one group were typical slav(e)ic peanutbrains with no regard whether they live or die (they're in hell anyway), while the other group were hyperfocused autismos who understood that "exceeding these parameters will result in a departure from controlled flight" means exceeding these parameters will result in a departure from controlled flight. I mean the one thing consistent with homo sovieticus is their complacency, and treating rules written in blood, and safety tolerances written in kabooms as optional guidelines that only apply in ideal conditions (i.e. on parade or inspection when Comrade Minister is watching).
>>64674724The American pilots that tested it said it had two saving graces. Tremendous acceleration and sheer straight line speed at low altitude. The latter becoming a concern for F-111 crews. As for the plane overall, in the words of one test pilot "he flew like the plane was trying to kill him at any moment."
