# MiG-23



## The Basket (Sep 10, 2007)

Interested to know if you think the ole Flogger was any good.

Could it have done well in any WP NATO war of the eightys.?

Was it cannon fodder? Too crude?

One point was it did have a medium range missile while the NATO F-16A didn't. And it was proper fast too. Plus plenty of them. And it could carry half dozen AAMs. Plus gun.


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## ccheese (Sep 10, 2007)

The Wiki Encyclopedia has quite a write up on the Flogger A thru K.

Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-23 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Charles


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## Glider (Sep 10, 2007)

We were told to consider it to be roughly equal to an early F4 but with poor reliability.


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## SoD Stitch (Sep 10, 2007)

This may or may not help you any, but I've flown the -23 in flight sims, and it's manueverability was surprisingly poor for a V-G aircraft. Acceleration was so-so, but low level speed was pretty good, probably due to the high wing loading. Other than that, it was about on-par with an early model Phantom, maybe a B or a C.


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## The Basket (Sep 10, 2007)

My view is the Flogger was ten years too late. It was designed to fight Phantoms but met Eagles instead.

Proof that the Soviets were behind.


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## comiso90 (Sep 10, 2007)

It was obviously influenced by the F-111 fighter/bomber. We recognized the limitations of the F-111 and turned it into a tactical strike aircraft while the MiG 23 soldiered on as an ungainly fighter.


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## mkloby (Sep 10, 2007)

SoD Stitch said:


> This may or may not help you any, but I've flown the -23 in flight sims, and it's manueverability was surprisingly poor for a V-G aircraft. Acceleration was so-so, but low level speed was pretty good, probably due to the high wing loading. Other than that, it was about on-par with an early model Phantom, maybe a B or a C.



Sims.... hehe


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## FLYBOYJ (Sep 10, 2007)

SoD Stitch said:


> This may or may not help you any, but I've flown the -23 in flight sims.


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## Matt308 (Sep 10, 2007)

And to think I actually was thinking full motion simulator. I really need to dump my bridge.


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## Glider (Sep 11, 2007)

The Mig 23 was I believe not really useful as a fighter considering what it was up against the Mig 27 was probably the first respectable Soviet strike plane. Not saying it was a good as the NATO aircraft, but it was a significant leap for the Soviet forces.


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## Graeme (Sep 11, 2007)

Do you think MiG should have stuck with the delta wing version instead of the variable-geometry? (and without the 'lift jets').


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## Matt308 (Sep 11, 2007)

...and the rough field landing gear, and the crappy engine, and the canopy that affored no visibility, and the lack of internal fuel, and the $hitty avionics, and the ....

Yeah they shoulda. Good decision.


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## Aggie08 (Sep 11, 2007)

The -23 was a near-equal to the Phantom? That's way better than I would have thought. That's pretty impressive, methinks.


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## Smokey (Sep 12, 2007)

From wikipedia:



> Performance tests
> 
> Many potential enemies of the USSR and its client states had a chance to evaluate the MiG-23’s performance. In the 1970s, after a political realignment by the Egyptian government, Egypt gave their MiG-23MS to the United States and the People's Republic of China in exchange for military hardware. These MiG-23MS helped the Chinese to develop their Shenyang J-8II aircraft by borrowing some MiG-23 features, such as its ventral fin and air intakes, and incorporating them into the J-8II. In the US, these MiG-23MS and other variants acquired later from Germany were used as part of the evaluation program of Soviet military hardware. The Dutch pilot Leon Van Maurer, who had more than 1200 hours flying F-16s, flew against MiG-23ML Flogger-Gs from air bases in Germany and the U.S. as part of NATO's aerial mock combat training with Soviet equipment. He concluded that the MiG-23ML has superiority on the vertical plane over early F-16 variants, is just slightly inferior to the F-16A on the horizontal plane, and has superior BVR capability.
> 
> ...



Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-23 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Sep 12, 2007)

I have some really good pics of Iraqi 23's that I need to find. We walked all over them and around them and from a maintaners point of view, I would not have enjoyed having to work on one.


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## Matt308 (Sep 12, 2007)

...and its my understanding that even when worked on, they had terrible sortie rates. The best aircraft that can't sortie is worthless.


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## JP Vieira (Sep 21, 2007)

from what I read, the Mig-23, speciall the latter models (ML?) were qite good; pewrhaps between the F-4 (late models) and an F-16.


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## J_P_C (Aug 23, 2018)

Here is my view of this airplane.
1)astonishing acceleration - especially after tunning engine to WEP mode
2) rugged airframe, with pretty good survivability level, system separation was well thought, fuel tank inert gas system was effective, landing gear it was true engineering masterpiece
3) pretty good reliability - far superrior to MiG29, and F-16/15 - but this is benefit from mature analog avionics, 
4) acceptable agility - i've witnessed mockup combat between MiG 23 and 29th, good pilot can use high energy of 23rd to stand against 29th in visual combat condition, in BVR combat 23rd is cannon fodder due to poor radar and R23 missile performance
5) effective close range armament, both Gsh gun and R60 missiles
6) acceptable air -to ground bomb load, but almost exclusively unguided, i never saw X23 missiles loaded on this airplane for training or combat purposes even theoretically it was possible
7) avionics was seriously outdated at the beginning of 90s
8) pilot's workload level was too high for 1990s 

As usually many pros and cons. You have to remember that this airplane was built with specific tactic in mind, unfortunately for it's fame, it was never used in combat in a way it was thought as a weapon system.

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## The Basket (Aug 26, 2018)

J_P_C said:


> As usually many pros and cons. You have to remember that this airplane was built with specific tactic in mind, unfortunately for it's fame, it was never used in combat in a way it was thought as a weapon system.


You should read what the Americans thought of the Flogger in American service.
Even experienced test pilots hated it!


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## J_P_C (Aug 30, 2018)

well - my opinion comes from personal experiences, i personally know pilots who hate this airplane and who loves it - interesting most of the second ones are guys who are, in my opinion, at least very good in their proffession. I'd love to read what americans thought about this airplane - i'll be gratefull for sharing your source.


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## The Basket (Sep 4, 2018)

The American pilots who flew Floggers were all experienced test pilots with many hours under their belts.
Just look under Constant Peg.
So the professional status is beyond reproach. One story is that a Flogger even on a F-16 six was still at a huge disadvantage because the Viper could be on the Flogger in a moment. The Flogger guns and runs and that's it. I like one story that if the wings were swept back the Flogger is running and if the wings were straight then it's trying to dogfight so an opposing pilot can tell straight away the intent of the Flogger pilot.

If you have any Flogger stories then please tell as I would love to hear them. Although Poland do fly some old WarPac jets but the Flogger is not one of them...

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## J_P_C (Jul 10, 2019)

28th fighter regiment of PAF was equipped with Mig23mf, in1997 or 98 we had participated in serious exercise with USAF, including mockup combat against F16s and 15s, first day od exercises generally confirmed superiority of US airplanes and tactics, that was mainly because exercises scenario was written by USAF in a manner " this how we imagine ww3" . Day 2 they accepted slight scenario changes and result was much better for Red forces, good enough for my regiment that US commanders protested bringing up fact that Red forces have used tactics which they haven't been awared - i'm citing this from memory - exact wording could be slightly different. This one more proof that equipment quality is important but human factor may slightly change force balance in surprising way.

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## The Basket (Jul 13, 2019)

I have load of questions about MiG-23 but where get answers? 
What was the true kill probability of the R-23/24 or the R-60?
What was the effective combat radius of say the Polish Flogger-B?
What was the radar range? 
What tactics did they use?

I assume it was straight line run and gun as dogfight was not its thing. 

However in say the 1980s there was plenty of NATO aircraft which was looking shaky against a Flogger. Mirages, Starfighters, Phantoms, Jaguars. 

Even NATO F-16 like Belgium were Sidewinder and guns only so the extra range of the R-23 would come in handy and if you can run fast enough before they get of a sidewinder shot it can either be flared away or even out ranged.


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## J_P_C (Sep 15, 2019)

Here answers on your questions:
- R23T/R - 0,6 for large slowly manouvring targets type B-52 for example (theoretical number not considering using defensive aids by target) - export version MF can use either of them but not simultaniously, Soviet airplanes can use both type of medium range missiles simultaniously - R-23 was basically useless against fighter type targets, any hard maneuver depleted missile energy pretty quicly
R-60 - 0,8 again this is theoretical number
- aircraft endurance reached 5 hours for the high/economical flight profile - using afterburner can eat all your fuel within 3 minutes
- radar range it is very complex question - but simplifying B-52 size targets it may be around 50km close to maximal range of R23 missile, now you may compare RCS of B-52 to any given type and estimate detection range drop (detection range is NOT equal to the radar lock range), in many cases thermolocator was significantly more combat effective than radar
- most effective tactics was GCI, very low level approach using ground clutter to hide airplane from fighters and AWACS radars, mutidirectional attack to saturate decision making system, airplane radars off to limit ECM effectivenss, use thermolocator mainly and last time near vertical zoom attack, surprise effect was a key

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