MiG-23

[The Basket]

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.

 

[ccheese]

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

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

Charles

 

[Glider]

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

 

[SoD Stitch]

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.

 

[The Basket]

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.

 

[comiso90]

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.

 

[mkloby]

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

 

[FLYBOYJ]

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

 

[Matt308]

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

 

[Glider]

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.

 

[Graeme]

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

 

[Matt308]

...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.

 

[Aggie08]

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

 

[Smokey]

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.

The Israelis tested a MiG-23MLD that defected from Syria and found that it had better acceleration than the F-16 and F/A-18.

Another MiG-23 evaluation finding in the US and Israel reports was that the MiG-23 has a Heads-Up Display (HUD) that doubles as a radarscope, allowing the pilot to keep his eyes focused at infinity and work with his radar. It also allowed the Soviets to dispense with the radarscope on the MiG-23. This feature was carried over into the MiG-29, though in that aircraft a cathode ray tube (CRT) was carried on the upper right corner that can act as a radarscope as well. Western opinions about this "head-up radarscope" are mixed. The Israelis were impressed, but an American F-16 pilot criticizes it as "sticking a transparent map in front of the HUD" and not providing a three-dimensional presentation that will accurately cue a pilot's eyes to look for a fighter as it appears in a particular direction.

Besides the Syrian defection, a Cuban pilot flew a MiG-23BN to the US in 1991 and a Libyan MiG-23 pilot also defected to Greece in 1981. In both cases, the aircraft were later returned to their countries.

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

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

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.

 

[Matt308]

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

 

[JP Vieira]

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.

 

[J_P_C]

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.

 

[The Basket]

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!

 

[J_P_C]

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.