Soviet MiG Expert Not Impressed by F-117A

PARIS – To one of the Soviet Union’s top warplane designers, America’s F-117A stealth fighter-bomber is no big deal.He doesn’t think the aircraft’s accomplishments in the Persian Gulf War were all that impressive, and he’s confident that one of his own fighters – even one that’s not his latest model – could detect the F-117A and shoot it down, if matters ever came to that.

The MiG-31 is a long-range interceptor designed to cruise over Soviet airspace and knock down enemy aircraft and cruise missiles. Dubbed “Foxhound” by NATO officials, it is the first Soviet plane to have a radar enabling it to shoot down aircraft outside the pilot’s visual range.

But what impresses Rostislav Belyakov is the F-22 advanced tactical fighter being built by General Dynamics, Lockheed and Boeing for the U.S. Air Force.

“Of course, we must now design new-generation combat aircraft that will be as good as the F-22,” Belyakov said yesterday during an interview at the 1991 Paris Air Show. “We know how the F-22 will perform; therefore we must also have new fighter. It is our task.”

Belyakov, chief designer at the Soviet Union’s Mikoyan Design Bureau, is personally credited with designing several generations of MiG fighter aircraft. Recently, during a rare two-hour exclusive interview, he talked candidly with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram about a variety of topics.

For the first hour, he spoke through an interpreter. But he continued in English for an hour after the interpreter left.Besides his views on the F-117A and F-22, he talked about the problems in dealing with a declining defense budget in his country – an ironic mirror image of the problems that U.S. defense contractors face.

And he talked about his impressions of one U.S. contractor: the General Dynamics Fort Worth Division, which he visited earlier this year.Belyakov thinks Lockheed’s F-117A, despite its starring role in the Persian Gulf War, is basically an Air Force experiment that has set the stage for the F-22.

Although the radar-evading F-117A broke a technological barrier, Belyakov said its 5,000-pound payload is too small and its unique shape limits its dogfighting capability.

“F-117 was the initial stage of stealth project, which is not very similar to next stage of stealth technology,” he said. “We consider the F-117 to have been an experimental program. It was probably very useful but has no future.”

All the performances of the aircraft, with the exception of its stealth properties, are very low. It cannot perform the fighter functions, just the bomber.”

But what of the F-117A’s bombing role over Baghdad? Too much has been made of it in the West, Belyakov said, noting that the allies sent other aircraft to knock out Iraqi radar and made extensive use of electronic jamming techniques – all of which played as big a role in letting the F-117A sneak into Baghdad as did its stealth technology.

But Belyakov said the F-22 will be a fighter the Soviets will have to reckon with when the Air Force puts it in operation at the turn of the century.The F-22’s technology is, of course, super-secret in the United States – but Belyakov seemed familiar with it.

Still, he admitted that he and his fellow designers have yet to develop vectored thrust for the engines of their fighter aircraft, a technology Pratt & Whitney Co. is ready to install on the F-22.Vectored thrust uses nozzles and louvers to direct engine exhaust in many directions, including side-to-side, downward and forward. It improves takeoff and landing performance, enhances maneuverability and can act as “speed brakes” or drag devices to allow landings on shorter runways.

“F-22 will have good maneuverability,” Belyakov said. “Vectored thrust is very useful technology. We’re working on it.”Belyakov is proud of his country’s aviation accomplishments. He said his MiG-31, displayed for the first time at the 1991 Paris Air Show, has radar good enough to detect the F-117A.

Belyakov said the MiG-31 flight computer and radar can track 10 aircraft at once and attack four simultaneously.The MiG is armed with air-to-air missiles, including four long-range radar-guided missiles and two medium-range infrared-guided missiles. It also totes a 23mm gun with 260 rounds of ammunition.Defense analysts and industry experts say the MiG-31’s engine, while powerful, is too unreliable, and they doubt the Soviet Union will find many countries wanting to take on its maintenance costs.

The Soviets already have a replacement for the MiG-31: the MiG-33. Belyakov, however, wouldn’t talk about that plane, and, like other Mikoyan products, it won’t be displayed in the West until its active-duty replacement is developed.

But Belyakov said developing new fighters won’t be as easy in his country as it was during the days of the Cold War, when the Soviets gave defense officials a blank check.The Soviet Union – in the midst of an economic transformation that newly elected Russian President Boris Yeltsin and others want to push into a free-market economy – is spending less on defense every year, Belyakov said. In fact, a drop in orders from foreign customers and the Soviet air force for the MiG-29 jet fighter could soon force the Soviet Union to end or severely cut its production, he said.

“Our economic position is a difficult one,” he said. “It will make it very difficult for us to do our task, but we will do it.”Belyakov is no stranger to Fort Worth. He visited the GD plant in April and said he came away impressed with its manufacturing technology.

He also said GD’s ability to design, develop and manufacture airplanes in the same plant contributes to the high quality of the F-16 Fighting Falcon, an aircraft he said he admires.”I like the production I have seen in Fort Worth,” he said. “The production floor area is very big, and the tooling is very sophisticated.

“All the process, starting from the supply of materials up to packing of manufactured airplane, is done in one single place.”There are six aircraft design bureaus in the Soviet Union, including Mikoyan, served by more than two dozen manufacturing plants. Those plants, Belyakov said, likely will be fighting one another for future work.

“There is competition,” he said. “For the number of aircraft manufactured will be reduced, and the range of types will be reduced as well.”We’ll be facing difficulty, surely, since there is a reduction in the defense budget.”But we think that the development and manufacture of prototypes will be continued. A new airplane is a new technology-driver.”

He acknowledged that the strongest catalyst in the Soviet economy will be the reforms proposed by Yeltsin and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.And what is his view of those initiatives?Gorbachev’s efforts will continue to have a great effect on Soviet defense systems, Belyakov said.

But he believes Yeltsin probably will not be a factor.Yeltsin, whom Belyakov said he has known personally for some timewill likely focus on political issues that won’t greatly affect the Soviet defense industry.”If Gorbachev take right direction, that would help,” he said. “But Gorbachev is wavering. I think Gorbachev must be in the right direction and try to position and not waver.”

Author: Michael D. Towle; Star-Telegram Writer

Caption:

Fort Worth Star-Telegram/Jim AthertonMiG-31 at a glance

GraphMemo:

Refer to microfilm for accompanying graph.