Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25

So you've got to remember that the Russians were afraid of almost everything the Americans were doing.

So the MiG-25 Foxbat was designed as this kind of super counter to the American aircraft at the time.

And the Americans then built the F-15.

And when they got hold of this... apparent russian super aircraft the mig-15 when someone defected i think they flew into japan or into south korea can't remember exactly how they got hold of this mig-15 and when they had a look at this thing they were like oh it's just great at going really fast in a straight line to try and intercept things like the sr-71 but it was not a very good aircraft so this super aircraft the first true air superiority aircraft the americans had with the f-15 was designed to combat this imaginary ghost or this ghoul of a Russian aircraft that just didn't exist.

Very neat.

T- tonight is a MiG-25 to 65,000 feet.

Wow.

Do you have any aviation regrets? And I mean, let me put it this way, in about '93, I was in Springfield, Illinois, and the guy who ejected out the MiG-29 in Paris-

We'd never done this.

And we went over there and flew the MiG 20- 29, flew the MiG 25.

Um, anyway, long process.

So I was dealing with the State Department, like, every other day for five months.

After minutes of pursuit, they had no confirmed contact.

Subsequent analyses by NATO's radar analysts noted that some of those tracks could have been spurious returns caused by temperature inversions over the North Sea or by signal reflections off weather phenomena such as contrails and cloud layers, but they were not able to conclusively attribute the anomalies to known aircraft types like MiG-25s or Dassault Rafales.

Because the F-16 pilots never recorded a clear image of an object that matched the ground reports, NATO issued a report in early 1991 acknowledging that the incidents remained unidentified and urged Belgium to continue monitoring, yet no further official investigations were pursued at higher levels due to diplomatic concerns about escalating rumors.

In hindsight, the intercept attempt underscores how quickly high-level military assets can become involved when radar data suggests something beyond standard operational envelopes, and also illustrates why most of these cases remain frustratingly opaque even to the most trained eyes and sensors.

Some say the craft was intercepted and forced to land in the Soviet Union.

This theory comes from the thought that a dismantled Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25 was included in the cargo on Flight 967.

In 1967, a Soviet Air Force pilot named Viktor Belenko defected in his MiG-25 to Hokkaido, and was offered asylum by Gerald Ford.

The fighter jet, MiG-25, became operational in 1970.

It was the main interceptor and reconnaissance aircraft of the Soviet Union, so they would do anything to keep it out of American hands.

It is absolutely true that Belenko offered a MiG-25 manual to the US in exchange for citizenship, but there is no proof either he or a decommissioned fighter jet were aboard Flight 967.

What happened to Varig Flight 967? Did it depressurize and the crew lose consciousness? Was it intercepted by the Soviet Union? What do you think? Thank you for joining me on our adventure through today's mystery.

The stories that That's Ready Mysterious covers are often stranger than fiction.

Hello and welcome to episode 59 of Control All Defense.

Now, there are fighter aircraft, there are spy planes, and then there is this absolute monster called the MiG-25 Foxbat.

Now, This is an aircraft that was so outrageously fast and powerful that for the longest time, it was born during the Cold War.

Most of the world had no idea what this aircraft really was about and what it could do.

I was probably the first or if not the first person who isn't from the Air Force to actually see these aircraft up close.

But these were incredible machines that the Russians built.

And India... for about a quarter century, in almost complete secrecy, operated these tremendous flying machines, the MiG-25 Foxbat.

So today on Control All Defense, Vishnu and I are not going to geek about the aircraft between ourselves.

Well, yeah.

The Viggins weren't there for more than, I'd say, five minutes, when a MiG-25, I could...

I could visually identify them.

But when I got to the Pentagon, I was told that they had launched over 20 aircraft at us that day, the Russians, out of different places.

It is 12.50 in the afternoon on the 6th of September 1976.

A Soviet Air Force lieutenant named Viktor Belenko releases the brakes of a MiG-25 interceptor at Sokolovka Air Base in the Soviet Far East, approximately 120 miles northeast of Vladivostok.

The aircraft weighs 22 tons and carries 14 tons of fuel.

It is one of the most secret pieces of military hardware in the world.

The contact on the ground controller's screen disappears.

What followed was one of the most dramatic cases of defection of the Cold War and one of the most consequential technical intelligence windfalls in American history.

For a decade, the MiG-25 Interceptor had been the West's most feared unknown in the Soviet arsenal.

The aircraft was studied for 67 days on Japanese soil before being returned to the Soviet Union in pieces.