Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire A MiG AT YOUR SIX....

Is better than no MiG at all. How a MiG-25 Foxbat ( a really bad airframe), shot down LCDR Scott Spicher's F/A-18 the first night of Desert Storm..

shootdown

Interesting story. Thanks for posting. Regrets for LCDR Speicher and thanks for his service and, unfortunately, his sacrifice.

What a shame. I had forgotten that Spicher later died. RIP.
Every time I hear something about the MiG-25 it makes me remember seeing on TV Belinko's (SP?) Foxbat sitting on the runway in Japan. I was in elementary school at the time. I remember thinking '"Wow a Soviet Foxbat defected?"

Bummer. E

He should have been engaged when he was seen climbing after takeoff.

I was in that Air Wing after DS as a Dept Head in the viking Squadron and in fact I'm very good friends with his room mate so I was very familiar with the issue. Spike's status was MIA for years, but during the clinton era, we had SOLID intel he had been captured, so a plan was put together to insert a team to the crash site to ascertain. The Chairman (JCS) at the time, that "showmeyourwillie" dude, disapproved it. Bottom line is we'll never know.

If you read the article, we had that damned MiG "painted" since he launched, but we did not have 100% ID and wanted to avoid blue on blue so the AWACS didn't paint a good picture. The other problem was it was a BVR (beyond visual range) shot (even though they could see his burner plume), but still, that missile launch was missed. That is war..

Wow. How terrible for his family.

Very unfortunate outcome but an interesting engagement.

There’s a great quote in Pederson’s new book Top Gun. Paraphrasing, he says, Why do we spend billions on new technologies when we turn around and write rules of engagement that don’t allow us to use the technologies.

We’d be better off training our asses off in good jets than squeezing in minimum training hours on great jets. The number one element of success in big aerial battles is situational awareness. They lost it, or in actuality it was lost amongst many other bits of information, and he paid the price. There’s also a mindset of “needing permission.” If the guy who had him on radar, and knew what it was, had been better trained to solve the problem that MiG would have been on our side of the Talley board. The F-18s at that time we’re still relatively new, and were mostly attack pilots lacking the training in large scale A/A scenarios. Training matters. Only after taking part in NUMEROUS large scale events does everything start to slow down in your mind where you can hear and process all the information being thrown at you, and then prioritize and act upon it.
We actually did a pretty good job of training to this in the years afterwards. Of course post 9/11 the missions changed and the focus was on strike/CAS (understandably). I’d be concerned about a similar A/A scenario today. Though in conversations I think they are aware and attempting to address the training shortfalls. Making a multi mission jet is easier than making a true multi mission pilot. I envy the F-15C and F-22 guys in that regard.

Thanks for sharing.

Do I remember correctly that Speicher wasn't even missed for two days?

That's nonsense. Everyone knew he'd been bagged, just not located because his ELT had not gone off. PRM, to your point and more recently, how many shots did we have to take against that Syrian Frogfoot (?) last year to knock him down?

Took two shots. The 9x didn’t work. The -120 did him in.

How long does it take to “warm up” a MIG’s radar?

That MiG25 is solid 60s tube technology!

It would seem that the old 60s tube technology was more than enough to kick modern high technologies ass, at least in this case. 😉

I remember reading about how the -25's radar, if it was powered up on the ground could fry rabbits and other small critters!
Probably an exaggeration, but makes a good story?

If the guy using the modern stuff is either prevented from shooting, or does not, then yes.

I have a friend who was on that strike - He said the biggest set of afterburners he had ever seen went through their formation - likely running up his jam strobe as that was the Iraqi training model and kill the Prowlers so the SAMs would have a jam free engagement. He split-essed 10,000 feet to keep it in sight and his Tomcats escorts turned but by that point the Mig had kept going at high Mach and they never saw it again. It is generally thought that it was the same Foxbat that got Spicher.

All the models and threat assessments on Iraqi tactics we got prior to ODS was we were going to lose 50% of us in Prowlers the first night with that same scenario. I'm pretty happy to say they were wrong.

The problem is, the politicians and generals don't want to WIN, they just don't want to lose. That's a poor recipe for success, in any endeavor.