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The Su-25 Frogfoot can out-accelerate any attack aircraft in the world and,
with everything dropped from its multiple weapons stations, easily go through
Mach 1...I know this from experience...I was the first Western pilot to fly the
Su-25. Though its 30mm cannon is not nearly as lethal as the A-10's Gatling
gun, it has similar armor protection and it can carry an impressive number of
external stores.
The radars equipping Su-27s and MiG-29s are less capable than Western radars,
but they are often left in stand-by (off but warmed up) and used only as
backups for targeting. The Russians have continued to develop IRST (infrared
search and tracking) systems, which the U.S. has left alone since the 1950s.
This passive system can track a heat source much like a heat seeking missile
without giving one's position away.
 During the Cold War MiG-23 pilots next to the Warsaw Pact/NATO border
practiced intercepting the E-3 AWACS and its fighter cover with a combination
of radar warning receivers and IRST, both passive. Flying at low level in a
line abreast formation of 12, they would fly up to the FEBA (forward edge of
the battle area), pitch up and simulate the simultaneous launch of 24 radar
sensing air-to-air anti-radiation missiles which could not be spotted until too
late. Able to track the AWACS several times during patrols on the border, they
were confident they could kill the E-3 and its F-15s over 50 miles away without
being detected. The simplicity of this tactic is frightening, considering how
much faith the West places in radar combat.
The last time we underestimated Russian technology and training...in the
Vietnam War...we got our hats handed to us. We had the better weapons, radars,
missiles and aircraft, but our kill-to-loss ratios were abysmal, totally
unacceptable. Out of that war came the Navy Topgun and the Air Force Red Flag
practice war and Aggressor squadrons, which improved training by leaps and
bounds. Now, with our own budget cuts breathing down our necks, the Pentagon
has opted to put most of the money in very high cost, high tech weapons systems
while drawing down on flying time and training. The Aggressor squadrons have
been deactivated. Red Flag is getting reduced and even the famous Topgun is
getting looked at for the ax. Plain and simple, high technology has never won
wars...if that were the case, Germany would have won World War II. Training and
numbers win wars. Sure, there are some anomalies on the scope, but this dictum
can rarely be contradicted.
 The Russian Air Force faces even worse problems than we do, which means it
cannot meet world class training and readiness standards. However, the
resurgence of Russian nationalism and the nostalgia for communism's promise of
at least basic subsistence is a volatile mixture. Who knows what could happen
politically? If the will were there, the money could be rechanneled
again into making Russia an armed camp. If training standards were brought
back up and the infrastructure maintained, its aircraft could easily meet the
challenge, just as they did during the Great Patriotic War (WWII). To count
them out would be folly.
Jeffrey Ethell's father, Erv Ethell, a career USAF fighter pilot, began to teach
him to fly at age eight. He soloed at 18 and had over 4,800 hours in over
210 different types of aircraft from World War I and World War II fighters to
modern jets. During his years in college in the late 1960s he received several
research grants from the National Air & Space Museum, Smithsonian
Institution. Ethell wrote 60 books and over 1,000 magazine
articles covering all aspects of aviation. He regularly wrote for and appeared
in aviation documentaries on the Discovery Channel, A&E, PBS,
Speedvision Network and others. An instructor, Jeff went full circle and
taught two of his three children to fly and transitioned pilots into many
ex-military warbird aircraft. He attempted to fly everything he wrote about and
he had formed his own book publishing company, Widewing Publications. Ethell was killed on
June 6, 1997 when the vintage P-38 "Lightning" fighter plane he was piloting crashed near
Tillamook, Oregon; see "Remembering Jeffrey Ethell."
(back to Miller essay)
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