The MiG-31 is only good at one thing: speed. That bad boy can intercept damn near anything but it can’t turn on a dime or go too fast unless shear forces tear its wings and airframe off. It’s pretty much a cool looking paper tiger.
So I was curious because I genuinely had that mixed up when reading the thread, so I watched a quick documentary about the foxhound. It is extremely similar because it’s derived directly from the fox bat platform. The mig 31 is an interceptor fighter. It’s still extremely quick, but not as quick as the fox bat. It could hit mach 2.5 and could intercept the sr 71 if it was pushing hard apparently, especially given that a missile could reach out and touch the blackbird if required.
The biggest difference I learned was that the 25 was all go and nothing else, whereas the 31 was slower to allow for more capabilities. The changes that they made for the 31 allowed it to be somewhat successful as a fighter as well at lower speed.
The MiG-31 is only good at one thing: speed. That bad boy can intercept damn near anything but it can’t turn on a dime or go too fast unless shear forces tear its wings and airframe off. It’s pretty much a cool looking paper tiger.
This seems like a fantastic example of “if a metric becomes a target, it fails in being a metric”.
Eh, it works for what it is. The whole plane is basically a manned stage-1 of an AA missile.
Are you thinking of the mig 25? The foxhound was supposedly much more capable at low speed than the foxbat. Genuinely curious
Crap I think you’re right. They look damn near identical to each other. I don’t know what the MiG-31 could do better than its older counterpart.
So I was curious because I genuinely had that mixed up when reading the thread, so I watched a quick documentary about the foxhound. It is extremely similar because it’s derived directly from the fox bat platform. The mig 31 is an interceptor fighter. It’s still extremely quick, but not as quick as the fox bat. It could hit mach 2.5 and could intercept the sr 71 if it was pushing hard apparently, especially given that a missile could reach out and touch the blackbird if required.
The biggest difference I learned was that the 25 was all go and nothing else, whereas the 31 was slower to allow for more capabilities. The changes that they made for the 31 allowed it to be somewhat successful as a fighter as well at lower speed.