Do the Russians have US planes for Top gun training?

Ive known for years that the US has acquired many Russian/communist craft. These days more and more we are using them in training. But my question is. Do the Russians have any Nato/American aircraft/systems that are relevant that they train against. I know having exact models of your foes in training is Gold militarily. Ive yet to find many resources on the subject. Anyone?

Do the Russians have any Nato/American aircraft/systems that are relevant that they train against.

Well, ironically, the Soviets most likely got their hands on a few F-14’s from Iran after 1979. Don’t know if they flew it for training but they most likely looked them over.

to the best of my knowledge there were no western pilot deffections to the SU blok - [ which garnered the west most of its most prized soviet hardware , prior to 1990 ]

but - i remember reading that the north vietnamese reportedly were required to hand over all savage they recovered as part of the price for the military aid they recieved

and VIET cong were trained to identify and remove portable peices that could be stolen from downed aircraft

the US was aware of this and IIRC the first F111 lost over south vietnam was the focus of a major salvage op - to stop ANY part of it falling into enemy hands

as wstie noted - the soviets took a great deal of interest in the iranian F14 - and there were several previous exaples of regieme changes / coups - leaving US kit in the hands of a new marxist govt who let the soviets paw over what toys were left behind

Originally posted by VType
Ive known for years that the US has acquired many Russian/communist craft. These days more and more we are using them in training. But my question is. Do the Russians have any Nato/American aircraft/systems that are relevant that they train against. I know having exact models of your foes in training is Gold militarily. Ive yet to find many resources on the subject. Anyone?

There was an ex-Viet F-5E that ended up in a Czech museum or test center for quite awhile.

I know that parts of an F-4J ended up donating J79 and APG-59 technology to the second generation MiG-23 upgrade.

OTOH, the REAL gold mine for the Soviets was, is and will always be, not the military but the U.S. itself. Freedom of information and the ease of access to what were locked behind 1,000's of miles of interior surrounding their factory and 'science city' installations locked their R&D people away from easy access.

But on the 'secrets are only as safe as the inverse of the square of people who know them' rule; you can easily see how just simple access (a camera recording vehicle plate numbers leaving a given MACDAC or GD or Boeing plant), combined with a little covert penetration of our police networks (which were interlinked long before the Internet), could get you 'all you needed to know' to begin working psyche profiles on threats.

In truth, this kind of humint appeals greatly to the insular and clannish Soviets who are past masters of manipulating their own closed society and have no disclosure or oversight rules on their spying activities.

So for every John Walker type opint case, there are probably a dozen others providing techint who sell their souls for money and then have nowhere to go with it that is not blocked off by their handlers.

Our own edge is of course technology and the ability to listen in to things which most people believe is either impossible or illegal but which the Feds do 'anyway' (the 'Bush does wiretapping' thing is so old that it's not even got much shine anymore). Because the land of the free really means the land of the blissfully unaware in those agencies of ours which operate on a stratified and partioned architecture most similar to the Russian model.

The APG-63/65 radar techbase was stolen this way. So too were a couple critical ASW thermocline model processors or their firmware I believe (I think this was SOSUS or longline rather than sub tow but I could be wrong).

And then of course there are all the overseas manufacturer/NATO leaks which gave such things as Norwegian and Japanese propellor milling technology away.

In the end there is some merit to letting your enemy have /some/ elements of your technology base. Simply because then they have no excuse to really start developing their own (which may or may not be a mirror-match so much as 'better than' your operational paradigm). As long as you are the lead dawg, the mushers behind only get to see your ass and this also helped keep our own MIC well and truly 'growth as much as innovation' minded (which is to say technology-insert respondent with continual micro upgrades that meld together to make a seamless system-of-systems synergy by default rather than intent).

The problem of course is that we have fed the beast until it became a monster and now we have a very hard time seeing the world as anything /but/ a win:lose military scenario because a lot of our other societal systems have been allowed to fail maintaining an edge for which we have no conquest to pay for.


KPl.

Even now, Venezuela is threatening to sell US hardware. In the 1980s, Venezuela was a lot more friendly to the US than it is now and bought a score of F-16s. They want more of them from Brazil, but the US is blocking the sale--and Venezuela threatened to sell the planes to China or Cuba. I don't think it's much of a stretch to say that Iran especially, or Iraq, Cuba, or any of a number of countries in South America could have sold planes to the Soviets or Chinese.

The biggest problem, as far as I know, would be upkeep--you can only fly fighters for a couple hundred hours at most without having or manufacturing replacement parts for them. I don't know how adept the Soviets were at reverse-engineering or copying American parts designs, but if they had American planes they would have to be to keep them in the air.

I'm not sure about any aircraft, but I did read an interesting story about our cruise missiles being sold. Apparantly when we fired cruise missiles at al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan in retaliation for the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, unexploded cruise missile(s) were sold to the Chinese by the Taliban. This apparantly was a huge asset to the Chinese and their missile development.

that is still one of their biggest flaws to this day, you can call it an hold over from their "SOVIET days"

many examples of WESTERN aircraft have been examine and greatly study over the years

but yet they have not taken a page from their "counter parts" nor made any effort to truly implement them into their "battle plan training exercises" as a guide

the reason is because of the "RUSSIAN philosophy" to warfare, they haven't yet to reformed their "tactics" and until they do their counter parts will always be one step ahead of them

It's rumored that US pilots that were POWs in Vietnam were turned over to the Soviets and they interrogated them ruthlessly about nuclear capabilities of our planes, etc. I don't know for certain of any CONFIRMED instances of this though.

^^
Zaphod, this happened to other way around too. I don't know about the ruthless interogation bit and I seriously doubt it, but I can confirm that IAF pilots (MiG-21 and Su-7) were routinely quizzed by the American Air Attaches(incld. Chuck Yeager himself!!) in Pakistan during the 71 war. They wanted to get to know these a/c better.

And here's an article about Russians engaging in mock combat with western fighters. Skip the Cope India bit and read the stuff after that:

Source

What i would like to find out is if any countries with US planes have had any missing parts or reported missing planes. Also if crashed planes were salvaged. And Im sure with all the tech info out these days the Russians could easily reverse engineer our craft part for part seeing how these air frames have been around since the 70's.

Originally posted by WestPoint23
Well, ironically, the Soviets most likely got their hands on a few F-14’s from Iran after 1979. Don’t know if they flew it for training but they most likely looked them over.

Not that I am questioning you, but could you provide a source? Thanks alot in advance.

Not that I am questioning you, but could you provide a source? Thanks alot in advance.

No problem mate, here are some links talking about the Soviet-Iran military connection after the 1979 revolution. By the way, its good to question.

A few Iranian F-14s are believed to have been shot down during the war, with the Iranian F-14s claiming a small number of kills of their own. It is known that the Soviet Union obtained both the F-14 and the Phoenix missile for reverse-engineering from Iran. It is unclear if this was done by the Iranian Islamic Republic's government or by a defecting Iranian pilot. F-14 technology may have influenced development of the Soviet MiG-31 "Foxhound" or "Super Foxbat", and it seems very likely that the Phoenix had a strong influence on the Soviet "AA-9 Amos" AAM, since the two missiles closely resemble each other externally.

This loss was something of a blow to the US, as the US Navy had been careful not to compromise the Tomcat's secrets. On 14 September 1976, a Phoenix-armed F-14A had rolled off the deck of the US Navy carrier JOHN F. KENNEDY in the North Sea, with the crew ejecting safely. Of course a Red Navy cruiser had been shadowing the American carrier group and presumably the Soviet sailors didn't fail to notice the bungle, and so the Navy performed an expensive eight-week deep-water recovery effort to retrieve the fighter. It is unclear if it ever returned to service after recovery, though it seems a bit unlikely.

Link

It is also believed that one or more F-14s were delivered to the Soviet Union in exchange for technical assistance. In addition, at least one Iranian F-14 aircrew was reported to have defected to the Soviet Union with their aircraft. Some believe that Soviet access to Iranian Phoenix missiles allowed the Vympel Design Bureau to develop the R-33/AA-9 Amos long-range missile that equips the Mig-31, but chief designer Gennadiy Sokolovskiy has indicated that his team never had such access. In any event, it is believed that Soviet and Russian expertise has allowed Iran to operate, maintain, and upgrade the F-14 fleet. The aircraft are reportedly being upgraded with a new Russian radar, engines, and a glass cockpit allowing them to serve until well into the 21st century. The Iranian press has further indicated that the surviving aircraft have been adapted for a heavy bombing roll, perhaps armed with air-to-surface anti-ship missiles.

Link

Now, this website claims that the pictures shown are original images of Soviet Tomcats. I highly doubt their authenticity but you can look them over.

[edit on 16-4-2006 by WestPoint23]

The Soviets and the Chinese have been reportedly picking up bits and pieces of western tech where ever and whenever possible.
Right from accusations surrounding the final resting place of the downed F-117A in Kosovo(Russia/China?), to the acquisition of tomahawk duds in Pakistan
(by China).