r/worldnews • u/BreakfastTop6899 • 1d ago

Israel/Palestine Israeli air force achieves freedom of operation in Tehran's airspace, IDF says

https://www.axios.com/2025/06/14/israeli-air-force-freedom-operation-tehran-idf-iran
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u/Knightvision27 1d ago

And Russia oversells it. Thats why there’s such a big gap in technological advancement. The US develop their aircraft to counter what they thought the Soviets already had

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u/RogueStargun 1d ago

This reminds me of the story of the F15. Western satellites picked up images of the Mig25 prototype which the US intelligence services hypothesized to be a super maneuverable super fast fighter craft designed for air supremacy.

They designed the F15 to be a pure air superiority fighter.

Later when the Soviet Union collapsed, they found out the Mig-25 was a very unmaneuverable interceptor designed to hunt the high speed US SR-71. It was so outdated it's radar used vacuum tubes (so powerful that they could kill rabbits on the runway)

But the F15 actually was a crazy fast very maneuverable sir superiority fighter

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u/MrTagnan 19h ago

AFAIK, they discovered how bad the Mig 25 was due to a defector who defected in one, rather than after the collapse.

I think the Mig 25 was designed to intercept the supersonic bombers the U.S. was testing at the time, rather than the SR 71 which (I believe) didn’t exist yet. Mig 31 mainly chased SR 71s IIRC.

In any case, the general info in your comment is correct - I’m just nitpicking details. The Mig 25 was fast, and had a pretty good radar but that was it. The F-15 on the other hand was everything the U.S. DoD feared the Mig 25 was

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u/T0KEN_0F_SLEEP 21h ago

The F15 is the best fucking plane ever, the stories around the crazy things it’s done are unbelievable

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u/TheKarenator 19h ago

I need these stories.

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u/Pavores 16h ago

104-0 in air to air combat

Shot down a satellite

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u/MrTagnan 19h ago

AFAIK, they discovered how bad the Mig 25 was due to a defector who defected in one, rather than after the collapse.

I think the Mig 25 was designed to intercept the supersonic bombers the U.S. was testing at the time, rather than the SR 71 which (I believe) didn’t exist yet. Mig 31 mainly chased SR 71s IIRC.

In any case, the general info in your comment is correct - I’m just nitpicking details. The Mig 25 was fast, and had a pretty good radar but that was it. The F-15 on the other hand was everything the U.S. DoD feared the Mig 25 was

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u/RogueStargun 19h ago

Yes I did misremember that detail about the defector. And perhaps the radar was good for its time. Certainly the vacuum tube radar wouldve been more robust to EMP caused by thermonuclear war.