As they approached the airstrip, they received word from the tower that the runway was indeed open, but was still pitted from earlier attacks. They were told to be careful and use their parachutes to slow the taxiing. Dushak headed down first. They weren't kidding when they said the runway was pitted! The strip of concrete was decorated with a complicated pattern of little earth mounds where the craters had been filled. As Dushak set down his MiG, he heard a loud bang. The right tire had burst on landing, largely as a result of unobserved battle damage. The plane began skidding uncontrollably. He could do nothing to stop the skid, and the plane headed for the side of the runway. It crashed into a small stand used for landing light array, then plowed into the soft field beyond. The nose gear collapsed, bringing the aircraft to a sudden, jarring halt.
Dushak's heart was pounding wildly. As a trained pilot, he knew he'd escaped this mishap, but his other senses had been preparing for the worst. Some ground crewmen in their usual black coveralls and black berets were running to the aircraft. It suddenly occurred to him that he had better exit the plane before a fire broke out. He sprang the release on the canopy and unfastened his harness. The ground crew was shouting to him, but with his helmet on, he couldn't hear. He removed it as he got out of the cockpit. "Comrade Pilot, get out quickly! Enemy bombers!"
Before he could crawl down from his awkwardly tilted perch, Dushak heard the deafening roar of fighter-bombers immediately overhead. A group of about six F-16s screamed over, dropping cluster bombs and Durandal airfield-cratering bombs. The concussion from a nearby Durandal heaved Dushak out of the cockpit, hurling him against the ground below. He had broken a collarbone, but was otherwise all right. He staggered to his feet and began running away from his wrecked aircraft toward a nearby clump of sandbags.
The airfield hangars took a heavy pounding. Kostenko's aircraft had been taxiing near the hangars, but Dushak could see no signs of his wingman or his aircraft. He hoped he had made it safely before the attack began. No more planes would be flying from this field today!
There is a cartoon, popular on many American army bases, showing a couple of Russian tankers in a cafe in Paris, their tank parked outside. Their feet are up on the table, and they are sitting back, having a mug of beer. One tanker says to the other: "Tell me, Ivan. Who did win the air war?"
The Soviet armed forces are not as preoccupied with tactical air forces as the U.S. Although the Soviets have a large tactical air arm, the so-called Frontal Aviation of the Air Forces, it receives a smaller chunk of the Soviet budget than is the case with the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army. Some of this has to do with historical experiences, and some of it is due to budget and technology constraints.
The Soviet Air Force in World War II was heavily oriented toward supporting the ground troops. The aircraft produced in the greatest numbers during the war was the II-2 Shturmovik ground attack aircraft. The Soviet Ground Forces did not put as much dependence on tactical air support as did U.S. forces, since air superiority over the battlefield was usually in question.
Although the Soviet Air Force could attain local air superiority in 1943, the Germans still managed to contest control of the air right into 1944. In contrast, the U.S. ground forces enjoyed air superiority almost from the outset in the European theater. The Soviet Ground Forces came to depend more heavily on artillery for fire support than on air forces. The Soviet Air Force accounted for less than 5 percent of the German tanks destroyed during the fighting on the Eastern Front. In contrast, Allied fighter-bombers accounted for nearly 20 percent of the tanks knocked out in the Normandy fighting, and almost 50 percent in Korea in 1950. More importantly, Allied tactical air forces had played a vital role in smashing German logistics and supply efforts.
From 1945 until the late 1960s, Soviet tactical air forces received little priority. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the accent was on strategic air defense. Fighters like the MiG-15, MiG-17, MiG-19, and MiG-21 were configured primarily for the antibomber role. The Il-10, successor to the Il-2 Shturmovik, ended production in the late 1940s and was not succeeded by a dedicated ground attack plane for more than a decade. In the post-Stalin period, the Soviets began shifting to the view that the battlefield in Europe would go nuclear, and so dedicated conventional attack aircraft would be of questionable value.
When the Soviets finally began to pay more attention to ground attack, they introduced a thinly rehashed fighter design, the Sukhoi Su-7, for this role. The Sukhoi Su-7B was viewed as a "frontal fighter" capable of being used as either a fighter or a light bomber. It was mediocre in either role. But the Soviets noted the critical role of air power in the 1967 Mideast war, in Vietnam, and in the 1973 Yom Kippur war. In the late 1960s, a major program to rejuvenate Soviet Frontal Aviation began. A new generation of MiG fighters, the MiG-23/27, was developed clearly for the tactical air role. The Su-7 was modernized into the more successful Su-17/ 20/22 family. And the Soviets began deploying attack helicopters in their Air Force for close air support.
Soviet tactical aircraft design has been heavily influenced by trends in the West. The Su-7 and the Su-17/22 Fitters were inspired by American strike fighters like the F-105, even though technically they have little in common. The MiG-23/27 Flogger emulated the highly successful F-4 Phantom. Like the Phantom, the Flogger was an attempt to develop a single aircraft capable of being employed in the fighter and fighter-bomber role. The Su-24 Fencer was a clear counterpart to the F-lll/FB-nL This highly capable strike aircraft represents the high-technology end of tactical air support. It is a deep penetration aircraft, with an elaborate and sophisticated navigation system. On the lower end of the technology spectrum, the new Su-25 Frogfoot is a counterpart of the U.S. A-10 ground attack aircraft.
The MiG-29 Fulcrum, which is the centerpiece of this fictional scenario, is a Soviet attempt to come to grips with the new generation of American fighter aircraft. The MiG-29 was developed in the early 1970s as a counterpart to the F-16 and F-18. In terms of size, it is closer to the F-18, and shares a very similar configuration. The Soviets also developed a counterpart to the larger American F-15 Eagle in the form of the Su-27 Flanker.
A bit more is known about the MiG-29 Fulcrum than many other new Soviet combat aircraft as a result of glasnost. In 1987, the Soviets displayed the MiG-29 at a Finnish air base, and in 1988, they took the unprecedented step of displaying it at the biannual Farnborough Air Show in England. This gave Western aircraft designers and pilots a chance to see it firsthand. While Western pilots were not allowed to fly it (at least as yet), they were able to get some sense of its capabilities.
The aerobatic performance of the MiG at the show was spectacular. Although some of the attraction was due to its novelty, its performance did put it in the same class as the F-16 or F-18. Instantaneous and sustained turn rates appeared to be comparable to Western fighters, but not necessarily any better. What made the performance especially remarkable was the nature of its design. Although it seems to offer performance approaching the best of Western fighters, the technology in many respects is of an earlier generation. The Soviet aircraft designers have shown an intriguing ability to push older technologies to the limit in order to extract performances and capabilities that Western designers obtain through the use of new technology.