Fate of Russia's old birds.

With the planes out in the open it is much easier to see if someone who is not supposed to be there is there pinching stuff.

Much of the stuff the older bombers were made of is not titanium anyway... titanium is expensive and only used where it is needed... very high speed aircraft like the MiG-25 use more stainless steel than titanium... lower speed aircraft like mach 2 fighters and bombers use even less.

Many modern planes have sections made out of titanium, and most warplanes have some of it where it make sense for strength and heat resistance as well as weight.

You wont find such modern planes in such boneyards...

The only planes with a lot of titanium was the MiG-31s and they are looked after because they use them.... the ones in storage are in storage because they stopped production of engines, but that is now back in production so they will likely keep using old planes from storage to keep operational numbers of MiG-31s in service till about 2028 or so when hopefully they will start replacing them with MiG-41s.

The T-4M had titanium skin but it never entered service. The MIG-25 used stainless steel.

No other aircraft in service needed any extensive titanium sections... the largest user of titanium would be in the Tu-160 in the centre box section swing wing section and the ones that weren't scrapped by the Ukraine are in Russia....

During certain periods of the cold war titanium was not used on aircraft because they were building subs out of the stuff... the MiG-25 should have been all Titanium but it wasn't.

It was never designed to fly at a sustained M3 like SR-71, just short bursts, then putter along at 1.5-1.8. (lol).

There is no evidence the MiG-25 can fly Mach 3, it is designed to fly all day and every day at mach 2.4... it can manage mach 2.6 for about 20 minutes before having to slow down to mach 2.4, and it can fly at mach 2.83 for about 5 minutes before heat becomes an issue.

To be clear operating at top speeds its flight radius of about 750km would take about 13 minutes in each direction, so it could take off and climb and accelerate to mach 2.6 all the way out to its max flight radius of 750km and launch a missile, and then turn back and fly back to base at Mach 2.4...

The bomber with the Ti Skin was a Valkyrie competitor and was designed for M3 cruise, so Ti skin was needed. Ti is not that hard to fab for framework, with skins and forgings it become more difficult, lots of hinges, fastners, small subframes can be made of Ti. For every kg you save that is more range, payload and efficiency.

Never made it to service and is in a museum... safe from thieves hopefully.

The Russians didn't use Titanium where it was not essential because they made good money selling it on the international market... the Titanium in Soviet Subs was made with Soviet titanium, but so were SR-71s, and now F-35s and Boeing airliners are made with Russian titanium components too.

israelis saw a mig25 burst up to Mach 3.2 to evade f-4 interceptors. the mig bureau brought it to Mach 3 early after introduction I believe for records. I know it ate up the engines, essentially, but it was definitely possible.

It would be possible to fly faster than the redlined Mach 2.83, but you better have a very good reason for doing so because the engines will likely be stuffed after they cooled down again.

Flying faster than Mach 2.83 was not allowed.

So according to wikipedia Russia has 500 mig-23 in reserve.

They already proposed an upgrade called mig-23-98 similar to Mig-21 bison with new radar, avionic and r-77. Cost is 1 million dollar each.

Do you think it's a good idea to put some back in service or modernize them and sell them to poor states ?

SAA would be much stronger with such plane and they already have pilots for them.

The MiG-23 was a rather good aircraft that was not very well respected in the west.

There was a MiG-23-93 upgrade proposed (along with a MiG-21-93 upgrade) and a MiG-23-98 upgrade, but as mike mentions... there was no interest from other countries.

It is a bit like tanks... who is going to buy new optics and new engines and new computer systems and put them in a T-54. It makes more sense to start from a T-90 as a basis because it is a newer and better tank to start with and the improvements make it better.

There was no interest AFAIK... I would expect a few of them have been used up as M-23s... which has all the ejection seat and cockpit instruments removed and essentially it is a drone target for testing air defences.

Even 50 mig-23 with zuhk-M radar and RVV-SD would increase their power against israeli f-15/16. They also have some still inflying condition on their own that they could upgrade.

Parts are not longer made, crew who worked on them have retired.... it makes more sense to get a customer to upgrade to a much newer aircraft like a MiG-29.

I think even Russia should have upgraded its mig-25 to mig-31 level and also upgrade its formidable r-40 (which are 6+m long so with modern engines/fuel could reach 250km easily) which comes in IR and radar version contrary to r-33/37M.

When they introduced the MiG-31 there was consideration to fit the 15 ton thrust jet engines from the MiG-31 to the MiG-25 which uses 11 ton thrust engines. An extra 8 tons of thrust from engines that were probably physically lighter and newer would have been rather interesting.

The R-40s were upgraded to the D level with the R-40TD being used on MiG-31s... they would have been ideal for use against the SR-71 because its mach 4.5 flight speed meant it should be able hit an SR-71 head on or in chase mode if launched as the SR-71 blew past the MiG...

They are finalising a new missile to replace the R-37M.

Advantage of upgrading them is that it is easy. Their avionics/electronics were so big that you can easily put digital stuff inside. And they were available in big number. Also their primitive construction allows to restart production of spare parts pretty easily too. As long as they have a good airframe they should have no problem using them again.

They were big and excessively heavy and could do things other aircraft of the time could not do, but now the MiG-31 is better than the MiG-25 and the MiG-29 is better than the MiG-23.

Mig-23-98 proposed upgrade.

Nice big nose so easier to put a big useful radar in, and with those wings swept back it was very low drag and had excellent acceleration... but weapons options were limiting to say the least.

The wingroot pylons could take larger weapons... but weapon options were not amazing.