Russian Aircraft @ Groom Lake?

Hello guys - I thought the terms and conditions of this board meant it was at least polite to ask before posting the photos off the website!

Anyhow, to update the thread - we spent a year tracking the Gulfstream around. It doesn't get out much but after our sighting with a Mig-29 over Groom Lake it went off to Eglin FL at the same time as the last ever detachment of German Mig-29s (widely reported in the aviation press).

This spring we managed to shoot some stills, video and audio of the Gulfstream at Point Mugu CA. It's all at

www.otterbourne.com...

As far as the Su-27 seen in Apr-03; if anyone wants some .avi of it or anything else drop me a line.

Ian

Guess its time for a short history of US operations of Russian planes.

The first was a defecting North Korean MiG 15, Chuck Yeager flew that in secret.

The second was in the mid 50's Wright Patterson air base, they aquired "somehow" a Yak 23, they got it in a crate, photographed each parts position and assembled, test flew it under the pseudonum X-5, packed it away in the crate exactly as it came and sent it back to the friendly East Bloc country.

Now it gets interesting, its the middle of 'Nam, US kill ratios suck and they have no idea how to defeat the MiG-21. The Israelis captured one that landed accidentally on one of their airfields, test flew it and then handed it to the US for similar treatment under the codename HAVE Doughnut. Testing was at Groom, the video is apparently declassified. The film Throw a Nickel on the Grass was shown to all Airforce and Navy pilots heading to combat, it showed them what they learned in that test program.

HAVE Drill was testing of several airframes, including the MiG 17 also during the late Vietnam period.

MiG testing went on sporadically through the 70's and 80's and General Robert Bond was killed flying a MiG-23 Flogger, he lost control during a supersonic run and crashed into Little Skull Mountain in the south end of the Nevada Test Range.

Since the Vietnam War the US has aquired at least one Sukhoi Fitter swing wing attack plane, a Flanker, several Fulcrums and a lot of missiles, bot air to air and surface to air, its is handled by the foreign technology exploitation division at Nellis.

I have 2 pics of the MiG-21, and one of the Fitter. and 4 pics of the Yak I'll post them if i have free space on my uploads area sometime.

The Mig-29's and other russian aircraft at Nellis are used for the Red Flag training exercise. Instructors fly russian aircraft and newcomers fly American F-15 and F-16 this is so the pilots get to learn the strengths an weaknesses of the russian fighters, since most 3rd world countries by the Mi-29. The red flag is the air force version of the Top gun program.

The U.S. has stolen...I mean "borrowed"...technology from Russia and the Nazis so that should probably explain it.

[edit on 28-7-2004 by Blackout]

Originally posted by Blackout
The U.S. has stolen...I mean "borrowed"...technology from Russia and the Nazis so that should probably explain it.

Now that not quite true. The Have Drill and Have Donut planes at least One of them came curtesy of Israel. The NAZI planes were war booty, and don't forget the wing of Mig-29's that the US puchased (I think) from the Maldavians.

Yes, the Fulcrum C's were from Moldova. The deal was done to keep them from selling to Iran apparently.

Its kind of like the deal that the US did with the check to keep them from selling their radar to china we gave them some money to compensate and took a bunch for testing in the US

Originally posted by intelgurl
On Monday, April 7th, 2003 "Ian" an avid watcher of the skies around Nellis/Groom Lake (Area 51) spotted Russian aircraft flying into Groom Lake.

There's nothing really new here. The US has "acquired" foreign aircraft and tested them at secret facilities in the US since the Korean War. In fact, it is generally believed the original reason the base at Groom Lake was created to begin with was as a classified location where Soviet aircraft could be tested unobserved. Many have also claimed that the designations F-112 through F-116 that were never used for US aircraft may have been applied to Soviet MiGs.

www.designation-systems.net...

"The pre-1962 F-series ends with F-111. However, ever since the designation of the Lockheed Nighthawk stealth fighter was announced as F-117A, there has been speculation about the "missing" numbers F-112 through -116. It is now known (although it has not yet been officially admitted by the Air Force) that at least some of these numbers have been assigned to secret projects of all sorts, including Soviet aircraft secretly acquired and tested by the USAF. ... the numbers YF-110 and -113 are frequently associated with the MiG-21 and MiG-23, respectively."

www.donhollway.com...

"In fact the origin of the F-117 designation is somewhat of a mystery. Were the "Century Series" designations passed on to the MiG fighters of the Red Hat squadron: F-112 for the MiG-15, F-113 for the MiG-17, F-114 for the MiG-19, F-115 for the MiG-21, and F-116 for the MiG-23?"

After the fall of the Soviet Union, its former aircraft were spread across many nations now friendly with the US, so it became much easier to obtain a MiG-29 or a Su-27 than it would have been during the Cold War. I'd be very surprised if the USAF wasn't testing these and other advanced Russian planes at Nellis AFB or other sites in the southwest. That is how we are able to build models of their performance to evaluate our aircraft against.

Groom Lake (Area 51) has with reasonable verifiable evidence was established purely for the U-2 test flights. It's expansion for the A-12 program was a matter of convenience, originally they didn't want to go back there but security wise it was the best location. By the time the MiG's came they had already tested several aircraft there which Lockheed had made. U-2, A-12, YF-12, SR-71, M-21/D-21, B-52 Tagboard.

The MiG's came much later than the U-2 to Groom, the first MiG flight was actually at Wright Patterson AFB in Ohio. NOT a very secure place to test a "borrowed" Yak-23.

This is a pic of a MIG-29 at Nellis AFB we got from the germans.The 'Red Hats' squadron is the one operated from Groom Lake
[edit on 29-7-2004 by ShadowXIX]

[edit on 29-7-2004 by ShadowXIX]

[edit on 30-7-2004 by ShadowXIX]

I also think I read somewere that one year the Germans showed up at Red Flag with a squad of Mig 29's for the exersize.

The Russian Aircraft that fly out of Groom Lake belong to the Red Hat squadron. Red Hat is an intelligence program started in the 1960's to test enemy captured (or otherwise obtained) aircraft to determine their capibilities and limitations. The lessons learned from the Red Hat program are used in the development of new US aircraft and in the development of new fighter tactics. It was from testing like this that they came up with the tactic of going vertical, after they learmed that on average US aircraft have a significant advantage in thrust to weight over their Russian counterparts.

Tim
ATS Director of Counter-Ignorance

One difference between the US and the Russians doing tests, the US does theirs in secret, as to hide actual aircraft types away from the enemy. If you don't know a particular aircraft has been exploited by a foreign nation you might not develop it as much with new systems to counter that intelligence.

Russia on the other hand never made any secret at all about the Iranian F-14 Tomcat that landed in the Soviet Union back in the 80's. I have a photograph of them testing it at Zhukovksy airbase near Moscow. Of course they never gave it back. One webpage claims the Russians had two Tomcats to play with.

[edit on 3-8-2004 by MPJay]

With the U.S. having managed to aquire so many Russian aircraft and helicopters it makes you wonder whether the Russians have done the same, if on a smaller scale due to financial contraints.

Yes, the Russians tested an F-14 Tomcat they captured when an Iranian pilot mistakenly landed in the Soviet Union back in the 80's. There's pictures of that online somewhere. I have it myself but don't have enough room to upload it to my ATS forum cache.

[edit on 1-8-2004 by MPJay]

Originally posted by Russian

Originally posted by FULCRUM

In 2. and 3. its MiG-29.

But in the first it could as well be a F-15.
(Its too fuzzy, hard to tell..)

it can be f-15s in both...

its to fuzz to say anything...

No. There's no way it's an F-15. There's no flat side where the intakes on the F-15 are, and the engines are too far apart.

Hmm, I dont think its an Mig-29, The Fulcrum has a smoky contrail that it leaves, unlike most fighters. It is usually darker, and when i mean smoky, i mean smoky, not cloud white.

It is a Fulcrum, i've seen several pictures from that trip on another site. Also, i've seen the MiG-29 at an airshow, yes it is true the engines are smokey, but only in throttle transients. The F-4 was a far worse aircraft than the Fulcrum for smoke. During the performance i saw with the Ukraine team, the engines were noisy, but only really smoked during hard throttle movements, during steady state operation they did not do that much if at all. And sitting in formation with that test aircraft nice and easy, it won't act like the Marboro Man.

Just because it doesn't smoke, doesn't mean it isn't a MiG29. First of all, the reason most 29's you see have smoking engines is due to the fact that many of them are quite old, and their maintenance history is less than perfect. Furthermore, the German MiG 29's, like the one in the picture, have had numerous engine modifications to make them more fuel efficient (although slightly less powerful), more reliable, and (you guessed it) less smoky. The use of German MiGs in the US is a well known fact, and they have visited every summer since 1999 (until 2003). The lot of the MiGs has already been sold to Poland, and JG73 will soon be taking delivery of the EF2000 to replace them. When in the US, they didn't only fly out of Nellis....in fact in 2003 they didn't even make it that far west. On their last visit, they flew out of Tyndall AB in south Florida, doing live fire exercises shooting down drones over the gulf to analyze the performance of the R27 (AA-10) and R73 (AA-11)....we are making our own copy of the R73 - it's working name is ASRAAM (advanced short range air to air missile) or Python 4. The German 29's aren't inferior to Russian ones, as someone said before. They are simply an earlier version - the MiG29A, which lacks ECM capability and a few other upgrades that some of the newer planes have - but the Russian and Ukranian air forces still use alot of 29A's.
The Luftwaffe would probably continue to use the Mig for the forseeable future if it had better avionics - the original setup wouldn't even let you fire on a target without a confirmation code from a ground controller, and even though that system has been modified, the overall design of the avionics is still engineered for the pilot to rely a little too heavily on ground control. It never has worked with the NATO command network very well. It's a great plane, and a real piece of history; I hate to see it go.

The first pic could be a RC? Or not, The US had indeed bought arround 30 MiG's form Moldavia, but they are really not air worthy! Or they must have upgraded the Fulcrums a lot! $$$$$$$