Fulcrum

by Alexander Mikhaylovich Zuyev

  When the instructor pointed out the key structural elements of the model, he noted that over forty percent of the generated lift was produced by the aerodynamic fuselage. This meant the plane could maneuver at unprecedented angles of attack.

  “Comrades,” the colonel said, “all you MiG-23 pilots will be happy to note that in our test programs to date, we have not been able to spin the MiG-29.”

  Flying a MiG-23 at a high angle of attack was a sure way to enter an often fatal flat spin. There was a murmur in the classroom.

  “Let some young unrated lieutenants fly it,” a senior colonel said gruffly. “They will find a way to spin the airplane.”

  “No, no,” the instructor replied. “Our test pilots have been very thorough. This is an inherently stable aircraft.”

  The instructor proceeded to note that the MiG-29 had a greatly improved hydraulic flight-control system that was augmented by a computerized cross-control system and devices that transferred primary control among the ailerons, rudders, and horizontal stabilizers during high-speed air-combat maneuvers. I was just beginning to grasp the level of sophistication of the new plane.

  “What about true fly-by-wire controls?” another senior officer asked brusquely.

  “The Mikoyan OKB is working on such a system for the later models,” the instructor explained.

  Now a major general broke in. “I understand the Sukhoi OKB already has fly-by-wire for their Su-27.”

  The instructor nodded patiently. The Sukhoi Design Bureau was renowned for its innovation. If it hadn’t been suppressed by Stalin after the war, Sukhoi probably would have surpassed Mikoyan.

  He smiled. “You fellows know those wizards in the OKBs,” he said frankly. “If they added all their planned modifications and improvements to the first model of a new aircraft, they couldn’t keep their contract pipeline open. You’ll get computerized flight controls in two or three years.”

  He conceded that a fly-by-wire control system had its advantages. In American aircraft like the F-16, computerized controls allowed the pilot to fly to the maximum possible degree of maneuverability before encountering dangerous stalls and spins. This also made the airplane very forgiving of pilot error. But a fully computerized fly-by-wire flight-control system had one major disadvantage: It was vulnerable to the powerful electromagnetic pulse (EMP) of a nuclear blast.

  “And we all know,” he said gravely, “that any full-scale engagement with NATO forces will take place on a nuclear battlefield.”

  “You’ll be happy to note, comrades, that the MiG-29 is just as maneuverable as the F-16C.” He consulted a sheath of technical data, then smiled. “The MiG-29 has a 360-degree turn-rate time of only seventeen seconds.”

  Now the murmur in the classroom was excited.

  The two RD-33 turbofans, he noted, each produced 18,300 pounds of thrust, which meant they were dramatically more powerful on afterburner than the engines of similar Western fighters. And because the MiG-29’s overall weight was relatively low, the plane could fly at a near-equal thrust-to-weight ratio on “dry” power — without resort to the fuel-draining afterburners.

  As the instructor noted the principal engine characteristics, I again heard a murmur of surprise in the seats around me. The performance of these big turbofans far exceeded that of the Tumansky R-29 in the MiG-23. Again the colonel smiled. “You will read in the ‘well-informed’ Western press,” he said, “that our new aircraft is powered by the ‘Tumansky’ RD-33. Such an engine does not exist.”

  These engines, he said, were designed and built by the Leningrad/Klimov scientific group, which had taken over from the Isotov Engine OKB. The RD-33 was an entirely new undertaking, which incorporated optimal thrust-to-weight, fuel economy, reliability, and simplicity of maintenance. This was not, the colonel stressed — as the Western aviation press had reported — simply an improvement of an earlier Tumansky engine.

  The instructor smiled. “But don’t you fellows think that we might be capable of helping this misconception?”

  When our laughter subsided, the colonel presented some highlights of the new fighter’s weapons and fire-control systems.

  “The NO-193 pulse-Doppler radar,” he read from his data sheet, “can search for and track moving targets above or below the fighter’s flight level out to a range of almost sixty miles.”

  “Computer-assisted?” a colonel asked.

  “Of course,” the instructor replied. “The fire-control computer automatically sorts out ten targets and presents them on the head-up display.”

  “And the IRST?” a major asked.

  “A complete new system from what you had on the MiG-23,” the instructor noted, citing figures from his data sheet. “And this search and track system is interfaced with the laser range finder and the helmet-mounted sight.”

  I was jotting notes as fast as I could, but then realized all these systems would be broken down and taught to us in great detail during our stay at Lipetsk.

  “The great advantage of this multisensor system,” the colonel noted, “is that the MiG-29 pilot does not have to use his radar constantly, which renders him invisible to enemy radar warning receivers.”

  He flipped a page in his data book and cited speed and range figures for the new radar-homing Alamo and infrared-seeking Archer missiles the aircraft would carry.

  I had been trained to fly a difficult, relatively low-performance fighter armed with obsolete missiles. But I saw at once that this new aircraft — with its multiple weapons sensors and powerful missiles and cannon — was the equal of anything in the Western inventory. I couldn’t wait to begin to study the fighter in detail.

  For the next week, we sat in brightly lit, stuffy classrooms, sweating over a mounting pile of MiG-29 technical data sheets. The aircraft was so new that neither the Mikoyan OKB nor VVS Frontal Aviation had been able to produce final printed manuals for the fighter’s systems. Instead, we were issued loose pages, most of which had to be carefully hand-corrected to incorporate the latest equipment modifications and performance information from flight-test data. It was hard, painstaking work, but all of us had a sense of being involved in a revolutionary endeavor. The more we learned about the MiG-29, the more we realized the colonel delivering that orientation lecture had been understating, not exaggerating, the plane’s potential.

  Then late on our second Friday afternoon, my group was escorted by armed guards to a nondescript inflatable hangar near the main Lipetsk flight line for the first personal inspection of the new fighter.

  My first impression on entering the nylon igloo of the hangar was of the fighter’s lean, sculpted contours. I went forward to stroke the cool gray alloy panels of the lifting fuselage and the thin swept wings. Although the MiG-29 was slightly longer than the MiG-23 Crocodile, the new fighter was much less chunky. On the ground the Crocodile was a clumsy brute. Even in this small hangar, the MiG-29 appeared powerfully agile, fluid, yet deadly.

  I passed around the left wing and inspected the sweeping blade of the one-piece powered stabilizer. These big horizontal tail surfaces were half as wide as the wings. And they could swing through an unusually wide deflection arc above and below the horizontal. Melding such powerful control surfaces with the massive thrust of the two turbofans would produce unprecedented maneuverability. Each of the twin raked vertical tails supported a large one-piece slab rudder, made of composite honeycomb material, that extended beyond the fin’s trailing edge, again evoking sensitive flight-control response. I was surprised at the thin airfoil sections of the wings and tail surfaces. These new alloys looked flimsy, but were stronger than steel.

  My hand rested on the cold segments of the left engine’s afterburner nozzle, which consisted of an inner and outer ring of tapered alloy sections.

  “This is a two-chamber bypass system,” a maintenance officer told me. “You can fly on maximum afterburner safely with no fear of nozzle overheating.” These engines delivered more thrust and better fuel consumption.

  The maintenan
ce officer showed me the engine air inlets that were protected by hinged, folding metal screens that dropped down the moment there was pressure on the landing gear struts.

  “On taxi and takeoff,” he said, “the engines are protected from ingesting debris, like ice or gravel.”

  Obviously this meant the new fighters could be safely flown from dispersed forward airstrips. With these protective doors in place, the engines breathed through the big louvered “shark gills” beside the fuselage on the upper wing surfaces.

  At the nose I stared up at the clear-glass dome of the IRST sensor, which shielded the smaller shiny black globe inside, the actual sensor head. It was cooled by liquid nitrogen and was reportedly accurate for search, track, and lock-on out to a range of over fifteen miles. When coupled with the look-down pulse-Doppler radar, I realized, the IRST gave the pilot a choice of sensor options not yet available in several advanced Western fighters. NATO fighters like the F-16 or Mirage F-l lacked this dual sensor system, and relied instead on target acquisition from airborne radar planes like the American AWACS. That was all well and good in peacetime, when the AWACS could orbit unmolested up at 35,000 feet with its huge antenna sweeping the battlefield far beyond the horizon. But in war, one well-placed missile would blind the AWACS, and the Western planes would have to resort to their own radars, which would reveal their positions on our radar-warning receivers.

  “How easy is all this electronic gear to work on?” I asked the maintenance captain.

  He grinned, and pointed at an electronic diagnostic cart coupled to the fighter by a single green cable. “That computer checks every system after each flight. This is a very easy plane to service. If I have the right mechanics, I can change an engine in thirty minutes.”

  Intelligence had taught us that it took top American ground crews a full hour to change an engine on an F-15.

  I waited my turn to climb the orange steel ladder to the open cockpit. When I sat on the surprisingly comfortable K-36D ejection seat, I felt like a king on a throne. This new fighter had been designed with a combat pilot in mind. Perched out here high on the nose, the view was unobstructed back past each wingtip. The instrument panel was dull gray with white instrument lights, unlike the MiG-23’s green panel that had dim red lights, which were hard to read. And the clear Plexiglas HUD was well placed and did not block my view forward. My hands automatically went to throttle and stick, where they would be in a dogfight. Even in this cramped temporary hangar, I could sense how the plane would feel alive, in its natural environment, the sky. I was impatient to fly this splendid new fighter.

  My group’s classroom orientation lasted most of December. And we only made it back to our bases in Georgia a day or so before the New Year’s holiday. But I had not minded the tedious hours with the engineering manuals. I was now firmly convinced that my country’s full scientific and technical potential had been brought together in a combat aircraft. The MiG-29 was not a compromise born of political intrigue or Moscow cronyism. It was a weapon equal to anything in the Western inventory.

  But I would have to swallow my impatience to fly the new fighter. The regiment then forming around my original cadre of officers would not receive their first aircraft for several months. In the interim I had two obligations to fill. First I had to complete my mandatory forty-five days’ annual leave off flight status. Then, I hoped, I would have time to finish my qualification training for my First Class pilot rating. Before leaving Lipetsk, I had stood in line for an hour to buy a nice New Year’s tree to bring back to Tskhakaya. Pine trees were a novelty in Georgia. I planned to host a large party for my friends in the regiment. This might be the last time I saw them for a long time. They were going to Afghanistan, and I was to be transferred to the MiG-29 unit.

  On January 5, 1985, I flew Aeroflot to Mineralnyye Vody and took an Army bus for the Ministry of Defense ski resort at Terskol on the slopes of Mount Elbrus. The Air Force ordered that I would forget about flying and devote myself to skiing through the deep powder snow and cedar groves on the steep slopes of that huge extinct volcano. The implication was that I was to relax completely. This I certainly intended to do.

  But then when I returned to Vaziani, I would have to throw myself fully back into my qualification training. If I didn’t make my First Class rating before transfer to the new MiG-29 regiment, I would have to repeat a lot of the tedious training that I had already sweated through at Vaziani. And I knew the new unit would be too busy qualifying pilots on the MiG-29 to devote aircraft and instructors to me. I either had to make my grade before leaving Vaziani or be stuck as a Second Class pilot for the indefinite future.

  I was tucked into a comfortable seat on the well-heated Defense Ministry bus, chugging slowly up the icy switchback roads toward the white dome of Elbrus. I had a reservation at the Terskol resort hotel and a canister of good Armenian cognac in my duffel on the luggage rack. Since coming to Georgia, I’d learned that cognac was as valuable as hard currency. A liter of Armenian cognac cost me five rubles when I dealt with a certain unofficial “Socialist Enterprise": an acquaintance named Otar — an amiable Georgian with a pirate’s mustache — who had family connections in Armenia. The same high-quality cognac in the State liquor store cost fifteen rubles, and was almost unobtainable in the Russian Republic.

  I had spent part of my annual leave here at Terskol the previous winter, and had learned how to ski the hard way, after accidentally taking a lift to the top of an expert run on the mountain’s eastern shoulder. After a couple near-fatal falls, I stopped to “adjust my bindings,” when a pretty girl took pity and showed me how to escape the dangerous slope by riding the chairlift back to the bottom.

  My first year at Terskol I had also made friends with three interesting young fellows who would join me on this vacation. When I had met them in the men’s dormitory of the resort the year before, they’d explained they were students. One of them was an ethnic Abkhas named Zaour. His tall friend Oleg was from Sochi with the precise diction of a television announcer. Vladimir, who appeared in his mid-twenties, was a Russian born in Georgia, but he spoke with a slight Baltic accent, as if one of his parents might have been Latvian or Estonian. They originally had a cramped, cold attic in the hotel annex, and I managed to get them into my bigger room, which we soon took over as our private domain. I had managed to bring three liters of cognac on my first ski vacation. Vladimir had a Toshiba stereo and a good assortment of Western rock cassettes. Zaour came equipped with a huge sack of oranges. Soon we had a nonstop party running every evening when the lifts closed. Oleg called it our “apres ski” classes.

  And the girls from Moscow Medical Institute and the professional schools in Georgia certainly seemed to enjoy the lessons.

  When the bus dropped me at the snowy steps of the Terskol resort, Oleg, Zaour, and Vladimir were already there, all grinning broadly. It seemed that the resort’s equipment manager, another Abkhas named Hamid, had been able to reserve us a pair of comfortable two-bed rooms which opened into a suite. The liter of cognac I’d given Hamid the year before was certainly bearing fruit. A senior lieutenant in the VVS and three students were going to live better than a lot of senior officers.

  One afternoon, Oleg told me that the three of them planned to pay their respects to the base commander, the lieutenant colonel who managed the resort. He wore a blue VVS uniform, replete with pilot’s wings, as if being up in the mountains was the same as flying duty. I wondered why students wanted to meet this officer.

  I turned to Vladimir. “What institute is it exactly that you fellows attend?” When I first met them, they had seemed a little old for students, but I hadn’t thought too much about it.

  Zaour looked at his pals and they nodded silently. “Frankly, Sasha,” he said, “we’re with the Committee for State Security.”

  I tried not to show my surprise. To me, the KGB was a vaguely sinister institution; certainly most of my pilot friends both disliked and distrusted the KGB Osobii Otdel meddlers found in any regiment. But I
was also deeply curious to learn more about their organization. I only hoped that I hadn’t inadvertently told any political jokes during our late-night parties. Then, looking at their smiling, open faces, I realized these fellows were a lot different from the humorless Osobists whom I had met in the Air Force. Certainly Oleg and Vladimir were not here to spy on me, and Zaour was hardly sinister.

  In fact, they were so close to me in age and education that I understood at once that we were actually colleagues, each defending the Rodina in his own way. The KGB had a reputation as the “Fighters on the Invisible Front,” which meant they protected the Motherland from spies and saboteurs. And from what I had read in Pravda and Red Star, there were a lot of foreign espionage agents loose in the Soviet Union. The television series This Is America had focused one show entirely on the CIA spies among us. They had cameras in their shoes, electronic listening devices shaped like watches, and ballpoint pens that could fire bullets. With characters like that in our midst, I knew the kind of challenge my new friends faced. And I was glad that I had strictly followed Defense Ministry directive number 10, in my answers to their questions about my assignment:

  “What airplane do you fly, Sasha?”

  “A MiG.”

  “How high do you fly? How fast?”

  “Very high. Very fast.”

  Even if I had drunk my fair share of cognac at night, I had never revealed any secrets.

  The next night, the three of them spoke about their assignments. Zaour ran the KGB’s communications room at their regional headquarters. It seemed to be an inherited job, as his father was the local KGB commander. Oleg was an operations man who worked in counterespionage in the major Black Sea ports and resorts. Vladimir was a newly appointed KGB officer who had trained as a physicist in Moscow. Once he completed his field orientation in Georgia, he would undergo intense training for an overseas technical espionage assignment, probably as a member of an “immigrant” group.