Why There Are Secret MiGs At Area 51
YouTube / Wings Over the Rockies Air & Space Museum
The MiG-23 was the first ever Soviet fighter that had a variable-sweep wing that allowed high-speed flight and manageable takeoff and landing speeds.
It entered service in 1970, with the Soviet Union producing more than 5,000 of these planes during its service life.
Constant Peg
A couple of MiG-23s came to the United States in 1977 as part of the secret Constant Peg program. Declassified documents showed Area 51’s role in housing secretly obtained Soviet MiG Fighters.
These planes were flown and evaluated in mock combat with American fighters by the 4477th Test and Evaluation Squadron, called the Red Eagles, in the Nevada Desert until the program was disbanded in 1990.
Approximately 6,000 American pilots from the US Air Force, Navy, and Marines, got realistic air combat training by flying against Red Eagle pilots utilizing Soviet tactics.
Flying the MiG-23
“The first thing I’ll say about all the MiGs is that they’re built and designed with a completely different philosophy in mind. There is a lot of stuff in the cockpit that’s mechanized completely differently from anything that we were used to,” said John Mann, an Air Force pilot who flew MiG-23s in Constant Peg.
He also said that it’s a very, very poorly turning plane. “Fast, doesn’t turn, hard to figure out the cockpit. It took some getting used to flying this airplane well.”
What’s Next
When asked if there is any current program that does the same thing, Mann’s reply was ambiguous. “If we were to have something, I would expect that nobody knows about it.”
He also said that dissimilar training is outsourced now in places around the States where there are dedicated adversaries that the tactical air force needs to train against.
