Yeah, you often read stories on the internet about how the SR-71 could easily outrun the MIG-25, proving US technological superiority, but those don't really take into account that there was like a dozen made of the former, with titanium hulls and exotic engineering. While there were more than a thousand made of the cheap, steel hulled MIG 25

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nl 20 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Not sure about the comparison to the SR-71, but the more interesting comparison was with the US XB-70[1] which ended up cancelled but the MIG-25 was designed to intercept[2].

Ironically the XB-70 was also stainless steel - but it still was pretty exotic. It partly relied on compression-lift and highly corrosive fuel to cruise at Mach 3 (in 1961!).

Edit: Wikipedia diving after writing that led me to the Sukhoi T-4 which was the Russian response to the XB-70. Only a prototype, but this one was titanium and it is an amazing, drop-nose machine [3]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_XB-70_Valkyrie

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-25#Backgr...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_T-4

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torginus 19 hours ago | parent [-]

I think while these kinds of projects are cool, but I think the point of my parent comment is that volume matters. If you can do something, its interesting and great for bragging rights, but making and operating thousands of airframes (especially considering the breakneck speed with which technology evolved, timeframes were very compressed!).

While the SR71 was more capable than the MIG, if the Air Force would've wanted to build a thousand of those in 5 years, it would've been impossible, not to mention the maintenance burden.

So while the planes you mentioned might've been more capable, in a real conflict they wouldn't have mattered much, as they could not have sustained a volume of strikes to be relevant.

Interesting how quality and quantity have changed over the years: in WW2, giant factories pumped out airplanes on endless production lines by the tens of thousands, yet those planes couldn't drop bombs accurately.

In contrast, 4th gen fighters were made in still significant volumes, and their smart bombs could hit a target accurately enough so that a hundred pound bomb can do the job you would need a WW2 B-29 to drop its entire payload for.

I think that was a peak in quality X quantity in aviation.

Yes, modern jets have even more tech, and stealth and stuff, but their complexity and and difficulty of manufacture doesn't offset the drop in volume.

So quality went up, but quantity went way down, and as a result their total effectiveness is less than the generation they're supposed to replace.

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nl 15 hours ago | parent [-]

> Yes, modern jets have even more tech, and stealth and stuff, but their complexity and and difficulty of manufacture doesn't offset the drop in volume.

> So quality went up, but quantity went way down, and as a result their total effectiveness is less than the generation they're supposed to replace.

Not sure why you think this.

The 5th generation F-35 is a great airplane[1], and they've made 1300 of them since 2016.

The 4th F-16 (also a great plane!) had 4600 built since 1976.

[1] Yes, despite all the negative press and the amount of time it took to get right, it's a great plane. See eg https://theaviationist.com/2016/03/01/heres-what-ive-learned... where the editorializing is anti-F35 but the pilot who flew it only has positive things to say.

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torginus 11 hours ago | parent [-]

> The 5th generation F-35 is a great airplane[1], and they've made 1300 of them since 2016.

Because in that time, F14,F15,F18 and F111 variants have been made as well, the total number of which is more than 10k. The testament to the usefullness of these is that they're still being made.

And the thing is each of these 4th gen planes generally carry significantly more weapons externally, than the F35 does internally.

So while I don't dispute that the F35 is individually a great plane, I still don't think the quality X quantity metric of a pure F-35 fleet is higher than a 4th gen fleet.

Which is echoed by US procurement, because if it was, they'd have stopped building other planes, just like the stopped building F-4s not long after 4th gens entered service.

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nl 8 hours ago | parent [-]

> Because in that time, F14,F15,F18 and F111 variants have been made as well, the total number of which is more than 10k. The testament to the usefullness of these is that they're still being made.

The F-111 is a 3rd generation fighter-bomber jet.

Putting that aside, the F-18 Super Hornet is a 4.5 generation plane that is pretty different to the F-18. It was created as a stop-gap because the F-35 was behind schedule.

The F-16 is in production to sell to air forces that can't afford the F-35.

The F-15 is in production to fill gaps because of slow production of the F-35.

The F-14 isn't in production.

> And the thing is each of these 4th gen planes generally carry significantly more weapons externally, than the F35 does internally.

This isn't true.

The F-35 can carry 22,000 lbs of payload. The F-15 can carry 29,000 lbs, the F-16 15,000 lbs, the F-18 18,000 and the F-14 could only carry 14,000 lbs.

So the F-15 is the only one that can carry slightly more than the F-35 and it is way less stealthy carrying external weapons. The others carry less and are less stealthy.

There is a reason the F-35 has won every fly-off against the Typhoon, Rafael and the Gripen.

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rkomorn 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Off topic but I can't help but snicker every time someone gets autocorrected into writing Rafael instead of Rafale (which I literally just had to correct, myself).

	▲	nl 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Argh!

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serf 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's a false comparison.

How many MIG-25s flew over the borders of the United States mainland during the cold war?

Yes the MIG-25 was a cheaper and more practical plane, but that wasn't the MO of the sr71.

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torginus 20 hours ago | parent [-]

I am not the one making those. If you read an article about how a Lamborghini Aventador was faster than a Nissan GT-R, you would go 'well, duh, it costs 20x as much'.

	▲	irishcoffee 20 hours ago \| parent [-]
		A school bus costs 4-5x more than. GT-R, and I wouldn’t expect it to be faster.

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LorenPechtel 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The SR-71 wasn't trying to catch the MIG-25, it was trying to get away--and it worked. The U-2 proved vulnerable to filling the sky with cheap stuff--the missiles were ballistic by the time they got up there but when the sky was full of them the U-2 had no path to safety.

The SR-71 couldn't be defeated by the level of missile spam that Russia was capable of, the MIG-25 couldn't get close enough to catch it and they didn't have a missile that could actually work up there. (You need more control surface up there, but down lower more control surface costs you performance.)

(And the MIG-25 was a maintenance nightmare.)

	▲	torginus 20 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I suggest you read the book Skunk Works by Ben Rich, to get reliable account about the SR-71 and its relation to Soviet air defenses from the horse's mouth. Besides, it's genuinely well-written and enjoyable book

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vsgherzi 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

These don’t seem comparable to me. The sr 71 was never meant to be mass produced or to head to head against a mig. The sr71 didn’t even have any guns it’s a spy plane. The sr 71 accomplished its goal with flying colors and spotted nuclear test sites and information on the Cuban missle crisis.

The star fighter, or f15 or f22 would be more apt.

TLDR special purpose tool vs general fighter cannot be compared

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nxm 20 hours ago | parent [-]

During the Cuban Missle Crisis it was the U2, not the sr-71

	▲	vsgherzi 36 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		my mistake, conflated my stories. The sr71 found a hidden nuclear site not the cuban missle crisis

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mikkupikku 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There were 32 SR-71s, 13 A-12s and 2 M-21s. That's 47 total I believe, making your figure off by about 300%, which incidentally is how much cooler the SR-71 is relative to the Mig, on account of it looking incredibly exotic and elegant instead of like a pointy sky tractor. Being faster is just icing on the cake.

	▲	blitzar 20 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Your figure of 300% is off by orders of magnitude for how much cooler the SR-71 is at 60 years of age than practically anything else that exists.
	▲	torginus 19 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		That's my point. The SR71 makes for a much cooler topic of discussion, but in a war, it matters how many planes you have. Even a thousand jets isn't really that much when fighting a country of millions.