WARSAW — Classes for the fall high school semester had just begun when on September 6, 1976, a "special report" flashed across the airwaves in that pre-internet, pre-24-hours cable news era. A young fighter pilot had landed the then-Soviet Union’s most advanced combat aircraft, a Mikoyan MiG-25 (NATO codename Foxbat), on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido. He announced his intention to defect and to hand the aircraft to the United States with both man and machine becoming the intelligence prize of the decade.
The pilot, Lt. Viktor Ivanovich Belenko, had become disillusioned with the Soviet system and had been planning his escape for months. The key factor was the high fuel consumption rate of his aircraft, powered by two Tumansky turbojet engines. This required him to wait for a day when the training mission he was to fly would require his aeroplane to carry a maximum fuel load.
A full fuel load provided just enough range to reach Japan, the nearest U.S. ally, but could only be accomplished by flying low enough to avoid the Soviet coastal radar network. At some points his aircraft was barely above the waves of the ocean as he streaked toward the nearest Japanese island. The defection was an act of extreme daring, creating shockwaves that rippled through the defense establishments of both the United States and the USSR for years.
Memories of that time returned with the November 19 announcement that Belenko had passed away on September 24 at the age of 76. No reason was given for delaying the announcement of his death for almost two months. But it was typical of how he largely kept out of sight until he found a situation where he wanted to be noticed for who he was.
In the early years after his defection Belenko lived inconspicuously under an assumed name, fearing—as did other Soviet military and intelligence officials who escaped to the West—there was now a target painted on his back. In his time the foreign operations arm of the Soviet-era KGB had a reputation for tracking down and killing "enemies of the people."
In the 1990s Russian colleagues who had worked inside the USSR’s pathologically secretive defense R&D sector told me they had been "assured" more than once by the security services that "this traitor had been hunted down and executed." This turned out to be bluster by the KGB—designed to frighten anyone else from trying to "go over the wall" to the Americans.
The former Soviet pilot nevertheless continued to fight on in the Cold War, only this time from the American side. He worked closely not only with U.S. intelligence but also with the American defense companies. He became a shadow warrior who would only emerge, as he once said laughingly, "when I travel to Washington and make my rounds of the Beltway Bandits to pick up my checks."
He exhibited his mischievous nature by occasionally engaging in taunting functionaries assigned to the Soviet embassy. One story he related was about driving in Washington and deciding to follow a car with a Soviet diplomatic number plate.
When both automobiles reached a red traffic light he exited his vehicle and knocked on the window of the embassy car. When the driver rolled down his window, Belenko announced who he was and how he could get the Soviet diplomat the same "defector’s deal" that he had received—"so much money per month," etc. The frightened embassy employee, as Belenko recalled, immediately closed his window and sped away.
Aside from a penchant for bold practical jokes, he provided enormous insight into how Moscow’s military machine operated—as well as how it was failing in numerous respects. In the post-Soviet era, he made more public appearances and eventually made a business trip to Russia in 1995—during the Boris Yeltsin presidency.
More than a decade later when I began analyzing the inner workings of Soviet combat aircraft it became clear just how eye-opening Belenko’s insights were. In the book MiG Pilot that recounts his life and what led to his defection, a picture emerges both of design methods for Soviet weapon systems and the organization in which both men and machines functioned that was less flattering than the images they projected to the world.
Intelligence reports on the MiG-25 and data gathered by radar intercepts showed the aircraft capable of speeds in excess of Mach 3, equal to the "crown jewel" of U.S. military aircraft, the SR-71 high-altitude reconnaissance plane. As Belenko revealed in debriefings, however, flying the aircraft at these speeds exceeded internal temperature limits of the engines, burning out the hot sections and requiring their immediate replacement.
The MiG-25’s radar contained a powerful transmitter and operated on two different frequency bands, making it difficult to jam as it guided the aircraft’s air-to-air missiles toward their target. But, when the inner workings of Belenko’s aircraft were dissected, U.S. analysts discovered vacuum tube-era technology already obsolete in the 1970s.
Even more eye-opening were the conditions on the ground at his airbase in the Far East region of Russia. In his time, the USSR armed forces were separated into five service branches, one of which was the regular air force (VVS) and a second, air defense forces (PVO) service.
Belenko’s unit belonged to the PVO, charged with the all-important defense of the USSR’s airspace. It was considered to be an elite formation that was equipped with more advanced interceptor model aircraft, selected the best pilots, and supposedly enjoyed superior basing facilities. Instead, the Chuguyevka aerodrome where Belenko lived and worked was an almost unliveable, primitive military outpost.
According to his debriefings, the brand-new pilots’ quarters he and his family moved into were built to substandard specifications and were already falling apart. The building contractors sold off many of the original materials and then paid bribes to have state inspectors sign off on their final construction.
Those on this PVO base complained it was like living on a kholkoz (Soviet collective farm), as he recalled. The alienation from the Soviet system this created with Belenko, the rampant corruption he witnessed every day, and inane attempts by state central planners to repeal the laws of nature by decree finally convinced him to find a way to flee the USSR.
A Soviet state investigatory commission formed after his defection was reportedly shocked at the base’s dismal state and ordered sweeping improvements to be made across military facilities in the region. In true Russian fashion, the state authorities demonstrated how they long ago had perfected the science of closing the barn door after the horse has run away.
General comparisons of the Soviet Union from Belenko’s time with today’s Kremlin regime add new meaning to the saying that "Russia is a country where everything can change in five years, but nothing changes in a hundred." The relatively free period of the 1990s offered a brief window of opportunity to make a return visit. But had Belenko attempted a similar trip under Vladimir Putin’s dictatorship, he would have suffered the same fate as under the Soviet regime.
The miserable existence of the average Russian soldier fighting and dying in Ukraine is also as bad as or even worse than that of the Soviet serviceman of almost half a century ago. His lot in life has not improved one iota, nor has the performance of the weaponry his country’s defense industrial base produces. Huge losses of Russian tanks, aircraft, naval vessels, etc., suffered against the small numbers of Western weaponry provided to the Ukrainian military show Russia never closed the technological gap with the West.
More notable is how disastrous this defense industrial collapse is for Russia. The 1970s USSR military was a feared enemy that NATO alliance nations sometimes were unsure they could hold back if Moscow gave the order to attack. Today’s Russian Army is a fallen giant that pulls decades-old armored vehicles out of museums to be sent to the front and is reduced to procuring poor-quality artillery shells from North Korea.
Few individuals today would attempt to try and change the world in such a bold manner as Belenko did almost half a century ago. Bravery of this kind is needed today as much as it is missed.
Reuben F. Johnson is a defense technology consultant and a correspondent for the U.S. publication Breaking Defense. He is based in Warsaw, Poland.