Mikoyan MiG-31 (Микоян МиГ-31; NATO reporting name "Foxhound") is a Soviet, now Russian, two-seat supersonic long-range interceptor — a fighter built to find and destroy enemy bombers, reconnaissance aircraft and cruise missiles far from the targets they threaten. It was designed by the Mikoyan bureau in Moscow and built at a single factory: aircraft plant No. 21 in Gorky, as Nizhny Novgorod was called from 1932 to 1990, today the Sokol Aircraft Plant (авиазавод «Сокол»).[5] The MiG-31 first flew in 1975 and was accepted into service in 1981. It was the first fighter to carry a radar with a phased-array antenna, and it can fly at 3,000 km/h at high altitude.[1][3] More than 500 were built before production stopped in 1994.[2][3]

Nizhny Novgorod, one of Russia's largest cities, stands on the Volga where the Oka flows into it, about 400 km east of Moscow. Its aircraft plant, opened in 1932, had built the MiG-25 interceptor before it turned to the MiG-31, and its own test pilots flew the new aircraft off the production line. Since 2008 the same plant has been rebuilding the fleet to the modernised MiG-31BM standard.[4][6][3]

An interceptor for the northern frontier

Work on a new long-range interceptor began in the Soviet Union in the mid-1960s. It was to replace the Tu-128 and to deal not only with high-flying targets but also with bombers able to slip under radar coverage at very low altitude, such as the American FB-111. A further requirement was the ability to fight semi-autonomously over the Far North and the Far East, where the air defence radar network had large gaps.[2] The project, designated Ye-155MP, was launched under a resolution of the USSR Council of Ministers of 24 May 1968 at the Mikoyan design bureau in Moscow; its chief designer was Gleb Lozino-Lozinsky.[1]

The aircraft was developed from the MiG-25 but differed from it in important ways. It carried a crew of two — a pilot and a navigator-operator, whose task was to run the interception — and was powered by two D-30F6 turbofans of 15,500 kgf thrust each, which gave it both high speed and long range. With a take-off weight of 41 tonnes and a length of 22.7 m, it could reach 3,000 km/h above 17,500 m and 1,500 km/h near the ground, and intercept targets 720 km from its base at supersonic cruise, or 1,400 km with drop tanks.[1] Its Zaslon radar was the first airborne radar with a phased-array antenna installed on a jet fighter: the weapon system could track ten targets at once and attack four of them. Four MiG-31s could exchange data automatically and search a wide corridor of airspace as one group, with or without guidance from the ground.[1][3]

The first prototype was flown on 16 September 1975 by the Mikoyan bureau's chief test pilot, Alexander Fedotov.[1] A resolution of the Council of Ministers of 6 May 1981 accepted the MiG-31, armed with long-range R-33 missiles, into service with the Air Defence Forces; in the regiments it replaced, first of all, the Tu-128.[2] The MiG-31B added in-flight refuelling, which extended a sortie from 3.6 hours to six or seven.[2] In 1987 MiG-31 crews twice intercepted American SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft, once in the Far East and once in the Arctic, and saw them off over neutral waters.[2] In the four decades that followed the type went through eight modifications and upgrades; one of them, the MiG-31K, was adapted to carry the Kinzhal air-launched missile.[3] The MiG-31 is operated by the Russian armed forces and by Kazakhstan.[12]

Built in Gorky

Aircraft plant No. 21 was founded by a decision of the Soviet Labour and Defence Council of 21 October 1929 and opened on 1 February 1932. In the 1930s its chief test pilot was Valery Chkalov; during the Second World War it built Lavochkin fighters, and from 1949 it worked with the Mikoyan bureau, building the MiG-15, MiG-17 and MiG-21.[4] From 1969 to 1985 it produced the MiG-25 interceptor, whose airframe was 80 per cent high-strength steel and titanium.[4] The MiG-25 forced the plant to change the way it built aircraft: welding replaced riveting as the main assembly method, workers and engineers had to learn the new trade from scratch, and at its peak the plant turned out 90 MiG-25s a year.[5] The MiG-31 was developed from this aircraft.[1]

The first two MiG-31s of the pre-production batch, numbered 011 and 012, were completed at the Gorky plant in the summer of 1977; No. 012 made its first flight on 30 June and No. 011 on 13 July 1977, and aircraft of the further pre-production batches joined the state trials as they were completed. In December 1978 the first stage of the trials ended with a preliminary recommendation to put the type into series production, which began at Gorky in 1979.[2][4] The plant's test pilot Vladimir Kherodinov, later an Honoured Test Pilot of the USSR, took up its lead production MiG-31 on 22 August 1978 and went on testing production MiG-31s until 1990.[6] The first unit to be equipped with the new interceptor was based at Pravdinsk, near Balakhna, in the Gorky Region itself.[2]

The MiG-31 was built at the Gorky plant and nowhere else.[5] Vladimir Rakhmanov, a test pilot at the plant from 1980, tested more than 450 production MiG-21s, MiG-25s, MiG-29s and MiG-31s of all versions, and devised combined test-flight programmes for the MiG-31 that reduced the number of flights each aircraft needed before acceptance. In 1997 he was made a Hero of the Russian Federation for courage in testing special aviation equipment.[7]

The end of production

The collapse of Soviet defence spending hit the plant hard. By early 1993, the business newspaper Kommersant reported, Sokol had lost 80 per cent of the Defence Ministry's orders for its main products, the MiG-31 interceptor and the MiG-29 fighter, and was trying to make up the loss with civil aircraft. Exports offered little hope: the paper explained that the MiG-31 only made sense to a buyer prepared to purchase a complete Russian-standard air defence system along with it.[8] Production of the MiG-31 ended in 1994, after more than 500 had been built.[3][2]

In the 2000s the plant's website presented an export version, the MiG-31E, among its products. It described an aircraft able to intercept targets flying at altitudes from 50 to 28,000 m; a group of four, flying in formation and exchanging data, could watch a strip of airspace 900–1,000 km wide, which the plant presented as especially important where the ground air defence system was absent or destroyed.[9]

Modernisation at Sokol

Work on a modernised version, the MiG-31BM, began in 1997, using the MiG-31B as its basis. Its upgraded Zaslon-M radar detects aerial targets at up to 320 km and engages them at up to 280 km, tracking ten targets and attacking six at once; both cockpits received liquid-crystal displays showing tactical, navigation and radar information.[3] Conversion of existing aircraft to the BM standard began in 2008, and the work has been done at the Sokol plant in Nizhny Novgorod; contracts planned the modernisation of 114 interceptors.[3] According to the Nizhny Novgorod Association of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, the upgrade made the aircraft 2.6 times more effective than the original MiG-31.[5]

The plant's annual reports describe the work as serial modernisation combined with a major overhaul, carried out under the state defence order: in 2012 the year's contract was completed in full, an additional agreement was being drawn up for the MiG-31BS variant, and all aircraft scheduled for 2013 had already arrived at the plant.[10] The plant's test pilots fly the rebuilt aircraft before they return to service; Andrei Pechenkin, at Sokol since 2000, tested MiG-31BS and MiG-31BM aircraft among others.[11] In July 2024 Sokol handed over to the Defence Ministry the year's first batches of repaired and upgraded MiG-31s, after ground and flight tests.[12] Since 2016 Sokol has been a branch of the MiG corporation, itself part of the United Aircraft Corporation.[5]

The region also became a place where crews learn to fly the aircraft. The MiG-31 is not flown at the military flying schools — it is too complex and requires special preparation — and pilots and navigators convert to it at the training centre at Savasleyka air base near Kulebaki, in the Nizhny Novgorod Region, where the course takes from two to six months.[14]

In 2026 the plant was upgrading MiG-31s to the BM and K standards, while also making parts for the Il-114-300 and MC-21 airliners. In July of that year the head of the United Aircraft Corporation, Vadim Badekha, said that Sokol's capacity had been offered as a base for the series production of light civil aircraft.[13]

Memory

Vladimir Kherodinov, who flew the plant's lead production MiG-31, was killed on 22 June 1990 in a test flight of a MiG-29UB two-seater, together with the plant's test pilot V. V. Bespalov; he is buried in Nizhny Novgorod at the Novo-Sormovskoye Cemetery.[6] Vladimir Rakhmanov lives in Nizhny Novgorod; he has been a member of the Civic Chamber of the Nizhny Novgorod Region and chairman of the regional branch of the association of Heroes of the Soviet Union and Heroes of Russia.[7] The MiG-31's predecessor, the MiG-25, can be seen in the city: a two-seat MiG-25PU trainer stands among the aircraft displayed at Victory Park.

See also

Sources

  1. Russian State Archive of Scientific and Technical Documentation (RGANTD) — "MiG-31", in the series of memorable dates (in Russian)
  2. testpilot.ru — "MiG-31 (izdeliye 01) Foxhound: long-range supersonic interceptor", reference site Ispytateli (Test Pilots) (in Russian) (archive)
  3. Rostec — "MiG-31BM: a high-flying bird", 22 January 2021 (in Russian) (archive)
  4. Nizhny Novgorod Aircraft Building Plant Sokol — "Our history", official website of the plant, 2004 (in English)
  5. Nizhny Novgorod Association of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs — "Created in the first five-year plan: the Sokol aircraft plant", 1 February 2022 (in Russian) (archive)
  6. testpilot.ru — "Kherodinov Vladimir Alekseyevich", Honoured Test Pilot of the USSR (1938–1990) (in Russian) (archive)
  7. testpilot.ru — "Rakhmanov Vladimir Ivanovich", Hero of Russia, test pilot (in Russian) (archive)
  8. Kommersant — Mikhail Sergeyev, "A business aircraft instead of MiGs", No. 33, 24 February 1993 (in Russian)
  9. Nizhny Novgorod Aircraft Building Plant Sokol — "MiG-31E fighter-interceptor", official website of the plant, 2007 (in English)
  10. OAO Nizhny Novgorod Aircraft Building Plant Sokol — Annual report for 2012 (in Russian, PDF)
  11. testpilot.ru — "Pechenkin Andrei Leonidovich", Honoured Test Pilot of the Russian Federation (in Russian) (archive)
  12. www1.ru — "The first modernised MiG-31s of the year handed over to the Defence Ministry", 15 July 2024 (in Russian) (archive)
  13. www1.ru — "The MiG-31 interceptor plant will change its purpose", 6 July 2026, citing TASS (in Russian) (archive)
  14. Komsomolskaya Pravda — Nizhny Novgorod — "The best fighter pilots are trained at Savasleyka air base near Nizhny", 20 January 2017 (in Russian) (archive)