Climb! Keep climbing! Soon, the air currents are no longer visible, and by this time they have entered the stratosphere.

Fly, keep flying high! Higher, faster! This is the goal pursued by the fighter designers of this era!

As he continued to climb higher, Andre's heart began to surge, and the altimeter in front of him had reached an altitude of 24,000 meters!

Now, of all the fighters in the world, only the MiG-25 is able to reach such heights! Except for the SR-71! Of course, if the Americans insist that the Blackbird is also a fighter.

Gently pushing the lever forward, Andre leveled the plane, and the voice of the ground CGI came from the headphones: "Attention, heading 240, Mach 2.4 cruising." ”

"Roger." The answer of the captain of the second brigade came from the headset: "Heading 240.Speed 2.4."

Pressing the operating stick, the fighter drew an arc in the air and flew in the direction of ground guidance.

The standard interception tactics of the Soviet Territorial Defense Force were carried out under ground guidance, and Andrei followed the formation of four planes in front of him, turning the slope while continuing to increase his speed.

At this altitude, the air resistance is quite small, and the two engines in the tail spew a blazing tail flame, pushing the fighter to continue to accelerate. With the appearance of a cone-shaped sonic boom cloud, the fighter plane quickly pierced the sonic boom cloud and entered a supersonic cruise.

The acceleration was short and long, and when the hand of the Mach meter on the green instrument panel in front pointed to Mach 2.4, Andre tightened the throttle a little, and the fighter flew steadily at Mach 2.4.

The temperature in the cockpit continued to rise, the hands holding the steering stick began to sweat, and Andrei breathed in the oxygen sent by the respirator and began to pull the radar panel in front of him with his fingers.

The other fighters in the formation are still equipped with the old-fashioned Whirlwind-A radar, although the inverted Cassegrain antenna is more than 1 meter in diameter, it is quite rudimentary, because the scanning line basically coincides with the axis of the fuselage, it does not have the ability to look down - shoot down at all, and the detection distance of a typical bomber target is only 100 kilometers.

A fighter plane that is sprinting at a high altitude and at a low altitude like the current one cannot be detected by the Whirlwind-A radar.

And now, the landline that Andrei is driving is loaded with an improved RP-25M pulse-Doppler radar with a pitch scanning capability of 42 ° downward, so, thinking about the manual he just flipped, Andrei turned on the radar.

Just at the time of takeoff, the vacuum tube of the radar was preheated, so now, after turning on the main switch, the radar begins to emit pulsed Doppler signals, and at the same time, through the interaction of combat information with the ground command station through the automated interception system, the scanning of the radar is purposeful.

Radar power on!

At the nose of the steel fighter, the inverted Cassegrain antenna with a diameter of 90 centimeters radiated a strong electromagnetic signal towards the airspace below the front, with a peak power of hundreds of kilowatts, which instantly made Andrei feel that the lights of the instruments in the cockpit were dimmed.

"Report, 032 found the target, the distance is one hundred, the speed is 0.8, the height is ten thousand, and the number is twenty." Andrei looked at the dots of light that appeared on the screen and said into the radio.

This set of Sapphire 25 radar works really well! Andrei looked at the dots of light on the screen, and his heart was very satisfied.

The scanning signal of the I-band filled the airspace ahead, and almost at the same time, the E-2 early warning planes hovering over western Hokkaido also spotted the MiG-25 fleet that came to intercept it.

The Soviets were also aggressive, and they actually dispatched nearly twenty MiG-25s, which is almost the size of an aviation regiment!

"Kraken squadron, Kraken squadron, pay attention, the target has appeared, eighteen MiG-25s, a hundred at a distance." The E-2 AWACS aircraft delivered a message to their own fleet.

The 35th Fighter Squadron of the 13th Fighter Wing of the Misawa Base, nicknamed the Kraken Squadron, took off from the Misawa Base after dawn, and at the same time an E-2 early warning aircraft also took off for early warning support, and these fighters flew for more than half an hour before flying near the center line of the Sea of Japan, while the MiG-25, which was responsible for the interception on the opposite side, flew for only ten minutes.

At this time, the distance between the two sides was already close to a hundred kilometers, and the relative speed exceeded that between the fighters of Mach three, and the distance of this hundred kilometers was less than a hundred seconds.

"Roger." Squadron Leader Major Dick Houston shouted over the radio: "Attention, drop the drop tank, turn on the afterburner climb, and get ready to lock!" ”

The flames of the two J79 turbojet engines in the tail suddenly turned blood red, and after turning on the afterburner, the engines burst out with maximum thrust, and the fighters began to accelerate.

At the same time, under the control of the radar operator in the rear cabin, the AN/APQ-120 in the nose also began to enter the working state, scanning the target aircraft in the airspace in front. Thanks to the use of transistors and integrated circuits, this radar is small in size and weight, but its performance has developed greatly, continuous wave scanning signals, flooding the airspace ahead, and soon, the radar began to look upward, it has already found those targets in the high sky!

"Attention, prepare for radar lock!" Major Dick said.

Locking is not to kill the opponent, but to show that you have the ability to kill the opponent! In fact, compared with a target aircraft flying at a speed of more than Mach two at high altitude, the Sparrow missile cannot be launched at that altitude at all, and only the immortal bird of the Navy's F-14 Tomcat fighter can pose a threat to the MiG-25.

Now, the purpose of using the radar to lock on to the target is to threaten the other side, and in the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union were so hostile that if they were not careful, they would trigger a silent confrontation in war, and I don't know how many times it was staged.

"Attention, prepare to dive, lock onto the target!" Almost simultaneously, the MiG-25 fleet also received signal guidance from ground-based CGI.

Due to the lack of down-looking and down-firing capabilities, if the MiG-25's Whirlwind-A radar locks on to the target, the side can only dive down, at least to an altitude of less than 20,000 meters, before it can successfully lock on to the opponent.

Swoop? Hearing this order, Andrei couldn't help but be speechless in the cockpit for a while, the main advantage of the MiG-25 is high altitude and high speed, and now rush to a low altitude and hover with the opponent at medium and low altitudes, confrontation, this is not fun.

Anyway, his own airborne radar already has enough downward vision ability, so Andrei did not dive with the fleet in front, and directly flipped the radar switch and turned into a locked state.

"Report, 032 has been locked, request launch." Andrei shouted over the radio.

Launch? Don't shoot the first shot! When Koridub on the ground heard this voice, the sweat on his head suddenly came out, damn it, he didn't plan to let this guy participate in the confrontation yesterday, and he didn't let him participate in the first-level combat readiness meeting, didn't he know the order not to shoot the first shot?

"Be careful, don't return fire until you're attacked!" Kozhdub shouted with a wireless phone.

Andrei, who was almost at the edge of the atmosphere, had a smile on his face, and the fun began!