The Boeing CH-47 Chinook is a tandem-rotor helicopter originally developed by American rotorcraft company Vertol and now manufactured by Boeing Defense, Space & Security. The Chinook is a heavy-lift helicopter that is among the heaviest lifting Western helicopters. Its name, Chinook, is from the Native American Chinook people of Oregon and Washington state.
The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-23 is a variable-geometry fighter aircraft, designed by the Mikoyan-Gurevich design bureau in the Soviet Union. It is a third-generation jet fighter, alongside similar Soviet aircraft such as the Su-17 "Fitter". It was the first Soviet fighter to field a look-down/shoot-down radar, the RP-23 Sapfir, and one of the first to be armed with beyond-visual-range missiles. Production started in 1969 and reached large numbers with over 5,000 aircraft built, making it the most produced variable-sweep wing aircraft in history. The MiG-23 remains in limited service with some export customers.
The CH-53 Sea Stallion is an American family of heavy-lift transport helicopters designed and built by the American manufacturer Sikorsky Aircraft. The Sea Stallion was originally developed in response to a request from the United States Navy's Bureau of Naval Weapons made in March 1962 for a replacement for the Sikorsky CH-37 Mojave helicopters flown by the United States Marine Corps (USMC).
The MolniyaR-60 is a short-range lightweight infrared homing air-to-air missile designed for use by Soviet fighter aircraft. It has been widely exported, and remains in service with the CIS and many other nations.
Korean Air Lines Flight 902 was a scheduled Korean Air Lines flight from Paris to Seoul via Anchorage. On 20 April 1978, the Soviet air defense shot down the aircraft serving the flight, a Boeing 707, near Murmansk, Soviet Union, after the aircraft violated Soviet airspace.
On 4 July 1989, a pilotless MiG-23 jet fighter of the Soviet Air Forces crashed into a house in Bellegem, near Kortrijk, Belgium, killing one person. The pilot had ejected over an hour earlier near Kołobrzeg, Poland, after experiencing technical problems, but the aircraft continued flying for around 900 km (600 mi) before running out of fuel and crashing into the ground.
Air-to-air combat is the engagement of combat aircraft in warfare in which primarily fixed-wing aircraft attempt to destroy enemy aircraft using guns, rockets and missiles. The Korean War saw the greatest amount of air-to-air combat since World War II. During the war the United States claimed to have shot down around 700 fighters. After the war the U.S. Air Force reviewed its figures in an investigation code-named Sabre Measure Charlie and downgraded the kill ratio of the North American F-86 Sabre against the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 by half from 14:1 to 7:1. One of the factors inflating US numbers was that most dogfights took place over enemy-controlled area. The only way to confirm kills was through gun camera photography. USAF pilots were credited with a kill if the gun camera showed their guns striking the enemy aircraft even if no one actually saw it go down. However, Soviet Air Force kill claims were also highly exaggerated, based upon inherent flaws in their film grading procedures. For instance, the S-13 gun camera was not aligned with either the gunsight or either cannons' ballistics. It ran only while the firing buttons were depressed. Film graders commonly included unit commanders and political commisars who would confirm a "kill"—sometimes even if one had not been claimed by a pilot—when the camera's crosshairs touched the target for two movie frames. During the first 16 months of combat Soviet V-VS units claimed 218 F-86s destroyed when only 36 had been lost. This results in a 600 per cent inflation rate in victory credits over actual Sabres destroyed. However, these figures are complicated by the fact that the Americans routinely attributed combat losses to landing accidents and other causes.
The General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon has served the United States and the air arms of 25 other nations. Over 4,400 F-16s have been sold.
During the 1991 Gulf War and subsequent operations in no-fly zones over Iraq, Coalition air forces faced the Iraqi Air Force (IQAF), the fourth largest air force in the world at the time. In the opening days of the war, many air-to-air engagements occurred, between Iraqi interceptors and a variety of different Coalition aircraft.
Project Dark Gene was an aerial reconnaissance program run by the Central Intelligence Agency and Imperial Iranian Air Force from bases inside Pahlavi Iran against the Soviet Union. The program was run in conjunction with Project Ibex, which was a more traditional ELINT mission. The first operations were during the 1960s with support of Iran's former Shah. Dedicated aircraft, air-bases, and U.S. personnel were stationed at numerous sites in Iran and would regularly fly across the border into the USSR through potential holes in their radar coverage. The intention of the program was to test the effectiveness of Soviet air defence and interception and resulted in one confirmed and possibly more combat losses in engagements with Soviet aircraft.
On 6 August 2011, a U.S. CH-47D Chinook military helicopter operating with the call sign Extortion 17 was shot down while transporting a Quick Reaction Force attempting to reinforce a Joint Special Operations Command unit of the 75th Ranger Regiment in the Tangi Valley in Maidan Wardak province, southwest of Kabul, Afghanistan.
The 1958 C-130 shootdown incident was the shooting down of an American Lockheed C-130A-II-LM reconnaissance aircraft which entered Soviet airspace during a mission in the region of Armenian SSR.
The 120th Separate Guards Brest Order of Suvorov 3rd Class Fighter Aviation Regiment is a fighter aviation regiment of the Russian Aerospace Forces. Based at Domna, the regiment is part of the 11th Air and Air Defense Forces Army and flies the Sukhoi Su-30SM.
The Shindand SuperCobra incident refers to the shootdown of two Iranian Bell AH-1 SuperCobras by Soviet forces near Shindand, Herat Province. It was the only air to air engagement between Soviet and Iranian forces in the Soviet-Afghan War that took place inside Afghanistan.
1982 Harmak incident refers to the accidental infiltration of Iranian territory during the Soviet–Afghan War, in which Soviet forces strayed from the target of a Mujahideen base in southern Afghanistan and accidentally destroyed an asphalt factory in Iran.
