After the death of the Soviet-aligned Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1970, his vice Anwar Sadat took over and quickly shifted the country toward the West and downgraded diplomatic and defense ties with Moscow. In mid-1977 President Sadat delivered four MiG-23s to the United States.


The Americans evaluated the Migs under a pair of programs code-named HAVE PAD and HAVE BOXER and this is what they learned:


They expected the MiG-23 to be highly maneuverable but this turned out not to be the case. Its agility was comparable to the F-4E Phantom. F-15 Eagle and upgraded F-4E with slats could easily out-turn the MiG-23. When the MiG-23 approached a high angle of attack it would become very unstable and depart from controlled flight. It had very few basic maneuvers and two of them were the massive loop and the no circle fight.


The Mig 23 had incredible acceleration, especially below 10 000 feet, and achieved Mach 1 faster than any American Fighter Jet. The Mig 23 had tremendous speed. At low altitudes, it had the ability to run down any NATO or American Strike aircraft except the late model F-111 which was designed to penetrate Soviet defenses low and fast.


Dutch Pilot Leon Van Maurer who had more than one thousand hours flying F-16s concluded the MiG-23 was superior in climbing to the F-16 and slightly inferior in the horizontal and had superior BVR capability


The American Pilots concluded that the MiG-23 was an interceptor and not a dogfighter. The airframe was easily overstressed. Was unstable when it reached Mach 1 and again when it reached Mach 2. It also sat low and its engines could ingest debris. In short, The Americans did not like it and thought it was dangerous but acknowledged in capable hands it was lethal.


Israel


On Oct 11 1989 Major Adel Bassciii of the Syrian Air Force made a dash in his MiG-23 MLD (Flogger G) 25m above the ground in afterburner towards Israel. Minutes earlier he was the lead in a two-ship training flight. Flying parallel to the Golan border he suddenly broke away, descended rapidly, and accelerated toward Israel. The entire incident took only seven minutes. The Major’s motivations were dissatisfaction with his position in Syria. The Israel Air Force was happy to get their hands on this aircraft but embarrassed that the MiG- 23 entered and landed unchallenged.


The Mig-23 that Israel got differed greatly from earlier models in both the airframes and avionics. After three months of preparation, the Israelis took to the sky and were taken aback by the sophistication of the plane, particularly its early warning and countermeasures. What was also very impressive was its climb rate. After taking off with the F-15 and F-16 the MiG-23 would shoot upward in a stiff climb and leave both fighters standing. The performance observed was different from the poorly performing MiG-23s Egypt supplied to the US.


The compromising of the capabilities of the top-end MiG-23 led the Russian Air Force to store all MiG-23 in operational storage.