Combat record
MiG-25 Foxbat — Combat Record
3rd-generation jet · USSR · First flight 1964 · Retired · Combat-proven: air-to-air
The story behind the numbers
Built to catch a bomber that was never built, the Foxbat terrified Western analysts until Viktor Belenko landed one in Japan in 1976 and the myth deflated into stainless steel and vacuum tubes. Yet its combat record is better than the joke version: Iraqi MiG-25s claimed the first coalition air-to-air loss of Desert Storm — a US Navy Hornet on night one.
Syrian Foxbats traded losses with Israeli F-15s in 1981; Iraqi ones outran or occasionally ambushed American fighters for a decade, and one embarrassed a pair of F-15s in the 2002 no-fly-zone skirmishes by surviving both. Five to fifteen kills, six to sixteen losses: the fastest combat aircraft ever fielded fought smarter than its reputation.
Campaign by campaign
| Years | Campaign | Operator | Victories | A2A losses | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1980–88 | Iran–Iraq War | Iraq | 9 | 2 | Iraqi Foxbats — Col. Mohammed Rayyan alone was credited with ~8 — downed Iranian F-4s, F-5s, a C-130, an F-14 and the Fokker F-27 airliner shootdown of 1986. Iran claims up to 10 Foxbats in return; only a couple are confirmed. |
| 1981 | Lebanon / Syria | Syria | 0 | 2 | Two Syrian MiG-25s fell to Israeli F-15s in 1981; a reconnaissance MiG-25RB lost in 1982 is sometimes added. |
| 1991 | Gulf War | Iraq | 1 | 2 | Downed a US Navy F/A-18 (Speicher) — Iraq’s only confirmed A2A kill of the war; two MiG-25s lost to F-15s. |
| 1992/2002 | No-fly zones | Iraq | 0 | 1 | One MiG-25 fell to a USAF F-16 in December 1992 — the first combat AMRAAM kill. In 2002 a Foxbat downed an MQ-1 Predator: the first aircraft-vs-drone kill, noted but not counted. |
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