MiG-31 Foxhound
The MiG-31 Foxhound is Russia’s Mach 2.83 interceptor and sole airborne carrier of the Kh-47M2 Kinzhal ballistic missile — an irreplaceable Cold War asset that dominates high-altitude combat and triggers nationwide alerts with every sortie, yet cannot be built anew.
Soviet/Russian long-range supersonic interceptor and airborne carrier for the Kh-47M2 Kinzhal air-launched ballistic missile, combining Mach 2.83 speed with a powerful PESA radar and the R-37M beyond-visual-range missile to dominate high-altitude battlespace.
Overview
The MiG-31 Foxhound is the fastest operational combat aircraft in the world and one of the most critical — and irreplaceable — types in Russian Aerospace Forces service. Designed to protect the Soviet Union’s vast northern approaches against low-flying cruise missiles and bombers, today it performs dual missions: long-range interception with radar-guided missiles that no Ukrainian tactical aircraft can evade, and strategic strike as the sole launch platform for the Kh-47M2 Kinzhal air-launched ballistic missile. Its speed, ceiling, and firepower make it a unique threat, but production ended in 1994, turning every airframe loss into a permanent subtraction from a finite stock.
Development
Development began at the Mikoyan design bureau as a deep upgrade of the MiG-25 to carry a heavy phased-array radar and long-range missiles against the next generation of Western cruise missiles. The prototype first flew on 16 September 1975, and full-production machines were accepted into the Soviet Air Defence Forces on 6 May 1981, a timeline documented by Wikipedia. Between 1975 and 1994 the Sokol plant in Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod) built about 519 airframes; the line then closed, and no new airframes have been manufactured since. The MiG-31 entered service with the Zaslon radar — the world’s first operational fighter passive electronically scanned array — paired with the R-33 (AA-9 Amos) long-range missile, which in a 1978 trial demonstrated simultaneous four-target engagement. A mid-life upgrade program launched in 2008 converted surviving interceptors to the MiG-31BM standard, introducing the Zaslon-AM radar and the R-37M (AA-13 Axehead) missile with a range of roughly 280–400 km; the first operational R-37M unit was stood up at Kansk in 2018, according to TASS. The Kinzhal carrier variant, the MiG-31K, was revealed in 2018 and added a stand-off strategic strike role, with the more autonomous MiG-31I “Ishim” following in the mid-2020s.
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