The MiG-29 Fulcrum outside the National Air and Space Intelligence Center at Ohio’s Wright-Patterson Air Force Base has a hornet’s nest growing in its nose. Its tires, lifted off the ground by stands, are split and shredded. Bird droppings drool off its radome. The aircraft gives the impression of a war prize displayed like a head on a stake. In a way, it is a war prize, taken in the winning of the cold war. It’s one of 17 MiG-29s the U.S. government purchased from the former Soviet state of Moldova in 1997, a deal that kept the jets from being sold to Iran. The loose confederation that replaced the Soviet Union was not in a position to stop the buy, and it became one more ignominy in the Soviet collapse. “Any military establishment of any country would be upset if its opponent would receive an opportunity to evaluate and test its most modern weapons,” says Moscow-based aviation historian Sergey Isaev. “I wonder how happy would the White House be and Pentagon if Mexico, for example, would even try to sell its UH-60L Blackhawk helicopters to the Russian Federation?”

The acquisition also gave Western analysts, some of them working inside the grim edifice of this national intelligence center, a chance to study the fighter that they had been viewing from afar for 20 years. When it first showed up, in 1977, the MiG-29, like its very distant ancestor, the MiG-15, was a startling revelation: The Soviets were catching up with U.S. aeronautical technology.
Top speed: 2,400 km/h
Range: 1,430 km
Length: 17 m
Unit cost: US$11 million (MiG-29B, 1999); US$22 million (MiG-29C, 2013)
Variants: Mikoyan MiG-29M; Mikoyan MiG-29K; Mikoyan MiG-35
Engine type: Klimov RD-33
First flight: 6 October 1977
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