When your opponent’s plane is so scary that you end up creating a new generation of aircraft out of pure fear.

**Context**: When the U.S. first got intel on the Soviet MiG-25 in the early 1970s, they thought the Soviets had unleashed the final boss of aviation. It could go over Mach 3, fly higher than anything America had, and was made almost entirely out of stainless steel, like someone welded a fridge to two rocket engines. U.S. analysts assumed it was some kind of hyper-agile superfighter that would obliterate everything in the sky. In reality, it turned out the MiG-25 was more of a “go fast in a straight line and pray” machine. Amazing at speed, terrible at turning. But before they figured that out, the Pentagon basically panicked and said: “Ok boys, time to build a plane that can bully this thing.” The result was the F-15 Eagle, one of the most successful fighters ever built. So yes, the MiG-25 didn’t destroy the U.S. Air Force. It unintentionally invented the next one.

I fear no man. But that thing... ...It was made with mematic

But lets be honest: even if the MiG-25 was indeed all that jazz that the U.S feared about, the scare wouldnt last for long. Its almost like building a high performance aircraft around a cruise missile engine isnt the best recipe for a long service life. Proof of this is that the Foxbat was completely phased out (okay, theres the MiG-31, but at that point its a complete new aircraft, it has different radar, different engines and different wing platform) and today you still have new F-15 variants still coming off the production line. (U.S peeps, can you confirm this for me?)

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