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Good morning

Consider this a limited nonnuclear war set in the 80s

USSR is attacking command and control centers airbases and navalbases in Japan and lets say turkey in the mid-80s

plan to attack them with ASM and ARM ( AS-6/AS-4 and AS-16) carried by Tu-16/Tu-22 and Tu-95

they need to be escorted to the launching point which is approx 200nm from their targets , that is where they will launch their missiles and then immediately turn back and head home as their missiles have inertial and active radar guidance

that means they need to be protected not for long distances over hostile territory but just to 200nm or so from enemy's bases

The primary threat to these bombers is the interceptors F-15/f-16 AND f-4 which will be scrambled as soon as the soviet bombers are detected likely several hundred miles away from the jap/turkish bases ( due to AWACS).

The bombers are at high altitude accompanied by mig-25s

Now the mig-25s accompanying them will race ahead to meet these fighters head on and this will accomplish 4 things
1-Distract the interceptors from the bombers
2-Draw in fire from their SARH missiles which otherwise could be used against the bombers, since enemy interceptors can only guide one SARH missile at one time ( and foxbats have shown they can be notoriously hard to kill with AIM-7s) this can be quite time consuming giving the bombers time to reach their launch point
3-The foxbats can fire their own missiles which even if they mostly miss will still make the fighters take evasive actions
4-Since bombers are at high altitude this will force the enemy interceptors to fight at higher altitude where foxbats perform better than at low altitude

In the meantime the bombers can reach their launch time, release their missiles and head home

In this way i though foxbats might be quite successful in their goal as escorts, not by destroying large number of enemy interceptors but by keeping them occupied long enough for the bombers to launch their missiles and foxbats may even get a few kills by their slash and dash tactics

what do you guys think ?
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