I think the Mig 29 did the same thing with the vacuum tubes, but I might be remembering this wrong. The Migs sure are built to be robust. They are designed to take off from broken and dirty runways (and their runways pretty much look like that anywaypaperburn1 wrote:This was back in the 70s I remember going through the white papers on the mig 25 that Victor somebody landed in Japan. They had used a lot of steel and hand welding to make the aircraft because they really didn't have the capabilities to work titanium successfully. Evaluation electronics at first we thought amusing because they had so many teeny tiny vacuum tubes. The later realize because of this and the steel structure of the aircraft the planes were pretty much EMP proof. I wonder how far they have actually advanced in these fields today
). IIRC, they were intended to be able to be used in a counter strike in case of a US nuclear first strike against USSR military installations.Western planes tend to be more sensitive.