Air and Space Magazine, October, 1995

"I'll give you a really good example," says Captain Bernd Pfaehler, a westerner, sitting in the officer's mess with a group of pilots. "With our expensive jets, if we realize something is not going to work--not at all--we get the hell out of there and bring our jets home and try to set something else up. Those guys"--he points to an easterner--"would have been vectored in there, maybe without even knowing what was coming at them, and [would have] died."

Andreas Zube nods grimly. "The old tactics were based on conventional superiority," he says. "In those days there was no choice. It was mass force. If I'd come back, the next day I would end up in military court."

Now considered one of the best pilots in the squadron, Zube ruefully recalls his baptism by fire into western techniques. "The real surprise was the first time I went out in 1991, when I was only trained in the old tactics, the old maneuvering, and I lost against an F-4," says Zube, unable to disguise his disgust.

"He was very surprised," Michalski says, chuckling.

Seven of the former East German pilots quickly washed out. "They weren't able to adapt to this style of maneuvering and thinking," says Michalski. It was a brutal process--of the 42 East German MiG-29 pilots from the original group that trained in July 1991, only 13 remain. Yet those that survived the western training are now among its biggest advocates. Some three years after losing to an F-4, Andreas Zube has defeated F/A-18s and F-16s in mock combat.

Michalski admits that these days it can be tough to best the easterners. "I have more hours on the MiG than all the other pilots, but they've learned a lot and it's not so easy for me anymore," he says.

But the best pilots in the squadron are still from the west. "No doubt about it," says Michalski. "It's one thing to perform normal aircraft maneuvering, air-to-air maneuvering. The other thing is to lead and be responsible for two to four aircraft, and lead them back home and make all the decisions to bring them back safely. This is another story which they're not used to. The western pilot, of course, is used to that and sees no problem with it."

When a pair of pilots is needed, commanders tend to send an Ossi and a Wessi so that any extra experience the westerner possesses will rub off. But perhaps the main reason the easterners have improved is increased flying time. Warsaw Pact pilots typically had only a third of the annual flying time their NATO counterparts had. "Someone who flies only 60 to 70 hours per year has a different capability from a NATO pilot who flies between 200 and 240 hours per year," says Stieglitz.

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By 1993, because so many former East German pilots had either washed out or left because of Stasi connections, western pilots were brought in to round out the squadron. Their training included a two-month program on the MiG, a somewhat surreal experience for them. "When we were training in the [1980s]," says Bernd Pfaehler, then a Phantom pilot, "the MiG-29 had just come out on [intelligence] reports, and that was our major hostile threat. And now I'm flying it--that was kind of strange in the beginning.

"I didn't encounter very many problems," adds Pfaehler, "except the cockpit was in Russian. I had to learn a little bit of Russian at least to read the cockpit switches."

The western pilots raved about the MiG-29's power and maneuverability, but they were less impressed with the pulse-Doppler look down/shoot down radar, which is not able to track an enemy aircraft while checking for other threats. In addition, the MiG's radar- and infrared-guided missiles were out-ranged by those of most top-of-the-line western aircraft.

"Why do you build such a great, highly maneuverable airplane and then have a very bad weapons system, radar, and so forth in the aircraft?" Pfaehler asks. "That's the problem we have, since we're trying to employ the MiG-29 in a western-type scenario, which it's not built for: autonomous operations with fuel required, with situational assessments based on your own radar and radar warning equipment. You don't have that in the MiG-29. You can't do that. It's purely built for ground-controlled, intercept-type point defense."

Moments after landing his MiG, Lieutenant Frank Simon, another westerner, stands on the frigid runway at Laage issuing his own criticisms. "One disadvantage is its smaller fuel range," he says. "In a combat situation you'd have to disengage after a short time. It comes from a different philosophy. The MiG can fly two hours on a training flight [with an external centerline tank]. But in a fight where you're using your afterburners, you could only last 40 to 50 minutes."

Western pilots are also less than thrilled with the MiG's cockpit set-up, which they say is not ergonomically well designed, and they complain that the throttle lacks thumb controls, which lessens a pilot's option for turning his head from the control panel.

Despite the deficiencies the Luftwaffe has made few changes to the MiGs, and those are largely superficial. Instead of the green camouflage the MiGs sported in the East German air force, they are now all painted gray to match other Luftwaffe aircraft. The labels in the cockpits are being changed from Cyrillic to English. Stieglitz says he hopes to improve the navigational capabilities of the MiGs by adding Global Positioning System equipment.

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