Feb 4 1978
From The Space Library
FBIS reported that the Japanese Defense Agency had deciphered the "identification, friend or foe" (IFF) code of the Soviet MiG-25 flown by a defecting pilot to Japan's Hakodate airport in Sept. 1976. IFF, a top-secret device, would enable a pilot flying at Mach 2 to identify a plane appearing on a radar screen. At that speed, since identification could not be made by sight, the pilot would send an electric wave in cipher; a plane that failed to return a prearranged signal would be attacked. The decoding was the result of intensive study of data observed from the MiG-25. Western military experts had discovered the Soviet approach to constructing secret codes, the basic units of pulse signals emitted by the IFF, and the sequence of Soviet codes. The USSR would now have to revise all IFF codes for the MiG series, including 304 MiG-25s and 115 MiG-25Bs. One aviation expert noted that the IFF had provided vital information; ". . . it is not an overstatement to say that the IFF was the only secret about the MiG-25 that landed at Hakodate." Japanese and U.S. authorities had returned the MiG to the USSR after study. (FBIS, Kyodo in English, Feb 4/78)
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