Viktor Belenko

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Viktor Ivanovich Belenko (Виктор Иванович Беленко) (born February 15, 1947) is an American aerospace engineer and lecturer of Russian origin. Belenko was a pilot with the 513th Fighter Regiment, 11th Air Army, Soviet Air Defence Forces based in Chuguyevka, Primorsky Krai. His name became known worldwide on September 6th, 1976 when he successfully defected to the West, flying his Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25 to Hakodate, Japan. This was the first time that Western experts were able to get a close look at the aircraft, and it revealed many secrets and surprises.

Belenko was granted asylum by then US President Gerald Ford, and a trust fund was set up for him, granting him a very comfortable living in later years. The US interrogated and debriefed him for 5 months after his defection, and employed him as a consultant for several years thereafter.

The MiG was disassembled, examined, and returned to the USSR in thirty crates. Belenko brought with him the pilot's manual for the Foxbat, expecting to assist American pilots in evaluating and testing the aircraft. However, the Japanese government only allowed the US to examine the plane and do ground tests of the radar and engines.

Belenko was not the only pilot to have defected from the USSR in this way, nor was he the first such to defect from a Soviet-bloc country. In March and May of 1953, two Polish pilots flew MiG-15s to Denmark. In 1985 and 1987, USSR-owned helicopters in the Afghanistan theatre of operations defected to Pakistan. Captain Alexander Zuyev flew his MiG-29 to Trabzon, Turkey on May 20, 1989.

The financial impact of Belenko's defection was enormous.^{[citation needed]} The Soviet Ministry of Defence abandoned the construction of two aircraft carriers in favour of fully replacing the system of target-classification on all Soviet military aircraft and spent over 2 billion roubles to that end.^{[citation needed]}