The MiG-IS was to have a long service career. It was built in huge numbers both within and outside the Soviet Union and paved the way for Soviet fighter design for the next decade. Many are active even now, mostly as privately owned warbirds. The MiG-IS was not a new aircraft, nor was it designed entirely in the Soviet Union. It was a major rework of the projected Focke-Wulf Ta 183 developed by Kurt Tank. It would never have appeared without 4 the use of captured German research data and "captive brains." Many nations made use of captured German technology, and given the pressures of the incipient Cold War, Soviet engineers had very little time to produce an "answer to the West" - months, sometimes literally days. Under the regime of Josef Stalin, failure to meet the objective could mean prompt execution. This is why Soviet engineers sometimes preferred to play it safe by using "imported technologies." This serves only to perWARBIRDTECH petuate the old myths associated with the MiG-IS to the effect that the Soviet Union, the Cold War enemy, is by definition incapable of creating anything worthwhile. Sure enough, the MiG-IS's designers made use of German technologies and a British powerplant, but this only served to accelerate the fighter's development. The design in itself was entirely indigenous, not just a rehash of the Ta 183, and such a fighter would still have appeared without imported
technologies, albeit years later.