I spent the major portion of my professional life in an era when the plan was 4 ships of F-4 sitting on CAP at 15K watching for and intercepting formations of Jags, Bucks, F-111s attacking at 250ft using their PD. Seemed a real defence compared to a couple of F-6s at 25K with pulse only
For some obscure reason the prevalent theory was that the Russians would, if they attacked, use the same tactics.
An AVM was given a tour of a Backfire at a Russian airbase in the 90s, when we were sort of friendly, and was puzzled when he couldn’t find the TFR and asked why they didn’t have one.
Turned out their attack plan was to come in at 50K+ supersonic and launch their As-4/AS-6s at max range using heavy ECM.
Not sure who the AVM was but that cunning Russian plan (Backfires, high level, high speed, etc) was known about and trained for on at least a couple of F-4M Squadrons well before the 90's...quite how it would have worked out ...........................