FIFY. Just because it appears stable, doesnt mean nothing is wrong. For all we know They saw hydraulic pressure drop to zero and/or or they could have been wildly trying to move controls and the plane wasnt responding. Kinda like in the movies when a brake line is cut and the character is wildly and repeatedly stomping on the brake pedal but the car is still moving forward at full speed.I wonder how many owners that Mig23 had? How do you have traceability on that? Forget about it. That plane looked like it was in somewhatcontrolledstable flight when they punched. I'll be interested to hear the story, if any, but that looked like a straight-up major system failure, and they were lucky enough to identify it before it became critical.
Very lucky nobody was killed.
Or there was a spider in the cockpit.