The pilots of the Kursk air base of the Russian Air Force have successfully mastered the MiG-29SMT fighters, which were previously planned to be supplied to the Algerian Air Force, Colonel Vladimir Drik, an official spokesman for the press service and information of the Russian Defense Ministry, told Interfax-AVN.
"By the end of the year, the Kursk air base showed the highest level of combat training: in terms of flight hours, in terms of the number of flight personnel who underwent retraining for MiG-29SMT fighters (only 100%) and according to the results of combat training firing from dispersal airfields," V. Drik.
According to him, this was noted at a meeting of the military council of the Operational-Strategic Command of Aerospace Defense (OSK VKO, formerly the Moscow Air Force and Air Defense District, Special Operations Command), where the results of combat training in 2010 were summed up.
The meeting was held under the leadership of the USC VKO, Lieutenant-General Valery Ivanov. Major General Alexander Shapekin, Chief of Staff - First Deputy Commander of the USC EKR, made a report.
The MiG-29SMT is a qualitatively new version of the MiG-29 light front-line fighter. It has in its arsenal a wide range of various air-to-air and air-to-surface aviation weapons. The aircraft is capable of carrying out missions to destroy both air and ground and sea targets with high efficiency. As a result of the modernization, the combat effectiveness of the MiG-29SMT in comparison with the base MiG-29 has increased by an average of 3 times, and the cost of operation has decreased by about 40%.
The contract between Algeria and Rosoboronexport for the supply of 34 MiG-29SMT was signed in 2006. Its cost, according to unofficial data, amounted to 28 billion. Having received in 2006-2007. 15 aircraft, Algeria stopped accepting, announcing a number of identified malfunctions, after which it was decided to return the aircraft to the Russian Federation. In the middle of last year, there was information that the "Algerian" MiG-29s would be bought by the Russian Ministry of Defense, paying 23 billion rubles for them.
