Russian Air Force plans biggest upgrade since USSR

Russia is to make the largest overhaul of its military aviation in post-Soviet history, its Air Force commander said yesterday, but admitted the planned modernisation was still a far cry from Soviet times.

Russia's creaking military machine contrasts starkly with the Kremlin's drive to be more assertive in world affairs, and analysts say much of its technological potential was lost in the turmoil that followed the Soviet Union's demise in 1991.

In what some officials branded a "record contract", Prime Minister Vladimir Putin oversaw the signing of a $2.5 billion deal this week for state-controlled plane maker Sukhoi to supply the Air Force with 64 new jet fighters.

"For the Air Force, this is one of the largest orders which we must fulfil by 2015," Russian Air Force Commander Alexander Zelin told a news conference during the MAKS-2009 aerospace fair outside Moscow.

"I believe this is a real breakthrough in Russia's recent history."

Commander Zelin said the Air Force would finally receive in the next few years the new Mi-28NM helicopter, dubbed Night Hunter, the Ka-52 attack helicopter, known as Alligator, and the Su-34 advanced fighter-bomber. He gave no numbers or time frames.

A handful of each of these aircraft have trickled into the armed forces in recent years, despite the fact all of them were designed and made their first flights in Soviet times.

The planned deliveries of new equipment to the Air Force, albeit the largest since the collapse of the Soviet Union, are dwarfed by comparison with Soviet-era military programmes.

Commander Zelin compared Russia's Air Force today with that of the 1970s and 1980s. "In those times, the Air Force would receive between 400 and 600 aircraft annually," he said. "But this was a different country and it had a different potential."

Commander Zelin said Russia would modernise its MiG-31 interceptor jets, in service since the early 1980s. He said their capabilities could be boosted by new types of short- to long-range weapons, satellite navigation and the ability to land on any military or civilian air field.

Russia planned to create nine squadrons each consisting of 12 of those modernised aircraft, he said.