Aviapedia

Russian Air Force fleet will be renovated by 2020

Air Forces Commander-In-Chief Vladimir Mikhailov has announced that all the Russian Air Force fleet will be totally renovated by the 2020.

“By 2020 all our fleet will be replaced with new one by each branch of aviation. Every branch of Russian Air Forces has up to 200 aircrafts” said Vladimir Mikhailov.

CINC has mentioned that process will go two ways: modernization of old planes and building new ones.

Answering question about new methods of aircraft-repair companies work Mikhailov said that board of directors of these companies include more and more Air Forces representatives.

“It allows to manage financial flows more effective and increase companies work effectiveness.” - said Mikhailov.

He also marked very high potential of new RAC MiG fighter MiG-35. According to his words in this plane were used some breakthrough technologies. Mikhailov is absolutely convinced that MiG-35 will be very wanted both by Russian Air Forces and foreign customers. MiG-35 will be presented on nearest airshow in India and will perform some demo flights there.

Besides he said that in Russia were activated works on the unmanned vehicles. “It’s classified topic, but believe me, work is going on” - said V.Mikhailov.

He also mentioned that Russian Air Forces are receiving new radar stations produced by “Almaz-Antei” company. According to his data these stations increase greatly potential of Air Force radio-technical troops.

Answering questions commander reported that during last year in Air Forces it were 7 aviation incidents: four crashes and three accidents. Commander said it will be performed all the necessary steps to increase aviation incidents amount.

He also said that average flight time of Air Force pilot in 2006 was about 40 hours. And rookie pilots had 85 flight hours. “If we will not take care about young pilots, we will lose our aviatoin” said Mikhailov.