"MIGs" and "Sushki" from under the counter for "Aggressor"
The American military-analytical review The National Interests reports on the Pentagon’s acquisition of combat aircraft in the former Soviet republics and Eastern Bloc countries that are in service with the Russian Aerospace Forces. The purchase is carried out by private companies Pride Aircraft, Draken International, Tactical Air Support, Air USA. Preference is given to the MiG-21 (in fact, long removed from service), MiG-29 and Su-27. Ukraine is the leader among suppliers of military equipment.
Aircraft purchased on the “gray market” are transported to the United States, bought up by companies close to the Pentagon, undergo technical testing, and then are used as mock enemy aircraft during combat exercises.
Moreover, the Pentagon turns a blind eye to the expensive maintenance of old Soviet aircraft, since American companies are forced to buy spare parts for them on markets of various shades of gray and through the hands of numerous intermediaries.
NI experts come to the conclusion that the United States was so impressed and at the same time concerned by the combat successes of the Russian Aerospace Forces in Syria that the Americans want to evaluate the capabilities of Russian fighter aircraft first-hand and are preparing for upcoming air battles with our pilots.
This is indeed an alarming bell, forcing one to think about the increased chances of a military confrontation between Russia and the United States during the current worsening of relations, which humanity has become unaccustomed to since the end of the famous “Carribean crisis.”
On the other hand, there is nothing new under the sun, and if you rewind time exactly 50 years ago, you can see that the United States has already resorted to similar tricks.
In 1968, the first air battles between the US Air Force and the North Vietnamese Air Force began to take place in the skies over Vietnam. And, contrary to American propaganda, the score in these battles was not at all in favor of the USAF hawks. For every Vietnamese MiG-17 or MiG-21 shot down, there were four Skyhawks or Phantoms piloted by the Radiant Jedi.
The command of the American Naval Air Force was the first to realize it. In 1969, a training center for training carrier-based aviation pilots for the air war over Vietnam was established at the Miramar military base in order to reverse the situation with losses. Since the teachers of the Vietnamese pilots were Soviet air aces, there was no point in wasting time on trifles - American pilots studied the tactics of the Soviet Air Force in practice, and for added credibility, they began to draw red stars on the planes of the imaginary enemy.
It should be noted here that in peacetime, during military exercises, it is not customary to clearly and unambiguously identify the enemy. Usually the symbols “blue”, “green”, “purple” are used, and some conventional fascist is drawn on the shooting targets. But the Americans were so stung by air losses over Vietnam that they openly identified the enemy.
The experience of deck crews from the Miramar base was a success, and in 1970, American aviation losses over North Vietnam were noticeably reduced. As a result, the methodology was generalized and extended to the entire US Air Force. In 1972, the 64th Combat Squadron of Aggressor Fighter Aviation was formed at Nellis Air Force Base, equipped with aircraft that looked like Soviet aircraft.
Usually these were F-5 Tiger training fighters, but then the Americans began to lease the Israeli Kfir (the French Mirage III, which had been stolen from the drawings by Israeli intelligence and the French Mirage III was “creatively rethought” by the Israeli military industry), to which the Americans assigned their own designation F-21A, hinting at imitation of MiG-21. And to avoid any discrepancies, the exercise program was called Red Flag. And, I must say, the name of the exercises did not change even after the collapse of the USSR.
It is important to note that the Aggressor squadron did not enlist whipping boys, but the best pilots of the US Air Force, paying tribute to the skill and training of Soviet military fighter pilots.
However, there are significant differences between then and now. If earlier the Americans could not get modern Soviet fighters at their disposal, and were forced to pass off their own or their closest allies’ aircraft for them, then in post-Soviet times everything changed. And the former Soviet republics, Ukraine and Moldova, first of all, began to provide services to the United States by selling their combat aircraft from Soviet reserves.
There is evidence that the Americans received the first MiG-29s for their “aggressors” from Moldova in 1999. Then Ukraine, which had significant reserves of Soviet MiG-29 and Su-27, joined the process.
The signal that Nenka was included in the sale of military aircraft at anti-crisis prices was the recent news of the crash of a Su-27 fighter piloted by US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Eric Schultz near Nellis Air Base. Despite all the efforts of the Pentagon to classify the crash and hide the ends in the water, the information was leaked to the media.
The very fact of the Su-27 crash did not particularly surprise anyone. It is no secret that over the past quarter of a century, Ukraine has not been engaged in its Armed Forces and the modernization of the remaining military equipment of the three Soviet military districts. What the Ukrainian Air Force was became known during the Crimean Spring, when, through the joint efforts of “polite” and Crimean militias, the Ukrainian military was first isolated in places of deployment, and then sent outside the peninsula.
As soon as the “polite” gained full control over the Belbek airfield, where the Ukrainian tactical aviation brigade was based, a heartbreaking sight met their eyes. Of the entire fleet of aircraft, only a few MiG-29 units were in good condition, but even they were suitable only for a museum - the equipment and avionics of the fighters were technologically left in December 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed.
Thus, by buying Ukrainian flying junk at a cheap price and putting their pilots in it, the Americans were obviously taking a significant risk. At first, the “multi-vector” Kuchma and Yanukovych did not care about modernizing aircraft, using the restored military-technical ties with Russia, and after March 2014, Ukraine itself severed these ties, remaining cut off from advanced technologies in many industries.
How the emergency modernization of military junk took place in Ukrainian is well known: to maintain the combat effectiveness of more or less suitable equipment, “technical cannibalism” was used, and if there was nowhere to get parts and spare parts, materiel acquired at a flea market or somehow was used In terms of performance characteristics, civilian analogues are almost equal to those of Aliexpress.
The explosions of Molot mortars and the accidents of Soviet rocket engines for American missiles, completed in Yuzhny, showed how degraded Ukrainian craftsmen bring to fruition complex and not so complex equipment. Needless to say, the tests of the “unique” Alder missiles, announced with great fanfare by Turchinov, were met with shudder, since they posed a danger not only to those around them, but also to the testers themselves.
Some military experts suggested that the Su-27 that crashed near the Nellis air base was “modified” by the mangy hands of Turchinov’s “craftsmen” using home-made materiel.
Apparently, the Americans themselves did not have much hope for the outdated aircraft provided to them by the Ukrainian “ally,” since the Aggressor squadron was replenished with the latest modification of the F-16C Block 25F, which should imitate modern Russian Su-35s down to the tactical coloring.
In general, the Pentagon’s practice of buying up aviation assets was criticized even by American experts, who noted that over the past 30 years, Russian military aviation has made a huge leap forward. You can paint old Soviet planes and newer American aircraft resold by Ukrainian hustlers as much as you like as Russian 4++ and fifth generation fighters, but this does not mean that the “aggressors” will be able to fully master the modern air combat tactics of Russian pilots.
Throughout the 1990s, the Americans so diligently hammered into the public consciousness that Russia was forever lagging behind in the field of high technology that the confrontation with the facts that its Armed Forces had modern aviation, high-precision weapons and unique electronic warfare equipment became a real shock for them. And we can certainly say that the old Soviet weapons obtained by hook or by crook will not be able to become an anti-shock drug for the Pentagon.
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