The existing, new and planned fighters of the MiG company are not needed by either Russia or its foreign partners, The Drive said.
The American edition drew attention to the December message of the general director of “Rostec” Sergei Chemezov about the elaboration of the concept of a promising single-engine combat aircraft in the state corporation. “Despite decades of work on a light fighter concept, the prospect of orders seems as distant as ever,” notes The Drive.
The publication says that Russia decommissioned the single-engine MiG and Su fighters back in the 1990s.Since then, Su planes began to gradually displace MiG machines inside Russia. The Drive also notes that the development of a light or medium fighter by Russia together with current foreign users of MiGs is unlikely to be interesting or will be within the power of the latter.
“The Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) do not seem to need single-engine aircraft. Even the twin-engine MiG-35 is struggling to find its niche in Russia, since the Soviet-era MiG-29s are being replaced by aircraft of the Su-27 family, ”the publication says.
In December, Chemezov said that Rostec “is working on the creation of a combat aviation system of the future in the light and medium class”, which “can be a universal platform in manned and unmanned versions.”
In February, the author of the American magazine The National Interest, Sebastian Roblin, said that the MiG-29 was the first Soviet light fighter of the fourth generation, and its numerous failures in various conflicts have formed a “terrible reputation” for the aircraft.
In February 2019, the director of the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation (FSMTC) Dmitry Shugaev said that India had asked Russia to provide “higher reliability” of the fourth generation MiG-29K and MiG-29KUB fighters.
