Monthly Defense News Recap – April 2023 Plus

Ukraine Starts Acquiring Much-Needed Fighter Aircraft

On 17 April, Slovakia’s defence ministry announced that it transferred all 13 of its MiG-29 fighter aircraft to the Ukrainian Air Force. Slovakia delivered the first four aircraft in March, shortly after announcing that it was responding to Kyiv’s repeated requests for fighters over the past year.

Poland, which kicked off the process of transferring legacy aircraft to Ukraine, also announced that it has sent the first tranche of its aircraft. Like Slovakia, Poland also pledged all of its MiG-29s to Ukraine. Warsaw reportedly has many as 28 MiG-29s in service with its air force by the time of the commitment.

On one level, the legacy MiG-29s are a much-needed addition for Ukraine. On the surface, the aircraft can add to Kyiv’s fleet, which was under severe strain due to intense, ongoing combat operations over the past year. However, there are several caveats that dampen Kyiv’s enthusiasm for these aircraft.

First, it is unclear how many of these MiG-29s are serviceable enough to meet Ukraine’s requirements. In fact, like Ukraine’s own MiG-29s, these ex-Slovak and ex-Polish aircraft were built during the Cold War. This means that these units are over 30-40 years of age and, as importantly, operate from a limited supply base in terms of spare parts and other lines of maintenance and logistics support.

Second, being legacy aircraft, these MiG-29s do not offer the technological leap that Kyiv is seeking for its goal of driving successful counter-offensives against Russia. Kyiv repeatedly called for contemporary multi-role fighters with beyond-visual-range air-to-air and precision-strike capabilities.