Russia to sell Strategic Bombers to China

Russia Hopes To Sell Bombers to China: Air Force Chief
By LYUBOV PRONINA, MOSCOW

Russia plans to show off a new T-160 strategic bomber and an upgraded one during its first joint military exercise with China later this year, hoping to get Beijing interested in buying the planes.

“China buys our Su-30 and Su-27 jets. But we will use more efficient planes in the exercise, like the Su-24M or the Su-27SM, and of course the Tu-22M3 that China does not have … and the Tu-95,” Gen. Vladimir Mikhailov, commander of the Russian Air Force, told reporters at a briefing Jan.13. “We will use them and show them to our neighbor … If they have the money, let them buy.”

Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov last month announced the upcoming maneuvers with China, but the exact dates have not yet been set.

In the past decade, China has been Russia’s prime arms client, heavily buying Sukhoi fighter jets, and would welcome the chance to purchase Soviet-designed strategic bombers that would considerably bolster Chinese nuclear capability, said Konstantin Makienko, deputy head of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, a defense think tank here.

Russia’s own Air Force is waiting to receive two new Tu-160 bombers later this year.

The Air Force will continue gradual modernization of its Flanker fighter fleet, Mikhailov said during the briefing, and the 30 percent increase in federal budget allocations for the Air Force this year will allow it to equip one regiment with more advanced Su-27SM jets with new avionics.

The regiment deployed at Dzemgi airfield near Komsomolsk-on-Amur, where Sukhoi has its production facility, will receive 17 Su-27SMs in addition to seven such jets it already received last month. Test pilots have been flying the first five Su-27SMs that were delivered to the Air Force base in Lipetsk in 2003 to prepare manuals for pilots in other units, Mikhailov said.

After focusing for the past few years on upgrading the Sukhoi family of fighters, the Air Force this year will begin modernizing its MiG-29s, Mikhailov said.

Starting Jan.17, a group of specialists from Russian Aircraft Corp. MiG will go to the base where reserve MiG-29s are stocked, examine them and take them to be modernized.

“Then they will return some of them to me and sell the rest,” Mikhailov said. “The regiments that are armed with MiG-29s will be modernized by all means, too.”

Mikhailov said that Aviation Holding Co. Sukhoi, which two years ago won the Air Force tender for work on the fifth-generation fighter, continues in that task.

“We are working and have recently created an electronic version of the plane of the future,” he said. “It was a success. It will have improved aerodynamics, and all arms will be inside the plane.”

Mikhailov said that the plane will be test-flown in 2007 but lamented that the government is not financing the program sufficiently.

However, the Air Force commander said he recently met with the new director of MiG, Alexei Fyodorov, to discuss a new-generation plane.

“It’s going to be a light fighter plane,” Mikhailov said. “I mean, everybody can’t fly heavy jets. Someone will have to use lighter versions.”

“It is revolutionary that the Air Force is going to modernize light fighters,” said Makienko, adding that Mikhailov’s announcement that MiG will work on a new lighter plane may lead to a revision of the fifth-generation fighter program won by Sukhoi.

Despite the significant increase in spending this year, Mikhailov lamented that he still lacks funds to support all the programs the Air Force needs. He said that continuous fuel shortages do not allow pilots and flight school graduates to spend enough time flying. This year, Mikhailov said, he hopes pilots will average 60 hours of flight time.