RuAF MiG-29SMT upgrade "frozen"

Upgrade of MiG-29 Fighters Frozen due to Lack of Funds

The program for upgrade of MiG-29s which are in the Russian air force inventory, has ended up in fact to be frozen because of insufficient financing, the general director and general designer of the MiG airplane building corporation, Valeriy Toryanin, reported today at the Dvigateli-2004 exhibition.

“Work on the upgrade of the MiG-29 airplane into the MiG-29SMT variant for Russia’s defense ministry has been underway for a long time, but practically only in words. Financing of this program is insufficient,” he declared. Toryanin noted that it is not deemed possible to perform the upgrade using the corporation’s own funds. “One of the main components of the upgrade is the installation onto the airplane of a new radar, the cost of which is approximately one million dollars. My are in no condition to finance such working using our own funds,” Toryanin said, Gazeta reports with a link to Interfax.

Source: 15.04.04, Izvestiya.RU

$1,000,000 for the radar? Do they mean the N019M1 radar upgrade? I didn’t think upgrading it’s capabilities would be so expensive.

I have no idea as to the relative costs of radars. How much does Zhuk-M cost?

Anyway, looks like Su-27SM & Mi-24PN have first dibs on available funds.