combat aircraft

T

HE RUSSIAN NAVY’S 859th

Center of Combat Training at

Yeysk held Exercise ‘Marine

Ace 2018’ from June 16-23

in the form of a series of

competitions between the air

assets of the Black Sea, Baltic, Northern,

and Paci c Fleets.

It was a unique event — this year, for the

 rst time, it included the mighty long-

range, anti-submarine Tu-142MK ‘Bear-Fs’.

Early in the morning of June 20, two of

these aircraft departed Yeysk, performing

11-hour  ights around the Barents Sea

region to search for a nuclear submarine

before bombing targets on the ranges of

the Northern Fleet.

The main part of the exercise got

under way with the various participants

having to negotiate ground-based

air defenses that had been set up at

Yeysk. They included Su-24M ‘Fencer-Ds’

of the 47th Independent Composite

Aviation Regiment (OSAP) of the Black

Sea Fleet and from the Baltic Fleet in

Chernyakhovsk, plus MiG-29K crews from

the Northern Fleet. A Ka-29ТB ‘Helix-B’ —

an armed variant designed for close air

The Russian Navy held a large-scale exercise in June,

testing the various elements of its air power capabilities in

a competitive scenario.

REPORT AND PHOTOS Dmitriy Pichugin

A Tu-142MK

gets airborne

from Yeysk for

a long-range

strike mission

during ‘Marine

Ace 2018’.

http://www.combataircraft.net // September 2018 79

78-81 Russian Navy Report C.indd 79 19/07/2018 12:18