for the new ‘Fulcrum’. It’s likely that a
batch of between 24 and 37 jets will be
purchased as a move to assist export
e orts — home nation endorsement is
rarely a bad thing.
Clues can be found in a November
2017 interview with the former VKS
commander-in-chief Viktor Bondarev,
who said that the nal stages of pilot
training might use MiG-29s and MiG-35s.
This suggests that the ‘Fulcrum-F’ will
never reach front-line VKS units. More
likely, it will repeat the fate of ‘classic’
MiG-29s and be assigned to training
units, and perhaps also the Strizhi
(Swifts) aerobatic team at Kubinka.Status
Two pre-production aircraft in ‘Russian
standard’ for VKS evaluation comprise
single-seat MiG-35S ‘702’ and two-seatMiG-29UB ‘712’. Both these aircraft
started ight tests over a year ago
— ‘702’ ew on November 24, 2016,
followed by ‘712’ a week later.
The only active contract for new
‘Fulcrums’ is the order for 46 MiG-29M
and M2 ghters placed by Egypt in
April 2015. The rst aircraft in Egyptian
con guration, two-seat MiG-29M2
‘811’ and single seat MiG-29M ‘801’,
commenced evaluation in spring 2017
and deliveries of production aircraft to
Egypt began last fall. The earlier contract
with Syria for a batch of 12 MiG-29M/M2s
— signed as early as November 2006
— is in fact frozen. Only two prototype
examples have been built in Syrian
con guration: single-seater ‘741’, which
has been ying since February 3, 2012,
and two-seater ‘747’, which actually took
to the air on December 24, 2011.http://www.combataircraft.net // March 2018 79
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