MiG-29 Fulcrum

The Soviet-era lightweight air-superiority fighter that ended up on both sides of the war — and the one Ukraine turned into the war's most improbable improvisation, bolting American AGM-88 HARM anti-radar missiles, JDAM-ER and Small Diameter Bombs, and French AASM Hammer munitions onto a 1970s Soviet airframe, often cued through a tablet taped into the cockpit. Agile and combat-proven but short-ranged and heavily attrited, the MiG-29 has become an emblem of how Ukraine wrings new capability out of old steel.

Overview

The MiG-29 (NATO: Fulcrum) is a twin-engine, fourth-generation lightweight fighter designed by Mikoyan as the Soviet Union's nimble, frontline counterpart to the heavier Su-27 — the high-low pairing that mirrored the US F-15/F-16 mix. Built for close-in air combat with a powerful infrared search-and-track, a helmet-mounted sight and the highly agile R-73 dogfight missile, it was for years one of the most feared dogfighters in the world. In the Russo-Ukrainian war it is flown by both air forces, but its defining chapter belongs to Ukraine, which integrated a string of Western precision weapons onto the type to keep it relevant against a numerically and technologically superior Russian air force. It is, alongside the Su-27, the backbone of the Ukrainian fighter fleet even after the arrival of the F-16.

Development

The MiG-29 first flew on 6 October 1977, entered service in August 1983, and was manufactured from 1981 to 2019, with more than 1,600 built, per Wikipedia. It was the product of the Soviet PFI lightweight-fighter program, conceived as the agile low end opposite the Su-27's long-range high end. The design spread widely — to Warsaw Pact states, India, Algeria, the Middle East and beyond — and spawned a long line of variants from the original Izdeliye 9.12 through the navalized MiG-29K and the modernized MiG-29M/MiG-35. After 1991, newly independent Ukraine inherited a substantial Fulcrum fleet, which it has since overhauled, upgraded (the indigenous MiG-29MU1/MU2 standards) and, after 2022, adapted to fire Western weapons.

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