Are you sure about Russian MiG-35?

     The 6th International “ASIAN AEROSPACE – Singapore Airshow 2018” Airspace Industry Exhibition starts on the 6th of February under slogan of “The Sky is our Theater, The Sky is our Home”. This year apart from the main expositions of aerospace and defense industry, there are two new exposition halls: Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) and land forces exposition hall. And, of course, there should be no exhibition without MiG aircrafts, especially if it is MiG-35.

     MiG-35 is the Russian multifunctional fighter of 4++ generation which is designed for ensuring of air domination and for effective hitting of ground-based and water-surface targets using high-precision weapons from outside of enemy’s air defense engagement range.

     Development engineers confirm that multifunctional performance of this aircrafts was achieved by means of deep upgrade of MiG-29M/M2 (Item 9-15) and MiG-29K/KUB (Item 9-31) aircrafts. However India already has a painful experience in operation of such aerial systems but let us now proceed! 

     Demo flight of MiG-35 aircraft in front of the president of Russian Federation took place in January 2017 at Lukhovitsy, Moscow region. This event was accompanied by announcement about accomplishing of factory flight test for two available aircrafts with further planning of serial production in quantity of up to twenty aerial vehicles per year. However till now there is no any information about factory flight test results, and it is not a wonder because at the best case these tests would be accomplished in March or April of current year. But it is already announced about approaching to state governmental testing in early 2018 with its accomplishment before 2019. This process is slowed down by international sanctions and insufficient import substitution, and Russians are not able to proceed further of announced terms, not to speak of reduction of such time limits. In addition Russia announces the fact of exhibiting two MiG-35 aircrafts at Singapore Airshow 2018.

     But how is it possible to exhibit aerial vehicles that didn’t pass factory and governmental tests?

     It’s more than likely that at a static parking area as training hardware model there will be exhibited a deeply modernized MiG-29M “with pluses” which is used by Egyptian Air Forces and which is similar in appearance with MiG-35. Half-meter difference in wings length and availability/absence of refueling system will not strike  eyes in case of correct placing of aerial vehicle. The question is: which aircraft will take part in demo flights? Don’t you think that Russians will ignore the safety of flights and visitors at international air show and will execute a flight using the aircraft that didn’t pass factory and governmental tests? It looks like MiG-35 aircraft is not that aerial vehicle that it is supposed to be.

     Despite the fact that basic MiG-29 is well constructively mastered and taken as a basis for MiG-35 aircraft, we have to mention a strong indication of Russians who promote in fact unaccomplished MiG-35 project into world markets. Potential market of MiG-35 export version aircrafts comprises of around 30 countries that are able to use infrastructure for MiG-29 aircrafts operation/maintenance. However there is a reasoned question: what kind of prospective could MiG-35 potential customers have from cooperation with Russian manufacturers which are imposed by international sanctions? Now it is easy to see the desire of Russians to occupy a vacant niche of highly technological goods – at one point, and at the second – its attempt (by right or wrong) to save Russian Aircraft Corporation “MiG”, and in this case it’s the only opportunity which could help.