05 December 2019, 14:56 / Politics

A Russian-made MiG-29 fighter jet crashed in Egypt

The contract for their supply continues to be fulfilled Ivan Safronov

Archive photo / Sergey Porter / Vedomosti

On Thursday, December 5, in Egypt, one of the MiG-29 fighters, supplied by Russia to the Egyptian Air Force under a commercial contract from 2016, crashed during a training flight, Vedomosti learned. According to preliminary information, the Egyptian pilot managed to eject, but so far there has been no specific information about his health, two managers of defense industry enterprises told Vedomosti. According to them, the cause of the incident could have been either technical problems in the fighter’s integrated control system or incorrect actions by the pilot.

A special commission of the Egyptian Air Force will determine the causes of the accident; the Russian side will soon send its specialists to Cairo to assist in the investigation, one of the interlocutors added. Representatives of Rosoboronexport (a special exporter of Russian weapons) and the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation refrained from commenting.

This is the second crash of a MiG-29 in service with the Egyptian Air Force: the first plane was lost on November 3, 2018, then the commission found that the cause of the crash of the fighter was problems in its control system.

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The Egyptian contract for the MiG-29M/M2 is one of the largest aviation contracts of the last five years: 46 aircraft cost the Egyptian Air Force approximately $2.5 billion. All of them will be equipped with the latest OLS-UE optical location stations, suspended sighting containers, as well as a small-sized station staging radio-electronic interference of SMEs . In addition, the Egyptian Air Force received Russian Kh-31 medium-range supersonic air-to-surface missiles (developed by the Tactical Missiles Corporation).

Vedomosti's source in the military-technical cooperation system believes that the incident with the MiG-29 is unlikely to affect the overall level of cooperation between Moscow and Cairo in the field of arms exports, and the parties themselves will find mutually acceptable conditions for resolving the situation. At the same time, the implementation of the contract will continue, he adds.