Iran on Tuesday revealed an underground air force base, called "Eagle 44" and the first of its kind large enough to house fighter jets, the official IRNA news agency said.
The "Eagle 44" base is capable of storing and operating fighter jets and drones, IRNA said. The report did not elaborate on the location of the base.
IRNA said it was one of the country's most important air force bases, built deep underground, housing fighters equipped with long-range cruise missiles.

In May, Iran's army gave details about another underground base, which houses drones, as the country seeks to protect military assets from potential air strikes by regional arch foe Israel.
"Any attack on Iran from our enemies, including Israel, will see a response from our many air force bases including Eagle 44," Iran's armed forces' Chief of Staff Mohammad Bagheri told state TV.

A F-4E AUP Phantom II of the Hellenic Air Force crashed  at 10:30 am local time on January 30, 2023, 25 nautical miles south of Andravida Air Base. The crash happened while the aircraft was performing a low altitude training flight over the Ionian Sea at 300 ft with another F-4E, who first raised the alarm and started loitering over the area as rescue forces were alerted.
Two AB-205 helicopters of the Hellenic Air Force and a S-70 helicopter of the Hellenic Navy were immediately launched for the Search And Rescue effort, while a C-130 was put on alert and ready to takeoff. The Hellenic Coast Guard rushed to the area with its naval vessels. The crash site was identified, with debris found floating by the assets on scene.

At the time of writing, the Weapon Systems Officer, First Lieutenant Marios Michail Touroutsikas, 29, was found dead on scene, while the search is still ongoing for the pilot, Captain Efstathios Tsitlakides, 31. Local media are reporting that the two officers were not able to eject, but this has not been confirmed.
The Phantom II was assigned to the 338th Squadron (Mira) “Ares” of the 117th Fighter Wing at Andravida air base. The aircraft has been identified as the F-4E Phantom II with serial number 01507 and construction number 4465 that was first delivered in May 1974. The aircraft went on to become the first to be upgraded during the Peace Icarus 2000 modernization program and delivered back to the HAF in December 2002.

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The Air Force on Friday unveiled its newest stealth bomber aircraft, the B-21 Raider, in Palmdale, California. Built by Northrop Grumman, the bomber was named in honor of the “courageous spirit” of airmen who carried out the surprise World War II Doolittle Raid.

The sixth-generation aircraft is expected to help the Air Force “penetrate the toughest defenses for precision strikes anywhere in the world,” Northrop Grumman’s press release said. Six bombers are currently in “various stages of final assembly” in California, according to the release.

The event on Friday was even more significant given that it marked the first time in more than 30 years a new US bomber has been publicly unveiled since the B-2 Spirit was presented in 1988. While the US originally planned to have a fleet of 132 B-2s, just 21 were ultimately purchased.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin touted the newest US stealth bomber in a speech Saturday at the Reagan National Defense Forum at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. He called the Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider a “major advance for American deterrence” and said it would be the backbone of the US bomber fleet in the future.

 The unveiling of the B-21 in Palmdale, said Saturday that the years ahead would be a “decisive decade” as the US faces competition from China and the threat of Russia. The release of the new bomber comes amid heightened tensions between the US and both China and Russia. Just days ago, the Pentagon released its annual report on China, which said the country has doubled its number of nuclear warheads in a fraction of the time the US expected it to.

By 2035, the report said, China could have roughly 1,500 nuclear warheads – an “accelerated expansion” of its stockpile, a senior defense official told CNN.

The next years, Austin said Saturday, “will determine whether our children and grandchildren inherit an open world of rules and rights – or face emboldened autocrats who seek to dominate by force and fear.”

The B-21 was designed with that competition in mind. Northrop Grumman’s rundown of the new bomber’s abilities said that while adversaries “continue to invest in and develop advanced weapons,” the B-21 will allow the US to penetrate enemy air defense and hit targets “anywhere in the world.”

“America’s defense will always be rooted in deterring conflict. So, we are again making it plain to any potential foe: the risk and the cost of aggression far outweigh any conceivable gains,” Austin said at the Friday unveiling. “This is deterrence the American way.”

While Friday marked the “first time the world’s first sixth-generation aircraft (was) seen by the public,” Northrop Grumman said, airmen and aircraft enthusiasts alike will have to wait until next year to actually see one in the air.

The first B-21 flight is expected to happen in 2023, Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said, though she emphasized that the timing of the first flight “will be data and event, not date, driven.”

The Air Force previously said that the new nuclear-capable stealth bomber, which has the ability to carry both nuclear and conventional weapons and which will fall under the Air Force’s Global Strike Command, will be “the backbone of the future Air Force bomber force,” designed in a way that is ripe for future modernization efforts.

The service named Ellsworth Air Force Base, South Dakota, as the home of the B-21 and home to the aircraft’s training program. Each aircraft was anticipated to cost $550 million when the price was set in 2010; after adjusting for inflation this year, Stefanek said, the cost of each aircraft, including training materials, support equipment and other components of the bomber, is $692 million. The Air Force plans to purchase at least 100 of the stealth bombers.

“Even the most sophisticated air defense systems will struggle to detect the B-21 in the sky,” Austin said at the unveiling.

The B-21 has been built with long-term sustainability and maintainability in mind, Northrop Grumman said in the release. It has also been designed to be rapidly upgraded when future threats demand it – a process that can often be slowed down by bureaucratic red tape and delayed timelines when it comes to older military aircraft and vehicles.

The bomber won’t undergo “block upgrades,” according to Northrop Grumman, which is a method of periodically upgrading parts of a system. Instead, the company said new “technology, capabilities and weapons will be seamlessly incorporated” through software upgrades.

“This will ensure the B-21 Raider can continuously meet the evolving threat head on for decades to come,” the company said.

Honoring the past
The name “Raider” was submitted by airmen with the 337th Test and Evaluation Squadron out of Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, and beat out more than 2,000 other suggestions. It refers to the April 1942 Doolittle Raid, during which 80 airmen flew a retaliatory mission to bomb Japan just months after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Led by then-Lt. Col. James “Jimmy” Doolittle, the airmen flew roughly 650 miles to Japan, bombing military installations, storage facilities and factories, according to the Air Force. But because of limited fuel, they knew it was unlikely they’d make it back to safety as planned.

Instead, the pilots and crew “ditched at sea, bailed out, or crash-landed in China,” according to the National Museum of the US Air Force, many reaching safety with the help of Chinese citizens. According to the museum, as many as a quarter of a million Chinese citizens were later executed by the Japanese as punishment for assisting the Americans.

Former Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James announced the new bomber’s name in 2016 alongside one of the airmen who flew on that World War II mission, retired Lt. Col. Richard Cole, who died in 2019.

“We wanted [to] ensure the aircraft had a strong name airmen could take pride in, especially those who will have the opportunity to fly and maintain the B-21,” Lt. Col. Jaime Hernandez, commander of the 337th, said in 2016. “We also wanted to take an element of our history into account, and the story of the Doolittle Raiders embodies just that.”

A short promotional video, made jointly by the United States Air Force and Space Force, shows a model of what appears to be the SR-72 spy plane, also known as the Son of Blackbird.
The aircraft appears at the very end of the video, with only an outline and a few details visible. The object is most likely a computer-generated image or a mockup, but it provides confirmation that the US military is working on the mysterious plane.
The rumors that Lockheed Martin is planning a successor to the SR-71, a famous cold war-era reconnaissance plane, date back to the late 2000s. 
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Very little is known about the project. According to Lockheed Martin, it is intended to be unmanned and fly at speeds exceeding Mach 6, or six times the speed of sound. To reach such speeds, the aircraft should use a turbine-based combined cycle (TBCC) engine, which blends a turbine engine for below-Mach 3 flight and a ramjet for higher speeds.
It was also said to be capable of carrying hypersonic missiles, shifting the focus from a pure reconnaissance platform. According to the manufacturer, the prime purpose of such a plane would be penetrating contested airspaces and striking highly valuable targets. 
However, the video, published on November 18, 2021, by the USAF Profession of Arms Center of Excellence (PACE) Youtube channel, focuses on intelligence gathering capabilities of the service, touting its ability to “[conduct] recon faster than the speed of war”. This might show that the military still considers the SR-72 as a spy plane, or at least as a platform capable of performing as one.


Numerous other mysterious projects can be glimpsed in the video. Those include, most prominently, the Northrop Grumman RQ-180 high-altitude flying-wing reconnaissance drone, referred to as the White Bat. Never officially confirmed, the drone has been accidently spotted in various locations all over the world, and is speculated to be a successor to the similarly mysterious RQ-170 Sentinel. 
The video also shows an outline of the Boeing X-37 space plane, seen on the screen of a sort of command center. A ballistic launch trajectory is shown on another screen, alluding to the idea that a mission of the vehicle is being monitored. The official purpose of the X-37 is to test various new technologies in orbit, although the nature of those technologies was never revealed.

Such is the case with the mysterious SR-91 Aurora spy plane.
This airplane may have been nothing more than an artist rendering of a concept, even though one witness said he saw it in action. Let’s take a deeper dive into whether the Aurora actually existed.
Why the SR-91 Aurora?


In the 1980s, the Air Force was looking for something that could replace the SR-71 Blackbird. The Blackbird was considered expensive to maintain as SR-71 flight operations cost a reported $200 to $300 million a year.
The SR-91 Program Was Ultra-Secretive If It Existed

The word “Aurora” came into public consciousness when the moniker appeared in a “black program” spy plane budget request in 1985. Could this expenditure refer to the SR-91 Aurora? This would have been a record-setting airplane – flying at over MACH 5 and streaking by at 90,000 feet. But what if Aurora was instead a different codename for the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber? The B-2 was flying in the late 1980s and was introduced in 1997. The name Aurora thus became an enigma.
SR-91: Better Described as a Hypothesis
DefenceAviation.com referred to it as a “hypothesis.” The website cited a British source with the following statement. “A British Ministry of Defence report released in May 2006 refers to U.S. Air Force priority plans to produce a Mach 4-6 highly supersonic vehicle, but no conclusive evidence had emerged to confirm the existence of such a project.”
Only One Alleged Sighting
Was there ever an SR-91 prototype produced?
One eye-witness claimed to have seen a triangular-shaped airplane that could have been a new reconnaissance plane flying in the late 1980s. This sighting happened over the North Sea in 1989. An engineer named Chris Gibson claimed to have seen it. But again, this could have been the B-2 or even an F-117 Nighthawk. The US Air Force was flying the F-117 at the time. But if that was really an Aurora, it would have been difficult to spot since its believed speed was MACH 5.


Did It Produce Those “Sky Quakes?”
Another enigmatic example attributed to the Aurora flight was the so-called “sky quakes” that happened over Los Angeles in the early 1990s. It was hypothesized that an Aurora could have caused these loud booms when it flew out of Groom Lake, Nevada (also known as Area 51). That’s pretty thin evidence that it was actually the Aurora causing sky quakes.
SR-91 Concept That Didn’t Live
If the Aurora was a concept, it probably got canceled.
What deemed the SR-91 redundant was the advancement of spy satellites and reconnaissance drones that made a hypersonic spy plane unnecessary at the time. Even though the SR-72 Son of Blackbird spy plane program is advancing now.

There is just not enough evidence to determine the existence of the SR-91 Aurora. It makes sense to call it a hypothesis because it is only plausible that Lockheed Martin Skunk Works was working on a new spy plane. The technology may have been there to produce a MACH 5 aircraft but that doesn’t mean it survived beyond the drawing board.
Skunk Works Director Denies SR-91 In Memoir
Speaking of Skunk Works, the National Interest cited a book by Ben Rich, who is a former director of Skunk Works and he poured cold water onto the Aurora hypothesis.
“Somehow the name (Aurora) leaked out during congressional appropriations hearings, the media picked up the Aurora item in the budget, and the rumor surfaced that it was a top-secret project assigned to the Skunk Works—to build America’s first hypersonic plane. That story persists to this day, even though Aurora was the codename for the B-2 competition funding,” he wrote.

As already reported, an F-117 Nighthawk stealth jet deployed to Savannah Air National Guard Base, Georgia, to take part in Sentry Savannah, the Air National Guard's premiere exercise held annually at the Air Dominance Center.
Running from May 2 to 15, Sentry Savannah is the ANG's largest fourth- and fifth-generation counter-air, large-force exercise that allows fighter units from across the country to train on integrated tactics such as ground training, offensive/defensive counter-air missions, cruise-missile defense and weapon-drop training on the range.
Although several interesting assets have deployed to Savannah for the drills, the most intriguing platform that quite surprisingly made its way to Georgia for Sentry Savannah is one F-117 Nighthawk from Tonopah Test Range.
The stealth jet, believed to be part of a unit known as the "Dark Knights," has deployed to Georgia (and, to our knowledge, this is the first time the stealth jet deploys to the East Coast since it was officially retired in 2008…) to take part in the first week of the exercise.

The aircraft, registration 84-0828, sported the "TR" tail code observed on the F-117s operating from Tonopah Test Range since 2020 along with a 40 years of operations logo on both tails that celebrates the 40th anniversary since the maiden flight that took place on June 18, 1981 at Groom Lake, Nevada.
The emblem says: "40 years of owning the night."
During its deployment to Georgia, the iconic stealth jet it flew two daily sorties. Here's what we wrote about the flying activity of the "retired" F-117s in our previous story on Sentry Savannah:
As explained in various articles, while some of the F-117s that were retired in 2008 and initially kept in a "Type 1000" storage at Tonopah Test Range have now been disassembled and transferred to museums around the US, F-117s have continued to fly. We have reported sightings in 2018, in 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022. After all, the F-117s are not completely retired, quite the contrary.
As of January 2021, the US Air Force had 48 F-117s remaining in its inventory. The service is disposing approximately four aircraft each year, meaning that +40 should still be available. The jets fly the adversary stealth role allowing U.S. squadrons to perform DACT (Dissimilar Air Combat Training) against a LO (Low Observable) aggressor and are also believed to simulate radar-evading cruise missiles during various exercises The Nighthawks are most probably also involved in the development and testing of stealth or counter-stealth technologies and tactics, as some photographs showing at least one airframe sporting a mirror-like coating similar to the one applied to two F-22s (one that has appeared quite recently) and to an F-35, seem prove.
Few weeks ago, the iconic stealth jets have have teamed up with the U.S. Marine Corps' F-35 Lightning IIs involved in the Lightning Carrier demo integrating with the F-35B Lightning II aircraft attached to Marine Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 122 operating from the flight deck of amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli (LHA 7). Previously, the Nighthawks had conducted DACT with the F-35Bs of the Marine fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 225 "Vikings" of Marine Aircraft Group (MAG) 13, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, US Marine Corps, deployed to MCAS Miramar from MCAS Yuma.
Anyway, our friend Misael Ocasio Hernandez has produced a stunning +9-minute video of the F-117 operations during Sentry Savannah.

A Ukrainian MiG-29 pilot who goes by the call sign ‘Juice’ has been giving interviews to media outlets about how Ukrainian aircraft and air defense systems have managed to keep the Russians in abeyance for over a month now. The Ukrainian Air Force has managed to do this with MiG-29 and Su-27 fighters.
While the MiGs are used for air-to-ground and air defense missions, the Su-27s are primarily kept for air-to-air missions. The Su-27 is a more powerful air defense asset, however, the early loss of aircraft units has shrunk the size of the fleet, which was always smaller than the MiG-29 fleet.
A typical air defense mission of a MIG-29 involves patrolling an area in search of an aerial threat, ‘free hunting’ or sometimes just pushing the enemy aircraft outside the area.
“If they have us on their screen, especially if we have a few guys patrolling the area, they don’t want to get into trouble. So, we push them from this area,” Juice explained in his interview.
Besides Russian manned aircraft, the MiGs are also tasked with neutralizing drones and cruise missiles which are hard to detect. However, Juice thinks ground-based air defenses (GBADs) are more effective against them.
“I think ground air defenses are much more capable against them. They have a lot of kills of cruise missiles every day. Drones are also a great problem for us, but I think it’s a much bigger problem for them, our Bayraktars are much more capable than their UAVs,” says Juice.

Multi-Layered Air Defense Network Manned fighters like MiGs work closely with GBAD units to form a multi-layered air defense network which involves sectors separated into different engagement zones for the fighters and GBADs to prevent friendly fire and also the manned fighters can try and push Russian aircraft into GBADs kill zones where “the more stupid ones” can then be picked off, Juice explained.
This is the first time in decades the world is witnessing a large-scale conventional war which also includes the aerial domain and many young pilots like Juice have no combat experience.


Older pilots who had taken part in combat during the height of the battle in 2014 in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions ahead of the signing of the Minsk agreements have since shared their knowledge with new graduates joining the air force.
The training since 2014 has stressed flexible tactics and keeping aircraft on the move from one airfield to another and flying difficult flight paths to reduce the chance of the enemy catching them on the ground as part of their air interdiction efforts.


“They had pretty interesting experiences. Of course, we use that during our training: low-altitude flights, using alternative airfields, etc,” said Juice, of the old combat veterans.
How ‘Clear Sky’ Drills Helped UkraineAlso, the Ukrainian pilots had some experience with large-scale high-intensity conflict scenarios from lessons learned from the US Air Force, particularly during the ‘Clear Sky’ series of drills in 2018 which was the first-ever joint multinational exercise hosted by Ukraine.
During Clear Sky, the MiG-29s and Su-27s sparred with the F-15Cs of the California Air National Guard’s 144th Fighter Wing wherein the F-15s replicated the tactics and performance of Russian Su-30 and Su-35S Flanker fighters.

The F-15s that took part in these maneuvers were older than the Ukrainian MiGs, they had been highly modernized and were considered much more capable than the Ukrainian MiG-29s and Su-27s that have undergone only modest and piecemeal upgrades.
Even still, the Ukrainian pilots were “sometimes pretty successful, just using our flexibility and creation of non-standard decisions,” Juice recalled.
“We did plenty of (basic fighter maneuvers) with our F-15Cs against their MiG-29s and Su-27s and to be honest we could tell instantly that their pilots were very good. They are very tactically inventive, they know their airframes and also understand what they are lacking. I mean, they fly old jets. Our F-15s for example are old airframes, but they have been constantly upgraded with new avionics,” retired Jonathan ‘Jersey’ Burd, the lead planner for the 2018 Clear Sky exercise told The War Zone.


Above all, the Ukrainian pilots got a much better understanding of the NATO fighter pilot mindset through their sharing of methods to defeat Russian tactics which have made a huge difference as even after one month, Russian forces have not been able to dominate Ukraine’s airspace.
The various tactics and techniques used by the Ukrainian Air Force in this war remain classified for obvious reasons but surely the war has reset the bar on a wide range of established air combat doctrine and dogma.


“The Ukrainians are defining modern warfare,” Jersey told Coffee or Die.
“Whatever ideas, assumptions, and tactics we believed were set in stone were done so by a nation that has not faced a peer threat for a very long time,” Jersey added. “Let me be clear, we trained the Ukrainian pilots as experts, but there is no substitute for aerial combat. They are the experts now.”
Meanwhile, the Russian Air Force has so far used Su-30 and Su-35S aircraft for almost all of their air-to-air missions.

Of these, Juice considers the Su-35s as the most dangerous because of its powerful radar and long-range R-77-1 air-to-air missiles with an active radar seeker that enables ‘fire and forget’ capability which is absent in the Ukrainian armory.
“It’s very capable, unfortunately for us,” said Juice of the R-77-1. “The lack of fire and forget missiles is the greatest problem for us. Even if we had them, our radars couldn’t provide the same distances [as the Russian fighters].”
Also, the disparity between the number of Russian and Ukrainian aircraft is a big problem for Ukraine.
“Sometimes they’re just trying to exhaust us,” Juice said, “flying near the border to get us to scramble, just to exhaust our manpower with these fuc***g stupid night flights.” With a huge advantage in sheer numbers, this tactic makes sense for Russia, as the Ukrainian jets can only be in one place at any time.
Furthermore, the Russian side has an advantage in air-to-air missions as well “because sometimes it’s one versus 12 or two versus 12,” explained Juice. “They have the advantage of situational awareness, radar range, missile range, missile [guidance] principles, and electronic warfare, and they still are sending so many jets against one MiG.”

The Air Force C-130 is one of the most versatile aircraft in its arsenal: it can deliver close air support, put out wildfires, and pick up special operators from austere landing strips in the middle of nowhere. In fact, the Hercules showed off its ability to pick up cargo and rapidly take off again recently in the Northeast.
Early Friday afternoon, residents of the famous Massachusetts island vacation town Martha’s Vineyard were surprised to see a C-130 with its four big, loud turboprop engines appear in the sky, land at the Martha’s Vineyard airport, drop its cargo ramp, pick up a motorcycle, then take off again in just about 15 minutes.

“Don’t see that every day,” said local resident Doug Ulwick, who was dining at the nearby Plane View Restaurant at the time and could see the whole affair, according to the Martha’s Vineyard Times, which first reported the story.
Unlike white-threaded sparrows, American goldfinches, or cedar waxwings, the C-130 is not a bird often seen in Martha’s Vineyard. In fact, this particular Hercules had come all the way from Keesler Air Force Base, Mississippi, where it is assigned to the 403rd Wing’s 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron. A spokesperson with the 403rd Wing confirmed the incident.
“The crew picked up a motorcycle that belonged to one of the crew members,” said Lt. Col. Marnee Losurdo, the wing’s Chief of Public Affairs. “Leadership is aware of the incident, which is under investigation. Once the investigation is complete we will provide additional information.”


Better known as the “Hurricane Hunters,” The 53rd Reconnaissance Squadron is a reserve unit unique in the Air Force because it flies straight into fierce storms to collect data that satellites can’t. Their WC-130J aircraft have a suite of special sensors to pick up data on humidity, wind speed, wind direction, temperature, air pressure, dewpoint and other elements which help scientists at the National Hurricane Center figure out where the storm is heading and when it will get there.
Even when hurricane season wraps up in late November, the Hurricane Hunters keep flying through the winter as part of its atmospheric river mission, where they track massive bands of moisture crossing the sky above the Pacific Ocean. Like with the hurricanes, the 53rd tracks these atmospheric rivers for scientists on the West Coast who can use the data the airmen collect to help prepare for flooding or snowfall.
“The big thing is water management,” said Lt. Col. Tobi Baker of the 53rd in a recent press release. “The better the forecast, the more local agencies along the coast are aware of how much water they can use from the reservoirs or how much they need to conserve.”

Now the 2022 hurricane season is on the horizon, but it was unclear exactly what the crew of the 53rd was doing in the Martha’s Vineyard area last week. Losurdo said they were performing “an off-station training mission” before making “an unplanned stop,” but did not share additional details.
Of course, with inflation and gas prices being what they are, it’s hard to blame a crew member for making a quick pitstop to pick up their bike on the way back home. Still, there’s a reason why Air Force Manual 11-202  compels aircrews to “ensure off-station training achieves valid training requirements … and avoids the appearance of government waste or abuse.” That is because aircrews have made far more wasteful pitstops for personal reasons in the past. 
For example, back in 2018, the commander of the Vermont Air National Guard was booted from his job after using an F-16 fighter jet to fly to Washington D.C. for an interstate booty call. Even further back, in 2006 two airmen from the New York Air National Guard pleaded guilty to narcotics charges after smuggling more than 200,000 pills of Ecstasy from Germany aboard their C-5 Galaxy cargo jet.

Besides the financial cost of fuel, there is always the safety risk of something going wrong during an unauthorized personal flight. As bad as the headlines are after an airplane crash, imagine how much worse it would be if that happened during an interstate booty call. Still, if the description of the motorcycle is accurate, it could be a ride worth getting in some hot water for.
“I saw a vintage BMW motorcycle. I used to own old vintage BMW motorcycles, so that’s how I know,” Tristan Israel, a local county commissioner who was also eating lunch at the Plane View Restaurant, told The Martha’s Vineyard Times. Israel guessed it was pre-1972 based on the logo. 
“I was eating next to the window,” he added. “We looked out and we saw the plane. We saw people walking a vintage motorcycle up to the plane.

Following Russia’s initiation of military operations in neighbouring Ukraine on the morning of February 24, countries across the Western world as well as Japan have taken a range of punitive measures against Moscow ranging from harsh economic sanctions to seizing Russian civilian shipping in international waters. It was revealed on February 27 that armaments set to be dispatched to the Ukrainian armed forces from Europe as part of EU funded aid included fighter aircraft, and would be delivered entirely through Poland. Ukraine’s fighter fleet has taken extreme losses in the conflict’s first 72 hours, a notable early sign of which was the decision of a Su-27 pilot to fleet to Romania on the first day. Two of Ukraine’s 14 highly prized Su-24 strike fighters were also reportedly shot down in the conflict’s initial hours. Airfield footage subsequently showed major losses suffered by Ukrainian MiG-29 fighters units to Russian cruise missile strikes, while at least one Su-27 has been lost to friendly fire. Ukrainian air defences were reportedly destroyed within 2-3 hours of the conflict’s outbreak, with Russian sources reporting in the early hours of February 28 that complete air superiority over Ukraine had been achieved. 

While the Ukrainian Air Force would struggle to integrate Western built fighters, which was one cause for hesitancy when it was suggested that U.S. military surplus fighters be donated over the past eight years, European countries formerly in the Soviet-aligned Warsaw Pact continue to deploy Soviet-built fighters. While the Romanian Air Force’s MiG-21 and Polish Air Force’s Su-22 jets are older designs that Ukraine does not itself field, the MiG-29 relied on heavily by Ukraine is deployed by Poland, Bulgaria and Slovakia with some reports indicating that units remain in the reserves of other states such as Hungary. The MiG-29 is a lighter and lower end design than the Su-27 or Su-24, but was more widely exported by the Soviet Union hence why it is used in Eastern Europe. Both European states and Ukraine rely on effectively obsolete 1980s variants of the fighters, however, which are technologically decades behind frontline jets deployed by Russia.. 

Sending MiG-29s to Ukraine remains highly questionable for a number of reasons. It is not altogether clear how the aircraft would enter the country, whether having European personnel fly them in could expose them to a high risk of being shot down by Russian aircraft, or whether Ukrainian pilots will be dispatched to Poland to fly them. Furthermore, with Ukraine’s airbases having been largely destroyed, even the MiG-29’s much famed ability to operate from short runways would be seriously tested. The possibility of escalation would likely be deemed too great, however, if MiG-29s were to fly combat sorties from airfields in Poland itself, as this would potentially expose Poland to airstrikes. Russian state media outlets notably highlighted that more capable Su-27 heavyweight fighters could also be delivered, although this appears to be an error since Ukraine is the only operator of the class in Europe and, other than two Su-27s in the United States acquired from Belarus for testing in the 1990s, no Western-aligned countries currently deploy it. It remains possible that only a token number of MiGs will be donated as a means of bolstering Ukrainian morale, and that these will come exclusively from Poland which has taken one of the most hardline positions against Russia within Europe.

Unconfirmed reports of an ace Ukrainian fighter pilot have gone viral, with social media users dubbing the fighter the “Ghost of Kyiv.”
Supposedly downing as many as six Russian planes in the first day of combat, the Ghost of Kyiv — and their MiG-29 Fulcrum — quickly became a folk hero in a war breathlessly watched online.
According to one widely circulated post, the Ghost of Kyiv is believed to have shot down four Russian fighter jets — two Su-35 Flankers, one Su-27 Flanker and one MiG-29 Fulcrum — as well as two ground-attack aircraft, so-called Su-25 Frogfoots.
Regardless, many on social media argued the legend of an ace fighter pilot holding off the Russian advance was useful in its own right.