Print

Mail

wiki links

Former top-secret air base opens doors to US, Brazil

It used to be US spy satellites that circled above this once top-secret Soviet air base, but this week F-15 fighter jets and a B-52 bomber will slice through the skies over Zhukovsky airfield during the Moscow International Air Show, which opened yesterday.

For the first time ever, the US Air Force has brought some of its top-of-the-line combat jets to the Russian show, held at what was once one of the Soviet Union's most tightly guarded facilities for testing new military aircraft.

"For us this is a very important opportunity to show the cooperation and the ever-developing ties between our two nations. This is the way forward," US Air Force Major General Edward LaFountaine said.

President Vladimir Putin, who arrived by helicopter, was one of the first to tour the exhibits, which runs six days and also features some of Russia's most sleek fighter jets and menacing helicopter gunships, as well as a display of wide-bodied civilian planes.

The biennial air show began in 1992 as a way to show off Russia's aviation prowess and, officials hoped, close some multimillion dollar deals. Most Russian aircraft makers found themselves struggling for survival when generous government orders dried up after the 1991 Soviet collapse.

In the decade that followed, the Russian air force received just a handful of new aircraft and its pilots logged only a minimal number of flying hours, while Russian airlines spurned domestic aircraft makers for Boeing and Airbus.

Gennady Zyuganov, a lawmaker and leader of the Communist Party, said the juxtaposition of US and Russian planes was symbolic of the "challenge" faced by Russia.

"All this technology around us is from the Soviet era. Democratic Russia hasn't done anything," he said.

New orders are trickling in slowly. Most successful has been the Sukhoi company which has sold large batches of its Su-27 and Su-30 fighters to China and India in deals worth billions of dollars. Earlier this month, Malaysia sealed a US$900 million deal to buy 18 Su-30 fighters. Yemen, Indonesia and Brazil have also come shopping.

The Russian air show remains minor in comparison to more established ones in Paris and Farnborough, England.

This year, however, the Russians are gloating: Top US military officials skipped the 45th Paris Air Show this summer, in what was widely seen as a snub toward the French government over Iraq.

Russia, like France, strongly opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq, but the Kremlin and the White House have worked hard to patch up relations, particularly ahead of this fall's planned presidential summit in the US.

The decision to come to Russia "is more political than anything," said Alexei Komarov, editor of the monthly Air Transport Observer. "It really says that we've ceased being opponents."

But Komarov predicted that while the Russians would be welcoming their former Cold War foes to this base just 25km southeast of Moscow, Russian pilots will be doing their best not to let their US counterparts outshine them at home.
This story has been viewed 2015 times.