The first fighter aircraft designed and developed in Russia after the break-up of the Soviet Union — the Mig 29 K/KUB for the Indian Navy — took off on its inaugural flight at the Zhukovskiy test centre here on Monday.

The first flight version of the ship borne fighters, on order from the Indian Navy for its carrier INS Vikramaditya, took off on a cold winter morning with the tell-tale black smoke but dispelled all doubts after a flawless 20-minute test flight.

India will receive the first serially produced aircraft in June this year as part of the 16 fighter jets deal. While the deal provides that an extra 30 aircraft can be procured later, MiG expressed its willingness to supply as many fighters as India wants on the eve of the test flight.

“The deal is for 16 aircraft but we can give any quantity required by India,” Director of the ‘Mikoyan Design Bureau’ Vladimir Barkovskiy said.

While the multi-role air superiority fighter Mig 29 K is the first major project to come out from the drawing board to serial production in post-Soviet Russia, the MiG Corporation is confident of pitching in its MiG 35 fighter for the Indian Air Force’s Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MRCA) requirement of 126 fighters.

“It (the test flight) is important not just for MiG but the Russian aviation as a whole. We had to make the whole aircraft, including avionics, from the scratch,” Barkovskiy said.

While the naval aircraft is named similarly, it is very different from the MiG 29s serving the IAF.

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