According to the Chief of Naval Aviation of Russian NAVY, Hero of Russia, Major General Igor Kozhin, “in 2015 strengthening and development of naval aviation will be carried out by means of expanding its fleet and upgrading the operated aircraft», press-service of Russian Ministry of Defense reports.
«This year we are going to take deliveries of MiG-29K aircraft. We will take delivery of more than 20 MiG-29K jets, which will serve as a basis of a new military unit of the Northern Fleet,» Igor Kozhin explained.
Moreover, the deliveries of upgraded Il-38 aircraft fitted with the latest antisubmarine equipment will continue. The proven Ka-27PL antisubmarine helicopters will be upgraded. The vehicles will be fitted with cutting-edge antisubmarine equipment and avionics suite, the ministry added.
«It must be noted that deliveries of Be-200 amphibian aircraft to the naval aviation will be started,» the Major General said.
Speaking of development of infrastructure, he said that Severomorsk-1 (Northern Fleet) and Chkalovsk (Kaliningrad) airfields would be put into service. NITKA aviation training range (Yeysk) will start operating in full, the press-service noted.
Major General Igor Kozhin reminded that the naval aviation logged a total flying time of over 25,000 hours last year. Thanks to activities aimed at improvement of combat training the number of flying hours per crew has been increased to over 80 hours. In 2014 over 300 crews completed their training; 250 of them are ready to perform missions at nighttime. 859th Combat Employment and Retraining Center of naval aviation of Russian navy located in Yeysk played a key part in this process: over 30 pilots of naval aviation have been retrained to operate new types of aircraft.