“Fulcrum Drivers” features Polish Air Force Mig-29s as you have never seen them before.
Filmed by Polish Air Force pilots from 22nd Tactical Air Base – Malbork, the following video shows Mig-29 Fulcrums from a quite intimate point of view: the cockpit.
The footage, shot using GoPro cameras, brings the viewer on the Soviet Union-era fighter plane during aerobatics, formation flying, mock aerial combat against German Eurofighter Typhoons.
You can even see a quite rare live firing test of am R-60 (AA-8 Aphid) air-to-air missile.
Noteworthy, it looks like the video maker tried to censor the German Air Force roundel at 01:57 (weird!), and you can see the shadow of a small drone used to film the plane on the ground in the very first seconds of the video.
Polish Air Force has deployed four Mig-29 Fulcrum fighters to Siauliai Air Base, Lithunia, to provide Baltics Air Policing.
H/T to Matt Fanning for the heads-up.
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It would be interesting to see how the MiG-29 fights when integrated into a NATO environment. So far it was always in the opposing force using outdated tactics with little to none support from other assets and in heavy numerical inferiority.
My bet is that it would be not even deployed into a joint aerial campaign.
Your bet would be wrong, they have deployed on several occasions to the Baltic Air Policing Mission, which is part of NATO. Soviet tactical doctrine in the air was not to send their planes into conflict ‘using outdated tactics with little to none support from other assets and in heavy numerical inferiority’, as you claim. The Soviets were always big believers in combined arms tactics. So the MiG-29 would have been used as a front-line fighter/bomber with AWACS support (A-50), fighter cover, and ECM support. Moreover, the number of advanced Soviet aircraft (MiG-29, Su-27, Mig-31) in Central Europe in the late 1980’s/early 1990’s was roughly equal to the number of F-15’s and F-16’s they would have faced.