The Fulcrum and Frogfoot jets were among the highlights of the Pyongyang parade.
On Oct. 10, North Korea celebrated the 75th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Workers’ Party.
The footage of the unusual night-time military parade held in Pyongyang and addressed by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was streamed live on North Korea’s state TV and Youtube. Although what appeared to be a giant new intercontinental ballistic missile on a transporter vehicle with 22 wheels surely attracted the interest of many analysts (it was the very first time since 2018 that North Korea has shown ICBMs at a military parade), the most interesting thing for us happened at around 1:45:00 mark in the video embedded below, when Korean People’s Army Air and Anti-Air Force jets made their “entrance”.
The footage, initially showed North Korean Air Force MiG-29 Fulcrum and Su-25 Frogfoot jets at Sunchon Airbase, about 30 miles north of Pyongyang, where all MiG-29s and Su-25s are based, preparing for start-up, then taxiing.
Interestingly, in order to be more visible at night from the ground, the aircraft were given led lights strips.
*Watching North Korean parade”
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Others: “Check out all the tanks, APCs, tacticool AKs and more”
Me: “Mig-29s and Su-25s with LED light strips? Neat!” pic.twitter.com/aB32wKwS16
— Lee Ann Quann (@AnnQuann) October 10, 2020
The MiG-29s also showed some paintings to the side of the cockpit: although someone suggested these nose arts might have been applied to the aircraft belonging to some sort of aerobatic team, the same could be spotted also on the North Korean MiG-29 firing an R-60 air-to-air missile that appeared in a photo emerged in April 2020.
The video then showed the various formation aircraft taking part in the flypast (7x MiG-29s and 7x Su-25s, along with AN-2 and Y-5 biplanes) from several viewpoints, with camera installed on the airframes as well as in the cockpit: the footage of the MiG-29 releasing flares over Pyongyang as the pilot gave the military salute in the cockpit was pretty impressive.
In the end, it was an interesting as well as rare show.
