What is significant is the attack on the airfield “Savasleika”.
June 9, 2025
What do the basic capabilities of the Russians look like for this type of aviation equipment?
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported that on the night of June 9, 2025, the Special Operations Forces, in cooperation with other components of the Defense Forces of Ukraine, struck the Savasleyka airfield and hit at least one MiG-31 and one Su-30/34.
Defense Express would like to emphasize that Russia is unable to produce new MiG-31K aircraft for the “Daggers”. Therefore, any losses in this area of aircraft will be acute for it.
To begin with, it is worth noting that during the full-scale war against Ukraine, the Russians made some efforts to even increase the MiG-31K fleet. Because if at the beginning of 2022 the Russian Federation had 12 aircraft of this type, then The Military Balance 2024 wrote about the possible presence of even up to 24 MiG-31Ks.
In addition, it is necessary to take into account the reports about the appearance in the service of the Russian Aerospace Forces of aircraft of the MiG-31I “Ishim” type, which differ from the MiG-31K in the declared ability to supposedly automatically go to the launch point of the Kh-47M2 “Dagger” (on the MiG-31K, all operations must be performed essentially manually by the crew of 2 people).
The basis for expanding the MiG-31K and MiG-31I “Ishim” fleet could be a certain number of MiG-31s in storage, which as of 2018 was estimated to be in the range of 130 to 150 “planes”. And which, however, could serve mainly as a “spare parts graveyard” to maintain the fleet of MiG-31B/BM interceptors in service with the Russian Armed Forces.
It is necessary to make a correction that at the beginning of last year, about 90 such interceptors were in service with the Russian Aerospace Forces, and another 30 units were in service with the naval aviation of the Russian Navy.
Serial production of the MiG-31 ceased in 1993, with a total of 500 serial copies being produced, of which only 150 are actually in service at the moment. This also demonstrates the rather low “endurance” of the MiG-31 in combination with the Russian maintenance culture.
A separate problem for the Russians is the D-30F6 engines used on the MiG-31 . These engines have a service life of only 300 hours, and if in 2014 representatives of the Russian military-industrial complex announced the accumulated stock of D-30F6 for 20-30 years, then in 2024 they started talking about the need to completely resume production of such power plants.
Based on current data from the Ministry of Defense’s GUR , the Russian military-industrial complex currently produces about 10-15 Kinzhal missiles per month, with an accumulated stock of 100 units.
Ukraine doesn’t have to destroy all of the Mig 31s. There is a certain point in which those planes are effectively out of action even if flyable units are still available, due to maintenance issues, especially with such old airframes and engines.