It is expected that the training of the regiment's pilots at the NITKA complex will last more than a month
MOSCOW, October 9. /TASS/. Deck-based multi-purpose MiG-29K/KUB fighters of the 100th separate Naval Fighter Aviation Regiment of the Northern Fleet (SF) performed a flight to an aircraft carrier analog - the ground test training complex (aviation) NITKA in Saki. This was reported to TASS by a source close to the power structures of the Crimea.
"The flight of carrier-based fighters of the 100th Aviation Regiment to the Crimea to the NITKA training complex began on October 5. It has now been completed. The planes made several intermediate landings on the flight route," he said. It is expected that the training of the regiment's pilots at the complex will last more than a month.
TASS has no official confirmation of this information.
On October 4, the press service of the Northern Fleet reported that the 279th Aviation Regiment of the SF, which is armed with Su-33 and Su-25UTG aircraft, completed training at the NITKA complex in Saki. According to her, for more than a month, seven pilots, including five young pilots of carrier-based aviation, were able to prepare for landing on the deck of the aircraft carrier. All of them took off from the ship's springboard on a Su-33 fighter jet and independently landed on a ground simulator with an aircraft finisher cable hook.
NITKA and aircraft carrier complexes
Before flying from an aircraft carrier, pilots of carrier-based aviation, according to existing regulations, must obtain access to them. To train pilots, it was supposed to use two NITKA complexes in Saki and Yeysk. It is known about the first one that it needed modernization, about the second - that its commissioning was repeatedly postponed.
The NITKA complexes are designed for testing the take-off and landing of naval aircraft. The complex in Saki is an airfield with a steel airfield in the form of a ship's deck, equipped with a springboard and aerial finishers. The dimensions of the airfield are equivalent to the flight deck of the Admiral Kuznetsov.
The NITKA complex in Saki returned to Russia together with Crimea in 2014. It was once built in "iron" with the prospect of repeated modernization in the future, and, according to experts, this is its main advantage and difference from the complex in Yeysk, cast in concrete.
In February 2017, the naval aircraft carrier strike group of the SF returned to Severomorsk from the Mediterranean Sea. The group included, in particular, the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov and the heavy nuclear missile cruiser Peter the Great. For the first time in the recent history of the Russian Navy, the Admiral Kuznetsov carrier-based aircraft was involved in a military operation in Syria. The pilots of the 279th Aviation Regiment mainly participated in the combat work.
The heavy aircraft carrier Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Kuznetsov is currently under repair.
