13 Slovak MiG-29s

On March 17, Slovak Prime Minister Eduard Heger officially announced the upcoming delivery of MiG-29s to Ukraine. Nearly 13 Slovak MiG-29s will be transferred to Ukraine, with 10 operational aircraft and three aircraft to be cannibalized for spare parts. With this delivery, Slovakia becomes the second state to supply operational combat aircraft to the Ukrainian Air Force. A day earlier, on March 16, Poland confirmed the planned delivery of 4 operational aircraft in the next few days and more aircraft soon but to be serviced before delivery (related article). Slovakia had already announced that it wanted to be part of a coalition of countries willing to hand over combat aircraft to Ukraine and thus joined Poland. The March 16 announcement had thus foreshadowed the Slovak delivery on March 17.

Slovakia is not limited to combat aircraft, as an unspecified number of 2K12 M2 Kub (SA-6 Gainful) short-range anti-aircraft systems will also be transferred. This is the second delivery of anti-aircraft equipment delivered to Ukraine by Slovakia; the delivery of its one and only S-300PMU long-range battery already represented the first delivery of heavy anti-aircraft equipment to Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion.

The Ukrainian Air Force will thus receive 14 operational MiG-29 fighter aircraft. These aircraft will address the confirmed losses (18 in total) since February 24, 2022.

12K2 M2 Kub

The Kub anti-aircraft system is developed by the Soviet company Torpov and produced by Vympel MKB and NIIP. The system is operational in the late 1960s in the Soviet Armed Forces and is also transferred to the Warsaw Pact Armed Forces.

Based on the GM-568 tracked chassis, the missile launcher has increased off-road mobility. Each launcher can fire 3 missiles before needing to be reloaded by a dedicated vehicle. Reloading takes about 10 minutes. The range of the missiles is approximately 23 kilometers. Little technical information is available on the Slovak Kub-M2. These have probably been modernized, along with the Czech Kub-M2s, having Kub-M2 Mod 1s, with improved working in jammed area capability and a camera for optical (passive) firing.

As described above, this is not a recent system (replaced in the USSR/Russia by the 9K37 Buk and variants) but it will provide the Ukrainian Forces with some additional anti-aircraft systems, still posing some anti-aircraft threat to Russian aircraft.

Article modified March 17, 2023 at 1:40 PM.