On April 6, 2019, a Russian News portal fort-russ.com published an article titled “ IN DEPTH: Poland’s Staged MiG Crashes – NATO Plan For Sales Of Inferior U.S F-35″
In the article author Alexander Shtorm & Bill French claims that Poland might have Staged MiG-29 Fighter jets Crashes to the forced Polish government in buying new Expensive Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II fighter jets
According to the article MiG-29 fighter jets, which are still in service with the Polish Air Force, have proven themselves brilliantly for decades. In addition to excellent combat performance, they also featured high reliability in operation: for almost 30 years of their service, not a single crash occurred.
And suddenly the last months brought a whole series of tragedies: literally every six months, one MiG-29 was broken. What is the matter? What suddenly changed?
The first MiG-29 aircraft appeared in Poland in 1989. Polish Air Force operated up to 32 MiG-29 aircraft. For many years, these planes flawlessly served in the Polish sky.
However, their failure-free operation ended on December 18, 2017, when the first MiG-29 crashed while landing at the airfield in Minsk Mazowiecki, its pilot survived, although he did not manage to eject (the plane was from among those received directly from the USSR).
On July 6 last year, another disaster occurred, this time with a deadly ending for the pilot: he managed to eject, but did not survive (the plane came to Poland from Germany).
Finally, on March 4 of this year, the third accident took place: a few minutes after the start from the base in Minsk Mazowiecki, another MiG-29 crashed, the pilot managed to successfully eject (this time it was a received from the Czech Republic).
The leadership of the Polish Ministry of National Defense as a whole reticently commented on the MiG catastrophes, noting that the outdated post-Soviet aircraft are characterized by “little suitability in today’s battlefield.”
In the political environment, comments were limited to condescending “no wonder: post-Soviet flying scrap metal is dangerous for flying.”
Official Warsaw used a series of MiG wrecks to justify another round of the arms race, in which Poland voluntarily participates in NATO.
With regard to the modernization of military aviation, Poland announced to purchase 48 American fifth-generation F-35. It is not a secret for anyone that such a deal will open up the possibility for multi-billion and long-term drainage of the Polish budget – not only the budget of the Ministry of Defense. Poland paid $ 3.5 billion for 48 F-16s in 2003, and Belgium recently ordered 34 F-35s for $ 4 billion.
Our Analysis on the fort-russ.com Allegations
The whole article is based on just a conspiracy theory. The author didn’t provide single evidence that proves that Polish Airforce staged MiG-29 Fighters jets crashes. On the basis of series of MIG-29 crashes the Polish government might have decided to replace its old aging fleet of fighter jets with new expensive one but it doesn’t mean that they staged fighter jets crashes
