Su-34 Bomber Crashes in Russia

A Russian Su-34 bomber, mistakenly identified as a Su-27, crashed in the Nizhny Novgorod region during a training flight.

The Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported on this.

The plane crashed while landing due to the failure of one of the landing gear wheels. The crew made several attempts to resolve the problem in flight, but the situation remained unchanged. Following the flight director’s orders, the crew brought the aircraft to a safe area and ejected.

Both crew members are reported to have survived, and the aircraft crashed in an uninhabited area without causing any damage.

According to Baza, the crash took place near the villages of Veletma and Kulebaki. Twelve kilometers away is the Savasleika airfield, where a branch of the 4th State Center for Aviation Personnel Training and Military Testing is located. Presumably, the training flight was conducted from there.

It is reliably reported that MiG-31 interceptors and MiG-31K strike aircraft are currently based at this airfield. However, a month earlier, the Ukrainian General Staff reported the appearance of Su-34 bombers at the airfield.

It should be noted that this is the second loss of a Su-34 bomber in a year for the Russian military, caused by landing gear failure. The first incident occurred in March, but then the aircraft managed to make a hard landing on its fuselage.

During landing, part of the left engine was torn off, which definitely put the aircraft out of service for a long time, with the risk of complete write-off.

Destruction of Russian bombers

With the appearance in the Russian arsenal of cheap and mass-produced bombs with UMPC modules, which allowed them to be dropped on targets from a safe distance, the destruction of their carriers became a priority for the Defense Forces.

Therefore, in June this year, the Security Service, together with the Special Operations Forces, carried out a large-scale operation at the Russian Marinovka airfield: it was announced that two Su-34s had been completely destroyed and two more aircraft of this type had been damaged.

Subsequently, satellite images in the optical and radar spectrum confirmed this information — two damaged aircraft were seriously damaged. At the site of one of the destroyed aircraft, there was probably a detonation of suspended weapons.

The Russian media project Astra also reported that a fifth aircraft was hit during the attack on the airfield on June 27. According to their data, three Su-34s were completely destroyed and two were partially destroyed. In addition, one Russian serviceman was wounded.