fulfilled or still under way, IAF is
to take delivery of as many as 272 Su-30MKI
fighters by the end of this decade, of which
50 were built by Russia’s Irkut Corporation and
222 are to be licence-produced by Indian aircraft
manufacturer HAL under a licence programme.
To date, Irkut has shipped 50 fighters of the type
to India as well as more than 150 licence production
kits. The first Indian-assembled Su-30MKI
has been flown and handed over to IAF in
November 2004. Since then, the number of
Indian-produced Su-30MKIs in IAF’s inventory
has been on the rise. As for today, more than
200 Su-30MKIs – both delivered from Russia
and assembled by HAL – are in service with IAF.
One more derivative of the fighter, the
Su-30MKI(A), was developed by Sukhoi and
delivered by Irkut Corp. The customer is Algerian
Air Force wich ordered 28 fighters of the type in
2006 and 16 more in 2010. Deliveries began in
late 2007 and by now a total of 44 Su-30MKI(A)
fighters have been built by Irkut and delivered to
the customer.
The Su-30MKM is another step in developing
the Su-30 platform further. The Malaysian
version is wrapped around the Su-30MKI
design, differing mostly in avionics but retaining
its airframe, AL-31FP thrust vector-controlled
(TVC) engines and fly-by-wire control system.
Still, there have been a number of radical modifications
to the Malaysian aircraft.
18 take-off december 2009 www. t a k e - o f f . r u
Last summer marked the fifth anniversary of the fulfillment of a contract for 18 Sukhoi
Su-30MKM two-seat supermanoeuvrable multirole fighters delivery to the Royal
Malaysian Air Force. The aircraft have been successfully operated by RMAF, being
its most advanced and sophisticated aircraft type. The Irkut corporation delivered
them to Malaysia between 2007 and 2009. Now all of 18 superagile Su-30MKMs
are in service with the 11th squadron of the Royal Malaysian Air Force stationed at
Gong Kedak air base in the Kelantan province, on the coast of the South China Sea,
300 km north of the national capital, Kuala Lumpur. The international debut of the
advanced Malaysian fighters took place eight years ago at LIMA 2007 airshow at the
island of Langkawi. This time, Su-30MKMs are also the participants of the Langkawi
International Maritime and Aerospace exhibition and, no doubt, will become the main
stars of the demonstration flight programme at LIMA '15.
Su-30MKM
IN SERVICE WITH RMAF
Andrey FOMIN