June 4,
2008: The recent death of a Russian
fighter pilot in Sudan, while flying a Sudanese MiG-29, brought to light the
fact that Russian pilots, both active duty and retired, have been flying
Sudan's 14 MiG-29s. This is because it has proven more difficult than expected
to train Sudanese to do the job. One reason for this is that Sudan doesn't have
many pilots to begin with, so the Sudanese MiG-29 pilots had to be recruited
and trained from scratch. Since Sudan is a religious dictatorship, the
leadership selected pilot trainees more
for their loyalty than for their piloting potential. Many of these trainees
proved inadequate as pilots, at least of high performance fighters like the
MiG-29 (which is similar in size and capabilities to the U.S. F-16). Rather
than have these expensive fighters sit around unused, the government hired more
Russian "instructors" to not only devote more time to getting the Sudanese
trainees in shape, but also to operate the MiG-29s.
Mercenary
Russian (and Ukrainian) fighter pilots have shown up in Africa before. Over the
last few decades, wherever there are Russian warplanes (and the list of African
users is long), and a need for them to be used, there have usually been
"foreign pilots" hired to make things work, or at least fly and fight. Russians
were often hired to maintain the aircraft (the mercenary pilots often insisted
on this.)
