BORCEA, ROMANIA (AFP) – Romania yesterday officially retired its fleet of MiG-21s – a heritage from the Soviet era – as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member and Ukraine neighbour is aiming to modernise its armed forces. Romania now uses a squadron of 17 F-16 fighter jets bought recently from Portugal, and signed a contract with Norway in November to buy 32 additional used F-16s.
At a ceremony yesterday, the MiG-21 LanceR jets embarked on their final flights.
During the communist regime, Romania had around 400 MiG-21s. The current number is confidential, but unofficial estimates say it now stands at around 25. The retired jets will be stored at the Bacau airbase in northeast Romania. “It was time for us to move on to something better and be in line with the world,” Romanian pilot Adrian Trifa, 37, told AFP ahead of the ceremony at the Borcea airbase in the southeast.
Trifa will not train to fly the more modern jets as he is “old” – the age to start training for F-16s is under 35, he said. Last May, Romania said it would use its fleet of MiG-21 LanceRs for one more year for air policing missions and flight training, just a month after deciding to ground them following a slew of problems. From 1991 to 2022, there were “30 aviation incidents that resulted in the destruction of the MiG-21 planes”, according to the Defence Ministry.
