Ladoga 2018
Exercise Report
exercise. It’s highly likely that the unit will retire this sub-variant before next year’s Ladoga exercise.
Russian warplanes once again conducted live weapons training over a temporary air-to-air gunnery range above Lake Ladoga near St Petersburg. Andrey Zinchuk and Alexander Mladenov report from northwest Russia.
This year’s Ladoga missilefiring exercise took part in the final week of March. It involved a significant proportion of the fighter aircrews from the Vozdushno-Kosmicheskiye Sily Rossiyskoy Federatsii (VKS RF, Russian Federation Air and Space Force) regiments in the Western Military District, which come under the command of the 105th Guards Composite Air Division of the 6th Air and Air Defence Army.
The main aim of this brief but intense training event is to refine aircrew skills in the use of heat-seeking missiles and cannon against aerial targets. These sorties are flown both day and night in clear-weather conditions. Gunnery experience of this type is a prerequisite to qualify fighter aircrews for quick reaction alert (QRA) duty.
The live firing took place on a temporary gunnery range, a restricted area set up over the ice-covered Lake Ladoga. Aircraft involved i…
