Bulgaria’s Defence Minister: Operating costs of Soviet-era MiG-29s and Su-25s in 2026 to be 114M leva

The estimated operating costs of the Bulgarian Air Force’s Soviet-era MiG-29 and Su-25 aircraft in 2026 are just more than 114 million leva, Defence Minister Atanas Zapryanov said in a written reply to questions in Parliament tabled by We Continue the Change – Democratic Bulgaria MP Atanas Slavov.

This is 10 million leva more than in the two previous years, 2024 and 2025.

The maintenance of the MiG-29 will cost 86.4 million leva, and the Su-25, 27.6 million leva. The estimates are made for services and supplies based on the annual planning and operational statistics for both types of aircraft.

The estimated amount for 2026 includes personnel costs (salaries of all personnel at the respective base), infrastructure (repair and maintenance of the infrastructure of the respective base, outside the scope of projects related to the operation of Bulgarian F-16 aircraft) and parts, as well as the spent aviation fuel.

The estimate does not include training, since such training for MiG-29 and Su-25 has not been conducted in the past five years, Zapryanov said.

The decommissioning and removal from service of the MiG-29 and Su-25 before the initial operational readiness of the F-16 would deprive the Bulgarian Air Force of a significant set of key capabilities and would make it impossible to fulfill the constitutional and alliance commitments for a long period of time, he said.

For this reason, the termination of the operation of the MiG-29 and Su-25 will be closely linked to the acquisition of the same capabilities with the F-16, Zapryanov said.

Taking into account these difficult-to-predict processes, no consultations have been held with Ukraine at this time on the further operation of the MiG-29 and Su-25 aircraft, he said.

Bulgaria has already received six F-16 fighters under the contract signed in 2019. Two more aircraft are expected by the end of the year. After the implementation of the second contract, the Air Force will have one squadron of 16 aircraft.

Replying to a separate question from Slavov, Zapryanov said that the ongoing process of the rearmament of the Bulgarian Air Force should not translate “into the immediate replacement of one combat platform with another, in the case of fighter aviation, the replacement of MiG-29s and Su-25s with F-16s”.

“The development of any operational capability requires the implementation of a comprehensive approach that covers all the imperatives of the capability and ensures the successful achievement of the defined requirements for initial and full operational readiness,” Zapryanov said.

“To this complexity should be added the parameters of the Foreign Military Sales contracts with the United States government for the acquisition of the F-16 aircraft and the current status of their implementation, as well as the requirements for the operation of the aircraft in terms of training of flight and engineering and technical personnel, delivery of spare parts and equipment, ensuring a reliable and uninterrupted supply/service chain and the availability of appropriate infrastructure.”

Bulgarian Air Force commander Major General Nikolay Rusev, speaking to Bulgarian National Television on October 16, said: “We have started receiving the F-16 aircraft, and at the moment, however, we are guarding our airspace with the MIG-29.

“Because a long time ago I said that there is no way that the F-16 will arrive in 2025 and immediately go on combat duty. It is not right to tell our allies in Europe – ‘we are stopping the MiG-29, if you like, come and go on duty, because a group of people here have decided that they do not like the MIG-29’. What is being done in the Bulgarian army should not be politicised.”

“The MiG-29 helps us a lot until the F-16 enters operational readiness,” Rusev said. “But that will not happen in 2025,” he said.

“The F-16 will go on duty when it fulfills two conditions – we have enough planes, we have enough pilots. At the moment, there are four aircraft. In the coming days, we expect the fifth and sixth planes to arrive. It is not possible to be on duty with six planes, but secondly, we do not have enough pilots. Six are trained, with only two of them trained to lead groups.”

F-16 pilot training is entirely designed in the United States.

“There is a delay in the preparation because the training slots, these are the places, are occupied,” Rusev said.

“The American side is also heavily involved in training pilots from other countries. There is some delay, but at the moment things are going well and I think that the number of pilots will correspond to the number of aircraft,” he said.

(Archive photo of Bulgarian Air Force MiG-29s: Ministry of Defence)