Arms trade

Kazakhstan receives four more Su-30SM fighter aircraft

The Kazakhstan Air Defence Forces (KADF) have received a new batch of Sukhoi Su-30SM ‘Flanker-H’ multirole fighter aircraft from Russia, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in Astana announced in a statement on 25 December.

A source from the Kazakh military told Jane’s that the service’s 604th Air Base in Taldykorgan, Almaty Region, took delivery of four more of the fighters, bringing to 12 the total number of Su-30SMs received by the KADF.

In 2014 Kazakhstan signed a contract worth approximately RUB5 billion (USD76.9 million) for four Su-30SMs, all of which were delivered by April 2015.

In December 2015 a second contract for eight of these platforms was signed, with the first two fighters arriving in Kazakhstan in December 2016 and two more in December 2017. According to the source, the recently delivered aircraft are the remaining four Su-30SMs ordered under this second contract.