The Bulgarian Air Force has found itself in a catastrophic situation in terms of maintaining the combat readiness of its fighter aircraft. On “paper” the country has 8 F-16 Block 70 fighters and 14 MiG-29 fighters, of which 3 are combat training fighters. But in practice the situation is much worse – none of the F-16s have yet been put into service, while the Soviet-made fighters have huge maintenance problems due to a lack of spare parts.
Moreover, the second batch of eight F-16 fighters, which Bulgaria purchased in 2022, is seriously delayed, and instead of 2027, they will arrive no earlier than 2030, and this deadline is not guaranteed. Given such a critical situation with combat aircraft, Sofia decided to look for used fighters (F-16 or Gripen), which could strengthen its military aviation in a short time, as well as donors of spare parts for their MiG-29 aircraft.
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But, as follows from the publication of the Bulgarian News Agency, both plans failed miserably - they quote the head of the country's Defense Minister, Dimitar Stoyanov, who stated that both the U.S. and Sweden refused to sell used fighters to Bulgaria. And he emphasized that second-hand fighter aircraft are difficult to find.
Therefore, the only option for the Bulgarians at the moment remains the search and purchase of spare parts for the MiG-29 fighter fleet. This is not the first time that Bulgaria has been talking about this, and back in July of this year they officially admitted that they were considering the option of purchasing Polish MiG-29 aircraft as donors of spare parts.
However, Poland clearly emphasized at the time that their priority was to resolve the issue of transferring these aircraft to Ukraine, on which, it seems, they still have not reached an agreement. Recently, the Polish Ministry of Defense stated that the operation of the MiG-29s, which they want to exchange for Ukrainian drone technology, is dangerous.
In addition to Poland, the Bulgarian Defense Ministry has also sent requests for spare parts for the MiG-29 to Hungary (which has already retired these aircraft and is keeping them in storage), as well as to a number of other countries. It is not yet known whether Sofia has managed to reach an agreement with anyone on spare parts for its MiG-29s.
On the part of Defense Express, we would like to note that in this story it is worth focusing separately on the possible option for Bulgaria to buy additional MiG-29s from Poland. Earlier, Bulgarian Defense Minister Stoyanov emphasized that these aircraft are of interest to this country exclusively as donors of spare parts.
A scenario cannot be ruled out in which some of the Polish MiG-29s that are in "better" condition (but will still require additional work) will go to Ukraine, and the rest of the aircraft that could only be used as donors of spare parts will be able to be received by Bulgaria.
It should be noted that if Sofia does not resolve the issue of spare parts for its MiG-29s, this will hit the country's defense capabilities hard, as it will then be forced to cannibalize its own aircraft to maintain at least a minimum level of combat capability of its fighter aircraft.
Defense Express reported earlier, that Bolgaria had another problem as civilian radars worked fine for MiG-29s, but F-16s needed Bulgaria to get GM400s.
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