One of the fighter jets of the russian aerospace forces currently stationed in belarus has become non-operational due to a fire breaking out in its engine. The incident took place on December 25, as reported by the belarusian OSINT-community "Belarusian Hajun project".
According to the community's findings, the board number of the aircraft is RF-95194 "Blue". In general, there are three russian MiG-31K fighters and a single A-50U AWACS at the Machulishchy air base near Minsk.
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It should be noted that such a fire for D-30F6 engines installed on MiG-31 fighters is not a "traditional" but still rather frequent occurrence. As far as known, there have been at least nine accidents since 1979 when an aircraft was lost or the pilots got injured or died, with the documented reason being the engine on fire. Also, several planes were lost due to the self-activation of the afterburner during takeoff or asymmetrical thrust of the engines.
The unreliability of the engines has forced pilots to pay a lot of attention to learning how to land with one working engine. During these trainings, a few aircraft were lost, too.
According to public data only, russia has already lost four MiG-31K in 2022. Whether or not the fifth one is to join the ranks is yet an open question, as the fire could have damaged the aircraft to the point beyond repair.
Earlier Defense Express reported that the activity of the russian fleet in the Black Sea, as well as their MiG-31K and the AWACS aircraft in Belarus indicates that russia is preparing for another missile attack on Ukraine.
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