While it might be connected to the war, note that "Another one of our Migs crashed" is more frequent in the news than "Voyager leaves the solar system".
One is none, two is coincidence, three is enemy action, let's not get ahead of things here. Older MIGs are not the most reliable craft and single engine jets are always at risk of some kind of mishap. These planes are now flying many more sorties than they have made in years.
The MiG-21 Lancer came out of a modernization program in the mid 90’s to the very early 2000’s. The airframes themselves were also relatively new with some of them being delivered in 1990 just prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Israel (IAI, Elta and Elbit) modernized for Romania them they have modern avionics, new engines new everything but the MiG-21 was the most problematic of the bunch (the Lancer program was a modernization program for all the Romanian MiGs).
This is getting ridiculous (and pretty ironic, based on my understanding of the spirit of jacquesm comments).
Over the last couple of weeks, I've noted jacquesm as one the few really valuable people on HN. I don't agree with all of the opinions he expresses, but I like to dwell on them. Although he might say some uncomfortable things, he tends to ask you to think, really THINK. This reduction of more or less objective opinion to "Russian disinfo" just seems to go against that so much that I find it ironic.
A 50+ year old museum piece MIG, and the SAR chopper was asked to return due to bad icing conditions before it was lost. It's almost certain that this was just a freak accident.
Romania is a kakistocracy and all branches of government and defense are affected by it. With the exception of troops sent to afghanistan and iraq the rest of the army is in a very poor shape. Despite spending 2% of its gdp on defense pilots dont get adequate flight hours.
The helicopter sent on a rescue mission today also crashed. Also old tech and poor training. Similar crash happened in 2013.
The migs are called “flying coffins” in romania. A few years ago one lost an engine at or after take off (it literally fell off), cant find the article.
Since the army is not much in the public eye, i can only begin to imagine the state its in. Sad but true.
Edit: new f16s are available, but given there isnt sufficient training available they cant operate all of them.
Romania had about 400 Mig-21 bought during the cold war when it was an ally of USSR. In the begining of 2000s, they modernized about 70 Mig to NATO standards [1]. There were frequent issues with them with about 20 fallen in 30 years. The aircraft were modernized but it only included the avionics and elecronic+weapons to NATO standard, I think the engines remained original. After Romania left the Warsaw pact, the Russian didn't provide engines or parts anymore.
Also, the romanian Mig-21 are converted to NATO specs, the ukrainean are not able to use them without training. Maybe it is the same issue with the Polish/Bulgarian Mig-29.
It seems like Europe announced the plane transfer without enough consultation from the countries who would actually have the planes needed. At least, that's the impression I've gotten from how fast most of them denied any MIG loan to Ukraine after the initial announcement was made
Apparently there are a number of technical challenges, mostly related to the pilots not being up to speed with the weapons conversions, ensuring they are not identified as NATO planes and the time required for training. Someone else pointed out that it may also be the case that through channels Russia gave some kind of ultimatum about this, but that is pure speculation.
I just recently learned that even though the MiG-21 models outwardly look quite similar, the plane was redesigned many times over during its long life span, numerous versions and massive build quantity.
