MOSCOW, August 28 (AVN) - Over 50 percent of the Air Force airfields have been in operation for more than 20 years and are in need of capital repairs and reconstruction, a spokesman for the Air Force Staff told the Military News Agency on Tuesday.
The number of airfields that need capital repairs and reconstruction will reach 80 percent by 2005. The maintenance of the airfield network in service condition costs RUR1bn (USD34.05m) a year including over RUR500m (USD17.02m) for capital repairs and reconstruction of artificial pavement, some RUR400m (USD13.62m) for current repairs and maintenance of airfields and over RUR100m (USD3.4m) for purchasing PAG airfield plates.
Air Force airfields do not fully match the current requirements, the spokesman said. Safety of flights is maintained by introducing various limitations at airfields. The limitations are related to complete or partial exhaustion of infrastructure components and equipment or their failure. Particularly, airfield authorities limit flights of aircraft depending on their their type, time of the day, etc.
At present the Air Force has 142 airfields with the landing strip of 1,800 and more metres long. 65 percent of them are located in European Russia and 35 percent in the Asian part of the country. Practically all those airfields need capital repairs and reconstruction of their energy system, service and technical installations.