MOSCOW. May 28 (Interfax-AVN) - A total of 70% of airfields, belonging to the Russian Air Force, need overhauling or repairing, Lieutenant General Alexander Merkulov, Deputy Air Force Commander-in-Chief for Logistics, said on Friday.
"The Air Forces overhauls one airfield per year, while there are more than 120 of them around. At the present time about 70% of airfields, belonging to the Russian Air Force, need overhauling or repairing," Merkulov told Interfax-Military News Agency.
"We could overhaul more airfields, if we had enough funds," Merkulov noted.
He also said that given the current percentage of operational aircraft, Air Force units are provided with only 65% of the required amount of aircraft fuel.
"Should all aircraft be operational, this figure will not exceed 50%, which means that the more operational aircraft the Air Force has, the less fuel they are provided with," he said.
At the same time Merkulov noted that positive dynamics of providing the Air Force with fuel had been in place since 1998. "In the past six years fuel deliveries have been increasing by about 10% on an annual basis," he said.
Responding to the question if the Air Force was ready for the coming large-scale exercise, aimed at airlifting troops from western to eastern Russian regions, which is to be held in June, Merkulov said that the Air Force had been ordered to establish necessary fuel resources at each airfield, and that this task had been discharged.
At the same time he did not clarify which airfields would be used by military airlift aviation in the course of the coming exercise.