Myanmar Air Force

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Myanmar Air Force
တပ်မတော်(လေ)
K-8 Karakorum
TransportShaanxi Y-8, Harbin Y-12, Beechcraft 1900, ATR 42, ATR 72, Fokker 70

The Myanmar Air Force (

internal conflicts in Myanmar, and, on a smaller scale, in relief missions,[3] especially after the deadly Cyclone Nargis
of May 2008.

History

Post-Independence era (1948–1990)

The Myanmar Air Force (MAF) was formed as the

Burma (as Myanmar was known until 1989) was still under British rule. By 1948, the fleet of the new air force included 40 Airspeed Oxfords, 16 de Havilland Tiger Moths, four Austers, and three Supermarine Spitfires transferred from the Royal Air Force, and had a few hundred personnel.[2]

The Mingaladon Air Base HQ, the main air base in the country, was formed on 16 June 1950. No.1 Squadron, Equipment Holding Unit and Air High Command - Burma Air Force, and the Flying Training School, were placed under the jurisdiction of the base. A few months later, on 18 December 1950, No. 2 Squadron was formed with nine Douglas Dakotas as a transport squadron. In 1953, the Advanced Flying Unit was formed under the Mingaladon Air Base with de Havilland Vampire T55s, and by the end of 1953 the Burmese Air Force had three main airbases, at Mingaladon, Hmawbi, and Meiktila, in central Burma.[2]

In 1953, the Burmese Air Force bought 30

Cessna 180s) and No. 53 Squadron (Bell 47Gs, Kaman HH-43 Huskies, and Aérospatiale Alouettes) in Meiktila.[2]

On 15 February 1961, an unmarked

Consolidated PB4Y Privateer came into Burmese air space carrying supplies for Chinese Kuomintang forces fighting in northern Burma, and was intercepted by three Hawker Sea Fury fighters of the Burmese Air Force. The intruding bomber and one Burmese fighter crashed in Thailand during the incident.[4] On 17 February, a team from Burmese 9th Front Brigade left for the crash site. A 12.7mm bullet was fired into the fuselage of UB-466, hitting pilot officer Peter as well, breaking five of his ribs. Peter was recorded in the history of Burmese Air Force as an airman who gave his life for the country and the people.[5]
In 1962, a new radar station in Mingaladon and a mobile radar station in Lwemwe (near Tachileik) were put into operation. By December 1964, the Burmese Air Force had 323 officers and 5,677 other ranks and it acquired
Namsang. In 1966, the radar arm of the air force underwent a complete overhaul and upgrade, with new radar stations being operated. The Namsang Radar station was upgraded to cover about a 200-mile (322-km) radius and renamed No.71 Squadron. In the same year, the Burmese Air Force formed the No. 1 Airborne Battalion with 26 officers and 750 other ranks.[citation needed
]

On 1 January 1967, the Burmese Air Force reorganized its command structure. No. 501 Squadron Group in Hmawbi became No. 501 Air Base HQ; No. 502 Squadron Group in Mingalardon became No. 502 Air Base HQ; and No. 503 Squadron Group in Meiktila became No. 503 Air Base HQ in Meiktila. It also maintained airfield detachments in Lashio and Kengtung to cope with the insurgency of Communist Party of Burma in the northeast border region of the country.[2]

In 1975, the Burmese Air Force took delivery of 18

Bell 205A and seven Bell 206B helicopters from the United States under the International Narcotic Control Program (INCP). In March 1975, it bought 20 SIAI-Marchetti SF.260 trainers from Italy.[2]

Between 1976 and 1987, the Burmese Air Force bought seven

Pilatus PC-6 Turbo porter STOL aircraft; and 16 Pilatus PC-7 and 10 Pilatus PC-9 turboprop trainers from Switzerland. These aircraft were deployed in Lashio for close air support in counter-insurgency operations.[2]

Modernisation programme (1990–present)

In the early 1990s, the Burmese Air Force upgraded its facilities and introduced two new air base headquarters and existing air base headquarters were renamed. It also significantly upgraded its radar and electronic warfare facilities. The Burmese Air Force bought more than 100 aircraft from the

FT-6M trainers, K-8 trainers and Y-8 transport aircraft
.

In 1989, the Burmese Air Force was renamed the Myanmar Air Force in accordance with the country changing its name from

Burma to Myanmar
.

In December 1990, the Myanmar Air Force took the first delivery from China of 10 F7 IIK interceptors and two FT-7 Trainers followed by another batch of 12 F7 IIK interceptors in May 1993. Further deliveries of F7 IIK interceptors were made in 1995, 1998 and 1999.

By 2000, the Myanmar Air Force has received 62

Elbit
contract was won in 1997, the air force has acquired at least one more squadron of F-7 and FT-7 aircraft from China, but these were not upgraded.

Between 1992 and 2000, the Myanmar Air Force took delivery of 36

A-5C Ground Attack Aircraft from China. In addition, the Myanmar Air Force also bought 20 Soko G-4 Super Galeb armed jet trainers from Yugoslavia
in 1991, but only approximately 6 aircraft were delivered due to the break up of Yugoslavia.

President Htin Kyaw and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, pass in front of the MAF Honour Guards during an arrival ceremony at the Presidential Palace, Naypyidaw in 2017.

The Myanmar Air Force procured a range of helicopters from

Bell 205 helicopters carried out search and rescue, and they flew 263 missions with over 114 flying hours.[2]

In 2001, the Myanmar Air Force bought 12

Mil Mi-35 gunship helicopters as part of a $71 million defence package signed in December 2009.[8]

Despite these modernisation measures, the capability of the Myanmar Air Force remained questionable, due to its absence during the Battle of Border Post 9631 with Thailand and the rescue missions related to Cyclone Nargis in May 2008.

A contract had been signed in December 2015 with

JF-17 Thunder has been suspended by Pakistan.[9] However, four JF-17IIs were seen at Air Force Day celebrated in December 2018. Under a bilateral contract, the MAF ordered six Su-30SM fighters from Russia in 2018.[10]

Since the military coup in February 2021, Myanmar Air Force aircraft have been used in airstrikes on villages,[11] killing noncombatant civilians including elders, humanitarian workers and children while forcing thousands of others to flee their homes.

Commanders in Chief and Chiefs of Air Staff since 1948

Commander-in-Chief and Chief of Air Staff in chronological order:

ID Rank Name Serial
1
Wing Commander
 Saw Shi Sho BAF1020
2 Major Tommy Clift (T. Clift) BAF1005
3 Lieutenant Colonel
Thura
Selwyn James Khin 		BAF1009
4 Brigadier General
Thura
Tommy Clift 		BAF1005
5 Brigadier General Thaung Dan BAF1042
6 Major General
Thura
Saw Phyu 		BAF1047
7 Major General Ko Gyi BAF1059
8 Lieutenant General Tin Tun BAF1127
9 Lieutenant General Thein Win BAF1193
10 Lieutenant General Tin Ngwe BAF1312
11 Lieutenant General Kyaw Than BAF1334
12 Major General Myint Swe BAF1587
13
General
 Myat Hein BAF1682
14
General
 Khin Aung Myint BAF1754
15
General
 Maung Maung Kyaw BAF1925
16
General
 Htun Aung BAF1982

Rank structure

Main article: Military ranks of Myanmar

Commissioned officer ranks

The rank insignia of

commissioned officers
.

Rank group General / flag officers Senior officers Junior officers Officer cadet
 Myanmar Air Force
 General
ဗိုလ်ချုပ်မှူးကြီး
bauilaʻ khayupaʻ mahūʺkarīʺ 		ဒုတိယ ဗိုလ်ချုပ်မှူးကြီး
dautaiya bauilaʻ khayupaʻ mahūʺkarīʺ 		ဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီး
bauilaʻ khayupaʻ karīʺ 		ဒုတိယ ဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီး
dautaiya bauilaʻ khayupaʻ karīʺ 		ဗိုလ်ချုပ်
bauilaʻ khayupaʻ 		ဗိုလ်မှူးချုပ်
bauilaʻ mahūʺkhayupaʻ 		ဗိုလ်မှူးကြီး
bauilaʻ mahūʺkrīʺ 		ဒုတိယ ဗိုလ်မှူးကြီး
dautaiya bauilaʻ mahūʺ krīʺ 		ဗိုလ်မှူး
bauilaʻ mahūʺ 		ဗိုလ်ကြီး
bauilaʻ krīʺ 		ဗိုလ်
bauilaʻ 		ဒုတိယ ဗိုလ်
dautaiya bauilaʻ 		ဗိုလ်လောင်း
bauilaʻ laeāṅaʻʺ

Other ranks

The rank insignia of non-commissioned officers and enlisted personnel.

Rank group Senior NCOs Junior NCOs Enlisted
 Myanmar Air Force
 No insignia No insignia
အရာခံဗိုလ်
’araākhaṃ bauilaʻ 		ဒုတိယအရာခံဗိုလ်
dautaiya ’araākhaṃ bauilaʻ 		အုပ်ခွဲတပ်ကြပ်ကြီး
aupaʻ khavai tapaʻ karpaʻ karīʺ 		တပ်ကြပ်ကြီး
tapaʻ karpaʻ karīʺ 		တပ်ကြပ်
tapaʻ karpaʻ 		ဒုတိယတပ်ကြပ်
dautaiya tapaʻ karpaʻ 		တပ်သား
tapaʻ saāʺ 		တပ်သားသစ်
tapaʻ saāʺ sacaʻ

Organisations

  • Air Force headquarters, Ministry of Defence (Naypyitaw)[2]
  • Aircraft Production and Repair Base Headquarters (Hmawbi)
  • Air Force - Ground Training Base (Meiktila)
  • Air Force - Fly Training Base (Shante)

Air bases

Meiktila Shante Air Base

Myanmar Air Force also utilised civilian airfields as front-line air fields in case of foreign invasion.

Air Defence

Main article:
Office of the Chief of Air Defence (Myanmar)

The Office of the chief of Air Defence is one of the major branches of the Tatmadaw. It was established as the Air Defence Command in 1997 but was not fully operational until late 1999. It was renamed the Bureau of Air Defence in the early 2000s.In early 2000s, the Tatmadaw established the Myanmar Integrated Air Defence System (MIADS) with help from Russia, Ukraine and China. It is a tri-service bureau with units from all three branches of Myanmar Armed Forces. All Air Defence assets except Anti-Aircraft Artillery are integrated into MIADS.[12]

Equipment

Aircraft

A MiG-29B sits on the tarmac
A Shaanxi Y-8 lifts off from Yangon International Airport
A Nanchang A-5C Fantan
A Myanmar Air Force Fokker F27
Aircraft Origin Type Variant In service Notes
Combat Aircraft
MiG-29 Russia multirole SE/SM/UB 30[13] 5 used for conversion training[13]
Sukhoi Su-30 Russia multirole Su-30SME 2[13] 4 on order[13]
Nanchang Q-5 China attack A-5 20[13]
Chengdu J-7 China fighter F-7M 26[13] 6 used for conversion training[13]
Shenyang J-6 China fighter F-6 1[13] Chinese built version of the
MiG-19
JF-17 Thunder Pakistan multirole JF-17E 11 5 on order[13]
Transport
ATR-42 / ATR 72
 France VIP transport 10[13] of which four are
ATR-72s[14]
Shaanxi Y-8 China transport 6[13]
Harbin Y-12 China transport 7[13]
Fokker 70 Netherlands VIP transport 2[15]
Pilatus PC-6
 Switzerland utility / transport 5[13] STOL capable aircraft
Beechcraft 1900 United States utility / transport 7[13]
Britten-Norman BN-2
 United Kingdom maritime patrol 5[13]
Helicopters
Mil Mi-2 Poland utility / liaison 22[13]
Mil Mi-17 Russia utility 13[13]
Mil Mi-24 Russia attack
Mi-35P
 9[13]
Bell 206 United States utility 3[13]
Bell UH-1 United States utility 2[13]
Alouette III France utility 13[13]
Kamov Ka-27 Russia utility / CSAR Ka-28 2[16]
PZL W-3 Sokół Poland utility 12[13]
Trainer Aircraft
Yak-130
 Russia advanced trainer 18[13]
Soko G-4 Yugoslavia trainer / light attack 3[13]
Hongdu JL-8 China jet trainer K-8 12[13] 50 on order[13]
Grob G 120TP Germany basic trainer 20[13]
Pilatus PC-7 Switzerland light trainer 16[13]
Guizhou JL-9 China
LIFT
 FTC 2000G 6[13] unspecified number on order[17]
Pilatus PC-9 Switzerland trainer 10[13]
Eurocopter EC120 France rotorcraft trainer 3[13]
UAV
Sky 02 China surveillance 11[18]
CASC Rainbow China
UCAV
 CH-3A 12[18]
CASC Rainbow[19] China
UCAV
 CH-4 produced under license[20]
Yellow Cat A2 Myanmar surveillance 22[18] domestic variant of the CH-3A

Armament

Name Origin Type Notes
Air-to-air missile
PL-2 China
air to air missile
 340 missiles obtained[21]
PL-5 China
Air to air missile
 200 missiles obtained[22]
PL-12 China Air to air BVR missile 60 missiles obtained[22]
R-27 Russia Air to air BVR missile 100 missiles obtained[22]
R-73 Russia Air to air Short range IR Missile 285 missiles obtained[22]
Anti-ship missile
YJ-83 China 30 missiles obtained[21]
Aerial bomb
LY-502 China unknown[23]

Radars

The Air Force has several radar installations including the three-dimensional surveillance

Integrated Air Defence office.[12][24][25][26][27][21]

Markings

Myanmar national insignia (white triangle with yellow field in the centre and borders in blue) is usually applied on six positions. The serialling system of Myanmar Air Force aircraft is suggested to serve as both – unit and individual aircraft identity, this could not be confirmed so far, however. Most of the older aeroplanes carried the serials with the prefix "UB" and the numbers in Burmese. Sometimes the serials were outlined in white. Combat aircraft generally carry serials in black.

Accidents and incidents

On 11 June 2014, a

Mig-29UB caught fire and crashed on to farmland near Myothit township of Magway at 8:30 a.m. (local time). Two pilots safely ejected.[28]
[29] [30]

On 10 February 2016, a Beech 1900 aircraft crashed after taking off from Naypidaw Airport, killing 5 military personnels.[31]

On 14 June 2016, a

Taungngu airbase, killing three military servicemen on board.[32]

2017 Myanmar Air Force Shaanxi Y-8 crash: On 7 June 2017, a Shaanxi Y-8 was reported missing 30 nautical miles (56 km) west to Dawei. The aircraft was carrying 122 people. There were no survivors.

On 3 April 2018, An F-7 fighter aircraft of Taungoo Air Base has crashed into a farm near KyunKone Village in Taungoo. It is learned that the F-7, which is used as a training aircraft, was believed to have crashed while trying to land the ground at around 11:30 am. It is reported that a pilot was killed on the spot during the crash.[33]

On 16 October 2018, two Myanmar F-7Ms crashed near Magway, Myanmar, killing both pilots and a civilian on the ground. Both aircraft struck a broadcast tower. One plummeted into a rice paddy, while the other nose-dived near a Buddhist pagoda in the Magway region of central Myanmar.[34]

On 3 May 2021, one Mi-35 helicopter was shot down near the town of Moemauk in Kachin province by the Kachin Independence Army in response to the MAF's air raid. There was no confirmation from the MAF nor the KIA on which AA system was used by the KIA in the incident.[35][36]

On 11 June 2021, a Beechcraft 1900 crashed on its landing approach to Pyin Oo Lwin's airport, killing 12 people including a senior Buddhist monk, the abbot of Zay Kone Monastery in Pyinmana.[37]

On 16 February 2022, an A-5 fighter jet crashed near Ohn Taw village in Sagaing Region.[38]

On 29 March 2022, a

Mi-17 helicopter crashed and injured five people on board near Hakha, Chin State.[39]

On 11 November 2023, a K-8W trainer aircraft of the Myanmar Air Force crashed in

Karenni State. Local rebels claimed to have shot it down, while the Myanmar Air Force claimed that it was a mechanical failure, and the pilot was later captured.[40]

On 3 January 2024, a

Mi-17 was shot down by the Kachin Independence Army using FN-6 MANPAD in Waimaw Township, Kachin State, killing all seven people on board.[41]

On 16 January 2024, the

northern Shan State.[42]

In January 2024, a Myanmar Air Force Y-8 on a mission to evacuate troops who had sought refuge in Mizoram, India, overshot its landing in Lengpui Airport. There were no deaths but the plane was badly damaged.[43]

On 29 January 2024, the Karen National Liberation Army shot down a Junta helicopter above Myawaddy Township near the Thai border. During the incident Brigadier General Aye Min Naung, the 44th LI Division commander, Colonel Soe Tun Lwin, LI Battalion 9's acting commander, pilot Colonel Toe Oo and two army captains were supposedly killed according to military sources.[44]

On 29 February 2024, one MiG-29SMT fighter of Myanmar Air Force crashed in southwest of Salin District, Magway Region. This aircraft crashed when it was on its way to combat mission, Myanmar military blamed the crash on a technical failure. One pilot ejected successfully and escaped the crash.[45][46]

See also

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Air force of Myanmar.
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Bibliography

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