32344 WARSAW PACT PILOTS

The Warsaw Pact was a political and military alliance of the Eastern bloc countries in which the USSR played a dominant role, which was emphasized, for example, by the fact that the Commander of the United Armed Forces of the Pact was always a high-ranking Soviet officer. The Pact included countries such as Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and, of course, the Soviet Union. The treaty was created in 1955 as a direct response to the remilitarization of West Germany carried out a year earlier (1954). It is estimated that at the end of the 1980s, the total number of combat aircraft in the Warsaw Pact forces was approximately 7,900 machines, of which approximately 6,000 were part of the Soviet armed forces. It is worth adding that Poland had around 480 combat aircraft at its disposal at that time. Of course, the aviation equipment of the Warsaw Pact troops was primarily Soviet (imported or licensed). So we are talking about machines such as the MiG-21, MiG-23, Su-22, and later also the MiG-29. The main tasks of the air forces of the Warsaw Pact countries included supporting their own offensive ground operations aimed at subjugating Western Europe, as well as trying to gain air superiority in the area of hostilities. It is worth adding that since the 1960s, the Warsaw Pact countries had a unified and de facto centralized anti-aircraft defense system based on Soviet equipment, such as S-75 or S-125 rocket launchers, based on the Soviet solutions.