August 13, 2025: Next month India will retire the last of its Russian-designed MiG-21 fighters. India is the last major country to abandon MiG-21s. This aircraft entered service in 1959. In 1986 MiG-21 production ceased, with 11,500 built. Most were built in Russia. Because of imports and locally manufactured ones, India ended up with 1,200 MiG-21s. Over the last 50 years India has lost at least 400 MiG-21s to accidents and a few more in combat. That earned the India MiG-s the Flying Coffin nickname. MiG-21 were rarely successful at shooting down enemy fighters, with fewer than a dozen kills, while American F-16’s have shot down 76 aircraft with only one loss.

The 8.8-ton MiG-21 was a remarkable jet fighter-interceptor in the 1960s, but even with upgrades the MiG-21 was unable to attain much air-to-air combat capability. It required precise ground-controller guidance to intercept targets, which pretty much limited it to attacking bombers. Many MiG-21s ended up as ground attack aircraft. The aircraft has an internal 23mm autocannon and 300 rounds of ammunition. Only four bombs, no heavier than half a ton each, can be carried. Pods with unguided rockets are sometimes used to attack ground targets.

Two years ago East European NATO member Romania finally retired the last of its MiG-21 fighters. This ended the nearly 70 years of MiG-21 use by European nations. Small numbers of MiG-21s still serve in a number of African countries. Romania has a small economy, and defense budget, compared to the original (West European) NATO countries and most other new East European NATO members. This has made it difficult, but not impossible, to upgrade its military to meet NATO standards. Romania replaced its MiG-21s with refurbished F-16s. There was an upgrade market for MiG-21s after the Cold War ended in 1991. Romania kept its MiG-21s relevant for a long time via periodic upgrades. This kept Romanian MiG-21s in service longer than anyone else’s. India's current potential opponents are Pakistan, with its F-16s and experienced pilots, and China with more locally produced fighters and relatively inexperienced pilots. China has a larger air force than India and is introducing two sixth generation stealth fighters

North Korea received MiG-21s the same year India did and claims to still have some in service. There is no proof of that and, in a war against the 167 South Korean, F-16s, forty F-35s, 50 F-15E attack aircraft as well as the South Korean designed and built KF-21 stealth fighters, the North Korean air force would be destroyed within hours.

The MiG-21 was the first successful Russian jet fighter with the largest number of any jet fighter built. Only 4,600 F-16s have been built so far and its production continues. During the 1970s Vietnam War North Vietnamese MiG-21s shot down 165 American and South Vietnamese aircraft while losing only 65 MiGs. This led to the U.S. to establish dissimilar training operations for the Air Force and Naval Aviation. This program continues to the present, giving Americans pilots an opportunity to conduct mock combat against enemy aircraft flown by U.S. pilots using foreign air combat weapons and tactics.

Twenty four years ago India carried out upgrades for its MiG-21s. Back then the Indian Air Force was authorized to have 45 fighter squadrons, each with about twenty aircraft. But because so many of its MiG-21, MiG-23 and Mig-27 fighters are wearing out so quickly, India only had about 28 squadrons by the end of 2021. Only about ten of those squadrons use modern aircraft like the Mig-29, Su-30 and Mirage 2000. The rest are older MiGs that were still flyable.

In 2018 India lost three more MiG-21 fighters, and three other aircraft as well. That's the good news, sort of. The Indian Air Force has made its MiG-21s safe, or at least safer, to fly. It hasn't been easy, or cheap. But for a long time, India lost at least ten MiG-21s a year.

In 2018, India had over 700 MiG-21s, with the most modern variant being the MiG 21bis. This was an upgrade of older MiG-21s, costing over $5 million per aircraft, which replaced electronic and mechanical items that had been identified as responsible for many accidents. This reduced the loss rate to about one crash for every 20,000 flight hours. The upgrade also made the aircraft viable for another decade.

The Indians became quite expert at making MiG-21s safer to fly. They found, and replaced components, like fuel pumps, that were responsible for many accidents. The Russians were, when the MiG-21 was designed, more into quantity than quality. They have since changed their minds, but the MiG-21s still around are the product of another era. Meanwhile, India has been trying to make those MiG-21s fly as frequently as Western warplanes, with disastrous results.

India also admitted that its high losses of MiG-21 aircraft were mainly due to poor maintenance by the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited/HAL. Until recently, most of the blame was directed at Russia, the designer of the aircraft and supplier of most of the components. Many of the locally built MiG21s built were done at HAL facilities. The Russians have pointed out that no other user of MiG-21s has such a high loss rate, and blamed Indian maintenance. Poor maintenance of Indian military equipment is nothing new. Management systems in India are known for lower standards than in the West. Multinationals must pay careful attention to the training and development of Indian supervisors and managers in order to achieve Western standards. While this works with most multinational firms, and many privately owned Indian companies, the large state owned operations like HAL are rife with corruption and lax management. The huge operational losses of the MiG-21 were usually blamed on Russia. It took a dozen years for the true culprit to be exposed. There was no assurance that HAL could clean up its act. HAL was not the first enterprise controlled by the Ministry of Defense to be caught screwing up, and later to be found incapable of cleaning up its act. HAL is a huge operation, in business since 1940, but 95 percent of its sales have been to the Indian government.

The many Indian problems with its Mig-21s were made in India.