page_title: Armed Forces of the Republic of Moldova
section_title: Air Force Command
hierarchical_section_title: Armed Forces of the Republic of Moldova / National Army / Air Force Command
caption_attribution_description: English: A MiG-29B trainer is readied for air shipment from Moldova to the United States on Oct. 8, 1997. The Department of Defense of the United States of America and the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Moldova recently reached an agreement to implement the Cooperative Threat Reduction accord signed on June 23, 1997, in Moldova. This agreement authorized the United States Government to purchase nuclear-capable MiG-29 fighter planes from the Government of Moldova. This is a joint effort by both governments to ensure that these dual-use military weapons do not fall in to the hands of rogue states.
context_page_description: The Armed Forces of the Republic of Moldova consist of the National Army and the Trupele de Carabinieri under the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Until 2012, the Moldovan Border Police belonged to the armed forces.
context_section_description: In 1994 the Moldovan Air Force consisted of 1,300 men organized into one fighter regiment, one helicopter squadron, and one missile brigade. Armaments used by the air force included thirty-one MiG-29 Fulcrum aircraft, eight Mi-8 Hip helicopters, five transport aircraft (including an Antonov An-72 Coaler), and twenty-five SA-3 Goa/SA-5 Gammon surface-to-air missiles.
  The 86th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment had been located at Mărculești since October 1951, and had been reequipped with MiG-29s in 1988. It had been part of the 119th Fighter Aviation Division, which had been resubordinated to the Soviet Black Sea Fleet since December 1989.
  Twenty-one of the MiG-29s were sold to the United States in October 1997 to prevent their sale on the world market, and for research purposes. All the spare parts for those aircraft were also purchased, as were the accompanying 500 air-to-air missiles.
   All the aircraft were transported from Moldova to the National Air Intelligence Center (NAIC) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio in Boeing C-17 Globemaster III transport planes over a period of two weeks.
  As of 2006 all the MiG-29 fighters had either been sold or scrapped, and the Moldovan Air Force had only 2 An-2 Colts, 1 An-26 Curl, 2 An-72 Coalers, 8 Mi-8 Hips, and 12 SA-3 'Goa' SAMs in service, manned by 1,040 personnel.
caption: A Moldovan MiG-29UB trainer in 1997.
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