Russia’s Primary Air-to-Air Missile the R-77 Just Achieved its Most High Value Kill Ever

Russia’s most widely fielded class of active radar guided air-to-air missiles has achieved its most high value kill on record in over three decades of service. The missile was reported by Sudanese sources to have bene used to shoot down a United Arab Emirates Air Force transport Near Nyala Airport in the south of the country’s Darfur region. Previously Sudanese sources had only reported that an air-to-air precision attack had been launched, fuelling speculation that one of the country’s MiG-29S fighters procured in the 2000s had launched the attack. The Sudanese Air Force was the second service in Africa after the Algerian Air Force to procure the R-77, which provided its MiG-29s with a distinct advantage over the fighter units of neighbouring states such as Egypt and Ethiopia that continued to equip their fighters with Cold War era semi-active radar guided missiles. The R-77 is a direct counterpart to the American AIM-120 that provides ‘fire and forget’ capabilities, meaning it does not require continuous guidance from the launching aircraft to reach its target, which makes it considerably more flexible.

The R-77 was widely exported from the 1990s to clients including Algeria, Sudan, Yemen, Syria, India and China, but was notably not procured in significant numbers for use by the Russian Air Force due to an acute lack of funding. The Russian Defence Ministry began to procure the enhanced R-77-1 variant in the mid-2010s, by which time the design was already two decades old and considered far behind the capabilities of the most advanced American and Chinese missiles of its time the respective AIM-120D and PL-15. The more recent entry into service of the heavily enhanced R-77M variant in the early-mid 2020s, however, has provided a much more viable air-to-air capability for high intensity engagement.

The Sudanese Air Force was reportedly previously scheduled to phase its MiG-29 fleet out of service in the early-mid 2020s and procure Chinese J-10C fighters with PL-15 air-to-air missiles to replace them. A Western-backed coup in April 2019, however, resulted in a significant deterioration in ties with China and sharp economic decline over the following years, culminating in the outbreak of an insurgency supported by the United Arab Emirates and various European states in April 2023. This has forced the Sudanese Air Force to rely on its MiG-29 fleet for longer than intended.

The transport aircraft targeted by a Sudanese MiG-29 had been transporting over 40 Colombian military contractors and at least one senior UAE Army officer into Sudan, as well as UAE Armed Forces technical specialists to operate some of the more sophisticated hardware being supplied to the insurgency against the Sudanese state. The personnel onboard, and the size of the aircraft which would be required to accommodate them, makes the shootdown the most high value kill achieved by the R-77. The R-77 has seen intensive combat use in the Ukrainian theatre, with Russian Su-57 fifth generation fighters reported to be using the enhanced R-77M as part of the fighter class’ growing contributions to the war effort. No comparably high value targets are known to have been shot down, however. The R-77has not otherwise seen significant combat use, despite unconfirmed reports of limited use by the Indian Air Force against Pakistani targets.