Ukrainian NITKA: Grasp ALL, Lose All
... naval aircraft training facility NITKA, built in the 1970s -1980s near the city of Saki on the Crimean Peninsula, now Ukraine, which seems to be in terminal decline. Due to the Ukrainian leaders’ vacillation on cooperation in the defense-sector, Russia, NITKA’s main user, has launched construction on its own complex, as have India and China, who also have Soviet-built aircraft carriers. Inter-Slavic Dispute NITKA was put into service in August 1982, when the facility’s ramp was first used to ski-jump a T-10K, the prototype for the SU27K carrier-based fighter, later mass produced as SU-33. Until the late 1980s,...