Bulgaria sent its MiG engines abroad to keep its MiGs flying.

Sofia signed a €9.5 million contract with Poland to overhaul six MiG-29 engines until its delayed F-16 Block 70s became operational. The old fleet depended on a workaround; the replacement depended on a delivery schedule.

Poland offered a bridge between them, although no public figure showed how many patrol hours it restored. Transition risk lives precisely here: the outgoing system becomes harder to sustain before the incoming one is ready.

For Bulgaria, an aircraft in a hangar is not air power.

There is a procurement fact hiding behind the public announcement: possession of the aircraft, vehicle or weapon is treated as proof of usable strength. What actually matters is maintenance crews, diagnostic tools, repair approvals, contractor access, payments and the flow of ordinary spare parts. That is the control point hiding behind the headline fact: Bulgaria sent its MiG engines abroad to keep its MiGs flying.

The supplier may never issue a written refusal. It can explain, review, consult and postpone. The result may still be to reduce availability month by month until an impressive inventory becomes a line of grounded equipment. Your forces experience the result long before your lawyers agree on the label. For Bulgaria, the warning is captured by what followed: Bulgaria sent its MiG engines abroad to keep its MiGs flying.

If you are buying, start with the questions the salesman would rather answer later. Which sealed units must go back to the original manufacturer? How many months of mission critical spares are held in-country? Can another approved company take over maintenance?

Doing every repair at home would be wasteful. Some foreign support is sensible. The mistake is allowing one inaccessible contractor, tool or approval to determine whether the whole fleet flies. That distinction matters here: Bulgaria sent its MiG engines abroad to keep its MiGs flying.

Run the failure as a tabletop exercise before it becomes a real one. Assume the controlling party decides to reduce availability month by month until an impressive inventory becomes a line of grounded equipment. Who notices first? Who has authority to activate the alternative? How many days of usable stock remain? If the answers require a new committee, a new budget and a new contract, you do not yet have a fallback. The exercise has a concrete starting point in this case: Bulgaria sent its MiG engines abroad to keep its MiGs flying.

Finally, ask what happens under pressure. What software, manuals and test equipment leave with the contractor? How quickly does fleet availability fall after foreign support stops? Which failures can your own technicians diagnose and repair? A contingency that has never been funded, integrated or exercised is only optimism with a heading. That is what 'Bulgaria sent its MiG engines abroad to keep its MiGs flying' should force a buyer to test.

Resilience has to be purchased deliberately. The programme should train national teams to diagnose faults rather than merely replace boxes, hold critical spares against a realistic interruption period and qualify a second maintenance route before the first one closes. If those items are unfunded, the independence claim is unfunded too. That is what 'Bulgaria sent its MiG engines abroad to keep its MiGs flying' should force a buyer to test.

The final test for Bulgaria is simple: how many aircraft, vehicles or weapons can actually deploy after six months without foreign contractor support? If the honest answer begins with 'provided that somebody else agrees', that condition belongs on the first page of the procurement decision, not in an annex nobody reads.

A grounded fleet still appears in the national inventory. It just does not appear over the battlefield when it is needed. The fleet you can repair is your fleet. The rest is borrowed availability. That is the practical question behind 'Bulgaria sent its MiG engines abroad to keep its MiGs flying'.