In the year 2025, several hundred of the iconic MiG-21 remain in service. Exact numbers are difficult to pin down but that number is about to shrink again as India prepares to retire its last examples. At the dawn of the jet age, the MiG-15 set the pace for dogfighting in the new era. The great success of engineers’ first combat fighter jet led to a legendary successor, namely the MiG-21.

According to historical data provided by MiG-21.de, the total output reached between 10,158 or 10,645 aircraft in Soviet Union factories from 1965 to 1985. China, Czechoslovakia and India each produced their own variants of the iconic fighter jet, writing their own chapters in the MiG-21’s history. The MiG-21 adopted different names, wings, and electronics in all three countries, but the fundamental concept remained the same.

The MiG-21 Force In Today’s World

Using a variety of sources across the web, we can piece together a picture of what the global fleet looks like now. Combining the numbers of MiG-21 and J-7s, we get a probable result of 880 jets in service around the world. Given the scarcity of reliable statistics for even the largest operator, the People's Republic of China (PRC), that is ultimately not a firm figure but a good estimate.

Serbia retired its MiG-21 fleet in 2021, and Romania followed suit in 2023. The final European operator dissolved its fleet last year when Croatia retired the final examples. Now India is preparing to retire its own, domestically produced fleet of MiG-21 Bison fighters later this year, as NDTV reports. That just leaves China and a handful of small operators around the world with active-duty MiG-21s, or J-7s, still in service.

MiG-21 By The Numbers

The Fishbed-A took to the air for the first time in 1955. Only a handful were built, but they set the template: two NR-30 cannons nestled in the wing roots and a delta wing that carried the diminutive fighter to nearly Mach 2. Combat doctrine was shifting toward missile warfare when the jet entered service, and Soviet leaders wanted to arm it with guided weapons.

The successor was the MiG-21F, dubbed the Fishbed-C by NATO. Outwardly indistinguishable to the untrained eye, the “F” featured a pair of under-wing pylons for the K-13 infrared-homing missiles, Soviet counterparts to the United States Air Force Sidewinder.

From the late 1950s through the mid-1980s, there were three factories: Gorky’s Plant 21, Moscow’s “Znamiya Truda” Plant 30, and Tbilisi’s Plant 31. These lines kept the airframe in constant supply, turning out machines for the Motherland and for virtually every corner of the export market. Gorky, now Nizhny Novgorod, built the lion’s share of somewhere between 5,278 and 5,765 fighters that went chiefly to Soviet squadrons.

The Decline In The Global Fleet

Short-range and strictly a fair-weather hunter, the MiG-21F nonetheless marked the point where gunfighter tradition met missile-age ambition. Moscow would approve foreign orders that added about 3,203 machines to the global fleet. One guideline rarely changed, however: only after a new variant had entered Soviet service were earlier models released for export.

After almost six decades on the flight line and over 600 domestically produced examples, the Indian Air Force’s MiG-21 is headed for retirement. In September 2025, the last 36 airframes will stand down, making room for the newer, more agile Tejas Mk 1A. Since 1963, over 900 of the jets served as the service’s backbone, holding that role until Sukhoi Su-30MKIs began arriving in the mid-2000s.

Exactly how many J-7/F-7s emerged from the plants at Shenyang, Chengdu and Guizhou remains unclear, but MiG-21.de estimates from 2,400 to 2,800 in total, including roughly 500 exports. Full-rate production of the Czech S-106 stretched from 1962 to 1972 and produced 194 aircraft. The last home-built Fishbeds retired from service in the early 1990s, closing the curtain on three decades of domestic production.

Made In China: Chengdu J-7

Born of Cold-War urgency and China’s determination to carve out a domestic aerospace industry, the J-7 began as a copy of the Soviet MiG-21 yet quickly grew a character of its own. Chengdu Aircraft Corporation would build the nimble, single-engine interceptor to defend the nation’s skies without breaking the defense budget. The result was a lightweight fighter that the People’s Liberation Army Air Force would come to rely on for almost half a century.

From the mid-1960s stand-up to the final aircraft that rolled off the line in 2013, more than 2,400 J-7s rolled out the doors of Chengdu’s factories. Engineers refined and re-refined the jet, ultimately spinning off 54 distinct subtypes. Of those, 28 were tailored for China’s domestic needs and 26 customized for export. Each new letter suffix designated a radar upgrade or new weapons hardpoint, with the occasional aerodynamic tweak.

As the reputation of the jet’s reliability and bargain price spread, overseas orders began to pour in. In 2005, AS Namibia signed up for a dozen, and in that same year, Bangladesh expanded with 40 more. Three years later, Nigeria welcomed 12 and a trio of trainers. Long-time partner Pakistan placed one of the largest orders in the program’s history: 120 F-7Ps followed by 60 of the F-7PGs. Sri Lanka joined the roster in 2010 with 13 airframes comprising the BS and G variants.

Smaller yet strategically significant batches found homes in the air forces of Sudan, Egypt, Tanzania, Yemen, Zimbabwe, Iran, Myanmar, and North Korea. Wherever they landed, the F-7s offered an affordable path to supersonic flight, giving nations without deep pockets a credible air-defense capability. Today, many of those slender delta-winged fighters still prowl the skies, a testament to the pragmatic design philosophy that guided their creation, although they may lack the stealth profiles and glass cockpits of newer jets.

The Making Of The Fishcan

When Beijing first negotiated a license for the MiG-21, relations with Moscow were still cordial. By the time blueprints and tooling began arriving, the Sino-Soviet split was in full swing, and Soviet advisers were on the next train home. Chinese engineers pressed ahead alone. Only a handful were finished before the Cultural Revolution froze production in 1969, but work resumed in 1972 and continued until around 1980.

In 1976, Chinese engineers were back at the drawing board with the J-7II. Distinguished by a rear-hinged canopy and a drag-chute housing shifted to the fin root. Its export alter ego, the F-7B, soon appeared with the roundels of Egypt, Iraq and Sri Lanka. The watershed moment, however, came at the 1987 Paris Air Show when Chengdu unveiled the F-7M.

Four under-wing hardpoints and an all-new avionics suite turned the once-spartan delta into a modern light fighter. Production would reportedly peak at twenty aircraft a month that year. F-7Ms were exported to Bangladesh, Iran, Myanmar, Pakistan and Zimbabwe. The PLAAF flew an identical version under the J-7M label.

A more radical branch of the family tree sprouted in the early 1980s with the J-7III. Externally it resembled the MiG-21MF as Chinese engineers had studied a Romanian MF airframe in 1976. Though it was never exported, it hinted at the program’s growing maturity. In the late-production J-7E for the PLAAF and F-7MG for export, both wore a distinctive double-delta wing that tamed low-speed handling without sacrificing dash speed.

Czech S-106s And Indian Bisons

In the early 1960s, Prague held a high place inside the Soviet Union,and its aerospace sector had already proven itself by license-building the MiG-15, -17 and -19. Approval to manufacture the MiG-21F-13 followed easily. Soviet kits arrived at Aero Vodochody late in 1961 for the first Czech-assembled jet. It would be known locally as the S-106 and first flew on 20 April 1962.

India secured its own license deal in August 1962, a fortnight before Chinese forces surged across the Himalayan frontier in a coincidence that inspired real urgency. The Nasik production line delivered its first locally built FL variant in late 1966 and ran until 1973. Meanwhile, preparations were underway for the MiG-21M, which remained in production until 1981.

The final MiG-21bis would be delivered in 1984. By the mid-1990s, the surviving Bis fleet was showing its age, so Hindustan Aeronautics and Russia’s Sokol plant teamed up to create the “Bison” upgrade. The first Bison aircraft flew on 31 August 2001 and joined an Air Force Day parade that October.