Chkalovsky Air Base

Chkalovsky (ICAO: UUMU, IATA: CKL) is a Russian military air base near Shchyolkovo, Moscow Oblast, some 31 km northeast of Moscow. The name is also rendered as Chkalovskoye; the facility is distinct from the Kaliningrad Chkalovsk and Omsk Chkalovsk airfields.

The site was selected in 1929 for a new Soviet flight test base serving the whole of the USSR. Construction included what was then the largest reinforced concrete slab runway in the Soviet Union, together with wind tunnels, hypobaric chambers, dedicated aircraft weighing scales, a research plant and associated laboratory and test facilities. A launch slide — an early prototype of the ski-jump take-off ramp later used on aircraft carriers, and known locally as "Chkalovskaya" — was subsequently added to assist the departure of heavy aircraft, principally the experimental ANT-25 (RD).

Between 1932 and 1935 the State Flight Testing Institute was transferred to Chkalovsky from Khodynka, the Central Airfield in Moscow. The base remained the principal Soviet flight test centre until a reorganisation in December 1960, when the bulk of test activity was relocated to Akhtubinsk in Astrakhan Oblast.

Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, a number of units were formed at Chkalovsky: the 401st, 402nd and 403rd fighter aviation regiments, the 410th and 411th dive bomber regiments, the 420th and 421st heavy bomber regiments, the 430th assault regiment, a reconnaissance squadron, and the 760th, 761st and 762nd airfield service battalions.

Chkalovsky provides air support to Star City and the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonauts Training Center, and previously to the wider Soviet space programme, a function continued under the Russian Federal Space Agency. The base received the Soviet Union's first Il-76K, configured for cosmonaut weightlessness training, on 23 July 1977.

The airfield is also a transport base. The 8th Special Purpose Aviation Division, redesignated the 6991st Air Base in 2009–10, operates from Chkalovsky with Antonov An-12, Antonov An-72, Tupolev Tu-154 and Ilyushin Il-76 aircraft, along with the Il-86VKP airborne command post. An-148 transports, Il-20 special mission aircraft and Mil Mi-28 helicopters have also been present at the base.