The Mikoyan Gurevich MiG-21 fighter aircraft (NATO codename Fishbed) is:

• the most built jet aircraft at all
• the most built combat aircraft after World War II
• the longest built combat aircraft with 50 years of production
• the most widely used combat aircraft and served or serves with about 50 air forces on four continents
• an aircraft built in 20 different versions of four generations.

Even today about 500 MiG-21s and more than 1000 J-7 / F-7s (Chinese copies) belong to the inventory of world air forces. Beside this the MiG-21 for more than 20 years was the backbone of the Air Force / Air Defence of the GDR (East Germany).