Step (also Olovyannaya) is an air base in Chita, Russia located 14 km northwest of Yasnogorsk. It is a large air base with two revetment areas and numerous military fortifications. It is near an SS-11 missile field that was dismantled in the mid-1990s.
58th Fighter-Bomber Aviation Regiment (58 APIB) flying Su-17M3 and L-29 aircraft in the late 1980s, and receiving MiG-27 in the early 1990s. It was under 23rd Air Army (Trans-Baikal).
The base appears to have been closed after a boiler room fire in December 2009. Thereafter, the base was reopened and the 266th Independent Shturmovik Aviation Regiment was reformed with at least two squadrons of Sukhoi-25s in 2019.[3] The regiment by this time had been shifted into the Eastern Military District's 11th Air and Air Defence Forces Army.
As of 2024[update] satellite imagery shows runway 09/27 to be 3.10 km.
Lenskii, A.G.; Tsybin, M.M. (2014). Советские Войска ПВО в последние годы Союза ССР. Часть 2 [Soviet Air Defense Forces in the last years of the USSR: Part 2] (in Russian). St. Petersburg: Info Ol. OCLC861180616.