The 4th Air Army (4 Vozdushnaya Armiya) was a Soviet Air Force formation and from 1992 to 2009 was part of the Russian Air Force. From 1998 the army was designated the 4th Army of Air Forces and Air Defence. It was first established on 22 May 1942 from the Air Forces of the Soviet Southern Front, and fought on the Eastern Front until 1945. In 1949 it was redesignated the 37th Air Army. It was reformed on 4 April 1968 in Poland, and was active there with the Northern Group of Forces for over twenty years, shifting to the North Caucasus Military District in August 1992. The arrival of the Sukhoi Su-24 drastically changed its tasking in the 1980s.