The President ordered to design more widely

Aviation design bureaus will gather in one center

Vladimir Putin yesterday visited the town of Zhukovsky near Moscow for the sixth time during his work as president of Russia. On the same day, Mr. Putin signed a decree establishing a national aircraft manufacturing center there. The attitude of aircraft manufacturers themselves to this idea can be described as ambivalent at best. However, now that the president has said “there is nothing to be afraid of, this is an absolutely realistic project,” the time for discussions on this topic seems to have passed. In addition, Vladimir Putin set the employees of the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) a task that just yesterday any industry expert would have called unrealistic: to design a new wide-body aircraft. Dmitry Medvedev, who arrived in Zhukovsky together with the current head of state, listened to the president’s instructions on the aviation industry along with others

The presidential visit was timed to coincide with the second anniversary of the decree on the creation of the KLA . Fundamentally, the issue of unifying the Russian aviation industry was resolved at a meeting of the State Council held in Zhukovsky a year ago. Yesterday, in the form of a “material” report on the work done under the UAC brand, Messrs. Putin and Medvedev were shown four domestic winged aircraft: the passenger Tu-334, the training Yak-130 and two fighters - the MiG-35 and Su-35 (the latter had just made its first test flight the day before). True, the design of the first two aircraft was completed in the “pre-UAC” era, and although the fighters took to the air under the auspices of the united corporation, they represent the development of the glorious MiG-29 and Su-27 families, rooted in the golden Soviet era of aircraft construction. However, there is nothing strange in this; fundamentally new aircraft are not made in two or three years.

Speaking to UAC employees, Vladimir Putin traditionally critically assessed the current state of the industry and focused on tasks for the future. He described the current state of the domestic aviation industry with the following words: “In recent decades, certain segments have degraded to a significant extent.” As for the future, the president noted: “Russia must have a widely diversified product range and specific guidelines for various segments of military, transport, and civil aviation. In principle, such tasks have already been formulated and set.”

In the following phrase, he formulated a task for the aviation industry that industry experts still considered impossible: “So, in civil aviation, the programs of a long-range aircraft of the 21st century, as well as a new wide-body airliner, must be implemented on time and at a high-quality level.” In the first half of this sentence, we are obviously talking about the promising MS-21 project, which was brought to the UAC by the Irkut corporation that merged with it. However, until yesterday, as far as is known, there were no plans to develop a domestic wide-body airliner at the UAC. Industry experts have come to the conclusion that the most modern domestic aircraft in this class existing today - the Il-96 - still cannot serve as the basis for creating a next-generation airliner. Our aviation industry does not have any other projects at any mature stage of readiness. The largest Russian airlines have already made a strategic decision to switch in the second decade of the 21st century to wide-body aircraft created by Western competitors - the American company Boeing and the European concern Airbus.

It is obviously planned to turn the situation around and catch up with foreign colleagues through the efforts of the National Aircraft Manufacturing Center. Yesterday, Mr. Putin personally announced that he had signed a decree on the creation of this structure in Zhukovsky. “Here it is necessary... to locate institutes and a joint engineering center; expand divisions of major companies operating both in the aircraft industry and in related industries; build a modern industrial, transport, engineering and, of course, social infrastructure. A network of scientific venture enterprises will be formed here. Additional opportunities should be offered for small businesses, for independent laboratories, design and research centers,” the president said. As for the so far more successful foreign aircraft manufacturing giants, the Russian president stated: “They also have a lot of organizational and financial problems there, experts know this well.”

Mikhail KUKUSHKIN