Developments in Russia's aviation establishment

Back in November last year, in Weekend Wings #27, I asked: "Will the MiG name vanish into history?" I'm sorry to say that according to a recent report, the answer appears to be "Yes".

The head of Sukhoi’s holding company, Mikhail Pogosyan, has taken the general director’s chair of the rival fighter manufacturer MiG Corp. with an aim to integrate the latter company into United Aircraft Corp.’s (UAC) combat aircraft division.

MiG — which has in its structure a design bureau, two serial manufacturing plants in Moscow and Lukhovitcy, and also the controls activity of engine manufacturers Chernyshev and Klimov — needs urgent financial recovery. A recent audit revealed that its debt amounted to roughly $1.5 billion, according to reported figures. The collapse of a $1.3 billion export deal with Algeria on deliveries of 28 MiG-29SMTs and six MiG-29UBTs, as well as a lack of domestic orders, heave created serious problems with the corporation’s cash flow.

One of Pogosyan’s new tasks is to improve MiG’s financial position prior to its inclusion into UAC. He also intends to integrate both fighter manufacturers, Sukhoi and MiG, into a single efficient structure, which will develop, manufacture and support combat aviation UAC products.

“Our aim is to gain [synergistic] effect through infrastructure ... optimization, manufacturing cost [cutting], single technical politics development [and] after-sales service improvement,” Pogosyan said in his inauguration speech at MiG. He retains his posts of vice president of UAC and Sukhoi general director.

That's sad news for the once-proud MiG design bureau. It looks as if Russia's somewhat contracted defense industry can only support one mainline fighter development company, and MiG has lost out to Sukhoi in the battle for survival.

There's also interesting news about the proposed Sukhoi T-50 PAK-FA fifth-generation fighter project.







It may not be so advanced as Russia has claimed, and may be much slower in development than the politicians and generals would want.

Demanding that the PAK-FA appears "on time" shows that Putin and Co. have not spent enough time reading their briefing book on "why the Soviet Union failed as a nation-state." Rule number one from that briefing is that simply decreeing a desired outcome does not make it so. Even though Deputy Prime Minister and Chairman of the Board of Russia's Unified Aircraft-Building Corporation (OAK), Sergei Ivanov, stated in May 2007 that Pogosian had "confirmed that the first plane will make its maiden flight in late 2008," these technological obstacles have made it so that the first flight will now be at least a year late.

"The most likely near-term future for the PAK-FA is that there will be prototype demonstrators that make a number of flights -- just like the Mikoyan MFI 1.44 and Sukhoi S-37/Su-47 models -- and then the program may slow down or come to a halt altogether while industry tries to finish developing these on-board systems," said one analyst in Moscow familiar with the program.

The consensus of ... industry representatives ... is that overcoming these technology bottlenecks depends significantly on whether or not any foreign partners come on board to cooperate -- and bring some much-needed funding with them. Development of the avionics and radar components will require a significant investment in Russia's electronics industry sector, which has been neglected for years. Russia, now in the middle of the worst economic crisis to hit the nation since the hyperinflation of the 1990s, simply lacks the resources required to bring its largely dilapidated defense industrial base into the 21st century. The most optimistic estimate for the program is that production-series PAK-FA airplanes will not be flying in VVS service before 2016 and that export customers would receive their aircraft much later.

That makes sense. The Russians have engines and airframes of reasonable quality and high performance, but their avionics and electronics are at least one to two generations behind anything in the West - and they've never put a stealth aircraft into production before. Those are very big obstacles to overcome.

Mr. Pogosyan's move to head up the MiG design bureau may be as much an attempt to put the combined strengths of both Sukhoi and MiG to work on these problems, as a strategy to integrate their operations.

Peter