RUSSIAN HELICOPTERS OBORONPROM group february 2009 • Special edition for Aero India 2009 MIL MOSCOW KAMOV ULAN UDE KAZAN ROSTVERTOL KUMERTAU “PROGRESS” ARSENIEV “VPERED” MOSCOW STUPINO MACHINE-BUILDING NOVOSIBIRSK R.E.T. KRONSTADT HELICOPTER HELICOPTER PLANT AVIATION PLANT HELICOPTER PLANT AVIATION PLANT AIRCRAFT COMPANY MACHINE-BUILDING PRODUCTION ENTERPRISE AIRCRAFT REPAIR SERVICE COMPANY PLANT AND OVERHAUL PLANT advertising Sukhoi fighters in India [p.8] Vikramaditya back in water [p.12] New helicopters entering service MiG-35 [p.28] OBORONPROM United Industrial Corporation OJSC 27, Stromynka str., Moscow, 107076, Russia e-mail: [email protected] favourite of MMRCA tender [p.18] www.oboronprom.ru Russian airliners production in 2008 [p.38] february 2009 Editor-in-Chief Andrey Fomin Deputy Editor-in-Chief Vladimir Shcherbakov Editor Yevgeny Yerokhin Columnist Alexander Velovich Special correspondents Alexey Mikheyev, Vladimir Karnozov, Victor Drushlyakov, Andrey Zinchuk, Valery Ageyev, Dear reader, Alina Chernoivanova, Natalya Pechorina, Marina Lystseva, Dmirty Pichugin, Sergey Krivchikov, You are holding a new issue of the Take-Off magazine, a supplement Sergey Popsuyevich, Piotr Butowski, to Russian national monthly aerospace magazine VZLET. This issue has Alexander Mladenov, Miroslav Gyurosi been timed with Aero India 2009 air show to be held in the “capital city” of India’s aviation – Bangalore. Design and pre-press Grigory Butrin By tradition, the aerospace show in Bangalore has been attended by numerous Russian participants and businessmen. Small wonder, since Web support India has long been among the main partners of our country in the field Georgy Fedoseyev of arms trade, specifically, in aerospace sphere. Translation Russian aircraft have been delivered to India for almost half century. Yevgeny Ozhogin Since the 1960s, the bulk of the Indian Air Force’s fighter and fighter- bomber fleets has been made up by MiG and Sukhoi warplanes, with a Cover picture large number of the MiG-21 fighters and MiG-27 fighter-bombers were Piotr Butowski made by India under Soviet licence and assembly of one of the world’s best fighters, the Su-30MKI, having kicked off in India recently. Publisher Licence production of the Russian combat aircraft is only one of the signs of the surging cooperation between the two countries. Ten years ago Indo-Russian joint venture BrahMos Aerospace, a developer and manufacturer of cutting-edge BrahMos supersonic cruise missile system, Director General launched its operations. Later on, a range of other important agreements Andrey Fomin concerning joint aerospace programmes have been signed with an intergovernmental agreement on co-development and co-production of Deputy Director General Nadezhda Kashirina the prospective fifth generation fighter by Russia’s Sukhoi company and India’s HAL corporation is one of the most important among them. Marketing Director At present, Russia’s MiG Corp. is fulfilling the contract on developing, George Smirnov manufacturing and delivering a batch of MiG-29K/KUB carrierborne fighters to the Indian Navy to equip the air wing of the Vikramaditya Director for international projects carrier now under repair and modernisation in Russia also. The Alexander Velovich customer’s representatives have been immediately engaged in the programme. Next key steps along the path of the Russian-Indian military- technical cooperation may be the acquisition of advanced MiG-35 News items for “In Brief” columns are prepared by editorial Generation 4++ fighters offered by Russian side for the IAF tender for staff based on reports of our special correspondents, press 126 medium multirole combat aircraft (MMRCA). All these programmes releases of production companies as well as by using information of Russian-Indian aerospace cooperation became the main topics of this distributed by ITAR-TASS, ARMS-TASS, Interfax-AVN, RIA Novosti, issue. By tradition, you can find also here a brief rundown on some other RBC news agencies and published at www.aviaport.ru, www.avia.ru, recent news and achievements of the Russian aerospace industry over www.gazeta.ru, www.cosmoworld.ru web sites past several months. Items in the magazine placed on this colour background or supplied I wish all the exhibitors and visitors of Aero India 2009 interesting with a note “Commercial” are published on a commercial basis. meetings, useful contacts and lucrative contracts! See you again at next Editorial staff does not bear responsibility for the contents of such items. air shows! The magazine is registered by the Federal Service for supervision of Sincerely, observation of legislation in the sphere of mass media and protection of cultural heritage of the Russian Federation. Registration certificate PI FS77-19017 dated 29 November 2004 Andrey Fomin © Aeromedia, 2009 Editor-in-chief Take-Off magazine P.O. Box 7, Moscow, 125475, Russia Tel. +7 (495) 644-17-33, 798-81-19 Fax +7 (495) 644-17-33 E-mail: [email protected] http://www.take-off.ru contents CONTRACTS AND DELIVERIES . 4 Beriev and Vega carry on with AEW systems Ka-226T is ready for Indian tender february 2009 AL-55I trials on MiG-AT started First An-74TK-300 built for Libya Indian An-32 upgrade may start this year 4 Sukhoi fighters in India Sukhoi fighters have flown in the Indian skies for 40 years. The story dates back to the late ‘60s, when the Indian Air Force bought a large batch of Su-7BMK fighter-bombers that became the first supersonic strike aircraft in service with IAF, giving it new tactical qualities, and proven themselves in the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war conflict. Su-7BMK had long been the mainstay of IAF’s fighter-bomber fleet, but time flies and they started being phased out gradually in the mid-’80. Nonetheless, IAF did not abandon the Sukhoi brand name. Moreover, Sukhoi jets are the service’s backbone now. The unique Su-30MKI supermanoeuvrable multirole fighter, which has spawned a whole family of derivatives and sold well on the global market, owes its emergence to an Indian order. The Su-30MKI has been in service with IAF since 2002 and repeatedly displayed its superiority to the cream of the crop of West European and US fighters on several combined exercises. To cap it all, the Su-30MKI has become, essentially, Sukhoi’s first project implemented through large-scale cooperation with manufacturers of both the customer country and major third-party companies. Mention should be made that the Su-30MKI delivery was just the first step towards the Russian-Indian cooperation in warplane development. The scope of the cooperation expanded with the kick-off of the large-scale Sukhoi licence production programme, under which HAL was to make 140 Su-30MKIs in India. A new phase of the 8 cooperation may be the unprecedented contract for joint development of a fifth-generation multirole fighter by Sukhoi and HAL, which is being drafted now. Vikramaditya gets launched while Indian pilots master MiG-29K The implementation of the Russian-Indian contract on overhauling and upgrading the Admiral Gorshkov through-deck aircraft carrying cruiser, which is turning into a classic aircraft carrier and will be commissioned by the Indian Navy as Vikramaditya, passed another key milestone on 4 December 2008. On that day after three years of repairs in a drained flooding dock of the Sevmash yard, the ship got back in its element – the dock 12 was flooded and the carrier was taken out of it to the fitting-out wharf of the Severodvinsk-based company for completion and outfitting. There have been important developments out of Moscow as well. Indian military pilots have begun to learn the ropes on the main weapon of the advanced Indian aircraft carrier – the MiG-29K and MiG-29KUB carrierborne fighters. Last year, the Lukhovitsy Production Centre of the MiG Corp. built, tested and prepared the first four production aircraft for delivery. In November and December, the warplanes were used heavily in Lukhovitsy as part of the conversion training of the lead team of Indian pilots who had completed their ground school and sharpened their flying skills in piloting the fighter on the high-tech MiG-29K simulator developed and made by the MiG Corp. under the same contract. Su-30MKI + BrahMos = new capabilities of Indian Air Force Today, Su-30MKI two-seat multirole supermanoeuvrable fighters are the image warplanes of the Indian Air Force and the cutting-edge weapon in the service’s inventory. To date, Irkut Corp. has delivered over 50 aircraft 16 like that to IAF, while the ongoing licence production of the fighter by HAL’s manufacturing plants, coupled with new deliveries from Russia, will enable IAF by the middle of next decade to operate as many as 230 aircraft, most of which will have remained in the inventory until 2030–40. The Su-30MKI programme is not sitting on its hands. Because the Su-30MKI production and deliveries are to go on for at least five years more and its service for at least a quarter of the century, the question of its further refinement is on the agenda now. Fitting the IAF Su-30MKI fleet with the sophisticated BrahMos-A precision-guided long-range multirole air-to-surface missile under development by the Russian-Indian joint venture is seen as a priority as part of such work. The venture has developed and delivered the shipborne and land-based BrahMos missile systems to the Indian Navy and Army. What new capabilities can the BrahMos offer, once fitted with the Su-30MKI? MILITARY AVIATION . 18 MiG-35: favourite of MMRCA tender 28 August 2007 saw the official kickoff of a largest-scale combat aircraft acquisition tender – the Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) programme estimated at $11 billion and providing for the Indian Air Force to buy 126 medium multirole fighters. On that day, the Indian government issued official request for proposals to the bidders.