Yak-130: News

Training aviation base Krasnodar Higher Military Aviation School for Pilots "A.K. Serov" in the Kushchyovsky District received aircraft Yak-130.

Thus it became the third training aviation base that received the Yak-130 training and combat aircraft after the KVVULL training air bases in Borisoglebsk and Armavir.

Presumably, the Kushchevskaya airbase received ten Yak-130 airplanes built in 2018 by the Irkutsk Aviation Plant (IAP) of Irkut Corporation PJSC with red hull numbers from “30” to “39”, transferred to VKS from June to October 2018.

In total, to date, the Russian Ministry of Defense has received 109 Yak-130 serial aircraft - of these, 12 of the first two series were built at the Nizhny Novgorod Aviation Plant Sokol, and another 97 at the Irkutsk Aviation Plant. Of this number, according to available data, as part of the KVVAUL aviation base in Borisoglebsk, there are now 40 Yak-130 airplanes (including eight actually unexploited Nizhny Novgorod built vehicles), and 45 aircraft in the KVVAUL aviation training base in Armavir KVVAUL air base in Kushchevskaya. Also, according to available information, eight Yak-130 airplanes are in Akhtubinsk. Another four airplanes are lost in flight accidents and two aircrafts built in Nizhny Novgorod are used as ground-based training aids.

https://bmpd.livejournal.com/3422309.html

Repair of the first Yak-130 aircraft completed

As reported on August 7, 2019, JSC 121 Aviation Repair Plant (Kubinka, Moscow Region), it successfully completed flight tests of the first combat trainer Yak-130 after repair at the enterprise. The aircraft is fully operational and will be handed over to the customer in the near future.



 The first undergone repair at JSC 121 Aircraft Repair Plant (Kubinka, Moscow Region) Yak-130 combat trainer (tail number 30 red, formerly 30 white, former, presumably airborne 92 red, serial number 01-01, registration number RF-81670), August 2019 (c) JSC 121 Aircraft Repair Plant


 Comment by bmpd. Thus, JSC 121 Aviation Repair Plant successfully mastered the repair of the Yak-130 aircraft and completed the repair for the Russian Aerospace Forces of the first aircraft of this type, which is a significant milestone in the history of the Yak-130. Judging by the photographs, the first repaired Yak-130 was a plane with tail number "30 red" (former "30 white", the former, presumably, board "92" red, serial number 01-01) - one of three received on 121- th ARZ in 2017, Yak-130 aircraft (the original white tail numbers are "21", "24" and "30"), belonging to 10 aircraft of the first production series built at Sokol Nizhny Novgorod Aviation Plant JSC in 2009-2010 , and recent years in storage. As you can judge, this aircraft is the first Yak-130 built on the Sokol and the first production Yak-130 aircraft in general.

https://bmpd.livejournal.com/3732193.html

JohninMK wrote:Is this a repaired from damage etc or upgraded aircraft?

The first 10 built were defective and production moved to another plant. They have been sitting in storage until now. The why and what is unknown.

The problem is the Yak-130 is not really a cheap aircraft... the concept of a LIFT fighter (lead in fighter trainer being used as a light fighter) is that you have them anyway and you can justify their higher price by using them for other roles like light strike and short range air defence.

The problem is that while expensive for a trainer, they are not super useful as a light strike aircraft... especially when you have an Su-25SM3 in service that would be much better suited to light strike roles. As a light interceptor with a radar and a self defence electronic pod it would be useful against third world country fighters like unupgraded MiG-21s etc, and for airspace patrol on the cheap, but for interception of serious targets it is simply too slow... you would need to probably replace the two engines with a single more powerful engine with AB to make it supersonic... but that sort of upgrade (most of the avionics would be fine, but engine, radar, and probably a self defence electronics pod and probably some sort of navigation and targeting pod too) is going to radically change the aircraft so it really wont be able to be used as a trainer any more.

If you make less changes to keep the costs down... well a cheaper model medium fighter like a MiG-29M2 would make more sense in terms of better performance all round and probably not that much more costly to operate.

Using them as trainers obviously makes sense... that is what they are designed for, but trying to make them a substitute numbers aircraft is just dumbing down the fleet... Su-25s for strike and MiG-29M2s for the numbers fighter role make rather more sense... especially over time when AESA radar elements become cheaper and are mass produced in enormous numbers... retro fitting them to your numbers fighter means a significant upgrade in quality at minimum cost.

For air forces other that Russia a light fighter version of the Yak makes rather more sense because they wont already have Su-25s or MiG-29s... in fact they could probably just use them as armed aircraft with an upgraded model with a single more powerful engine and radar with targeting/navigation pods and ESM pods, while the standard trainer with twin engines and no radar which would be much cheaper, but still using the targeting/nav pods and ESM pods would be a useful day fighter platform as well as advanced jet trainer.

Russian Aerospace Forces received two new Yak-130 aircraft

According to spotters, on February 13, 2020, during an intermediate landing in Novosibirsk at Tolmachevo Airport, two new Yak-130 combat training aircraft were shot taking off from Irkutsk Aviation Plant (IAZ) of Irkut Corporation PJSC to the European part of the country to the Krasnodar Higher Military Aviation School for Pilots (KVVAUL) named after A.K. Serov. The aircraft have red side numbers "01" and "02" and became the first Yak-130 received by the Russian Air Force since October 2018.

Presumably, the planes should be part of the KVVAUL training aviation base in Kotelnikovo (Volgograd Region), and will be the first Yak-130 as part of this air base. The base in Kotelnikovo will be the fourth training aviation base to receive Yak-130 combat training aircraft, after the training air bases of the same KVVAUL in Borisoglebsk, Armavir and Kushchevskaya. The Ministry of Defense of Russia announced on January 29, 2020 that the new Yak-130s were received at IAZ by KVVAUL specialists.

According to available information, the two Yak-130s are the first aircraft of this type built under an additional contract for the supply of several Yak-130 units concluded by the Russian Ministry of Defense with PJSC Irkut Corporation in 2019. Both aircraft were actually built at IAZ back in 2019 and circled back in November, but transferred to the KVVAUL only now.

Earlier, from 2009 to 2018, the Russian Ministry of Defense received 109 Yak-130 aircraft under various contracts - of which 12 of the first two series were built at Sokol Nizhny Novgorod Aviation Plant, and 97 more at the Irkutsk Aviation Plant.








https://bmpd.livejournal.com/3932200.html

It is sort of a catch 22 really because for an air force with Yak-130s then having MiG-29M2s as a heavy fighter (ie a small Air Force), then a version of the Yak-130 that uses a single RD-33 engine would make sense... perhaps without AB so dry thrust of about 5-6 tons thrust would be plenty and offer commonality with the standard fighter (MiG-29M2).

The problem is that as a jet trainer it is actually valuable to have more than one engine... and not just for safety, but also for training in managing multi engined aircraft.

A jet with two small low power engines is cheaper to maintain and operate than a jet with a big powerful expensive engine, and you really need to be careful cobbling different things into different airframes.

The space the RD-33 would take up might not leave room for enough fuel or other equipment for example.

They are however neat little planes and I think a much cheaper much more simplified model should be considered to keep training costs to a minimum but also offer a trainer for air forces that don't have 5th gen fighters they need to train crew for, and of course you could then split it into the cheap simple model for early multi engine jet training, to be followed by the more sophisticated and more costly 130 training where you match the flight performance of various different aircraft and train with all sorts of weapons.

That SR-10 looked interesting, but seems to have not been what they wanted to totally get rid of all the L-39s...

An armed version of their turboprop trainer would be interesting too...

The Gefest & T dumb bomb and rocket aiming system would be useful because it predicted impact points in real time during manouvering combat... so selecting a weapon it would indicate where the weapon was going to go if you fired... a centreline targeting pod for bombs and the HUD for rockets and it would be a capable little light attack aircraft...

Having a single engine fighter with a RD-33 engine (mig 29 engine) would make it a copy of the chinese/ pakistani JF-17 more than a single engine derivative of the yak-130.

The JF-17 is just a modification of the MiG-21 with a conventional nose for radar... it is not that special... the Yak-130 with a 6 ton thrust single engine would be more like a light MiG-21.

Possibly it would be cheaper and faster to copy or get production rights for that aircraft. After all mig corporation helped its development.

We are talking about potential modifications of the Yak-130 for poorer countries that want to use it as more than just a trainer, there would be no value in copying a Chinese copy and upgrade of an old Russian fighter.

It would make more sense for them to design their own light fighter from scratch than base it on anything else in that sense... except you would go the other way and develop a cheap light fighter and then a cheaper LIFT based on that light fighter...

Furthermore in Soviet times most nations that received those kind of airplanes never paid soviet union for them, but got them practically for free.

Not going to happen again...

At the moment Russia have already a lot of new projects in development and that require capable engineers, I do not believe that it would be worth to spend a lot of resources on something that is not a priority for Russia and would not bring a lot of money in return.

The obvious solution is to make a dual purpose aircraft suitable for both roles with minor changes... a small light fighter aircraft with AESA radar and modern ESM and ECM equipment and modern AAM and air to ground weapons and all electric systems and powerful twin engines to give it good flight performance could be used as a relatively cheap small fighter for Russia to operate from aircraft carriers and also densely populated areas in European Russia as well as small airfields in the far north for point defence, while a model without the radar and self defence avionics could be used as both a trainer in a two seat version and also a light fighter with cheaper components substituting the state of the art Russian bits they will be using...

Russian development of more capable systems offer potential for the poor country to buy perhaps two or four dozen cheaper types and a dozen top of the line types as well as a dozen trainers... so 72 aircraft with related parts and components... a bit like a Russian twin engined Gripen... but that is actually cheap to operate... and buy.

It would be different if another nation could work on it and russia would just offer the engines, the internal and weapon systems and support and guidance in the development.

Not many countries are both too poor to afford MiG-29M2s but also able to develop their own aircraft... if the money isn't there then the design potential probably isn't either...

Again, it is just a matter of priorities and cost return ratio...

But again that is the problem... if Russia needs a cheap attack plane then the Yak-130 can carry a wide range of sophisticated and dumb air to ground munitions... and so can the Su-25...

As for COIN turboprop etc yes it could be done fairly easily and would allow Russia to to cover every type of aircraft/need on the market not a bad strategy considering price of oil dropping they may need to increase sales of defence equipment to help increase short fall of oil sales. Super tucano is a good aircraft and dominates that market so this either needs to be better or cheaper. It's possible that Russia could not only do it cheaper but also much more cheaper and more variety of weapons which could be useful and useful for a country already operating such weapons. And yes a bigger engine would be needed as yak-152 as u said has 500bhp engine and only ceiling height of 13,000ft, compared to the super tucano having 1,604bhp and a ceiling height of 35,000ft which is much better performance.

And yet the work they are doing on high speed helicopters suggests that perhaps that might be a better area to branch in to.
I remember a small light plane from the 1990s that was a high wing turboprop or piston engined plane... FN-92 or FN-94 or something that had forward firing rifle calibre machine guns and underwing 7 shot 80mm rocket pods...

They certainly have a range of gun pods and rocket types and the introduction of laser guided rockets making accuracy and effective firing range less of a problem I think they could come up with some capable ideas.

A cheap turboprop aircraft is a good idea but having cheap guided rockets so you can fire outside HMG range makes your aircraft much much safer...

I suspect drones will replace the Tucano type aircraft... including suicide drones.

Nice planes but lets be honest. An upgraded mig-21 will obliterate it.

It really depends... keep in mind that the Yak-130s aerodynamics is designed to allow it to emulate the manouver performance of late 4th and also 5th gen fighters, so while it does not have thrust vectoring engines it is quite a capable little jet, but of course without R-77 it would be limited to close combat.

An ESM pod and a targeting pod to enable it to engage air and ground targets and it could be a useful little fighter that could be rather tricky if skill fully used...

The MiG-21s age limits its potential for growth, but it is its small size that limits the capacity for turning the Yak-130 into a fighter...

As you add things you add weight... you can put more powerful engines in to compensate, but then you need to find room to put in more fuel which makes it bigger and heavier and then needs bigger engines... pretty soon your light fighter is a rather poorly performing medium fighter that is not cheap at all... sometimes I think it would probably be better to start with a medium sized aircraft like a MIG-29M2 and just fit it with cheaper components to reduce costs.... it is basically a good fighter.