Ukrainian Aviation Industry: Discussion

GarryB wrote:The primary user of the An-225 was the Soviet space industry.

The aircraft are huge and impressive but ultimately very expensive to operate when smaller cheaper aircraft can do the job and operate from smaller airfields.

GarryB wrote:So 100 tons of medical supplies weighs more than the 120 ton Buran Space Shuttle... impressive number skills there...

Heaven and earth. Why Ukroboronprom is at war with Antonov and the aircraft plant will be closed
Antonov has two valuable assets - a fleet of cargo planes and land masses in Kiev. There is a struggle for them

Lyudmila Ksenz
19:53, June 10, 2020

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Rodion_Romanovic wrote:https://strana.ua/news/272213-pochemu-ukroboronprom-vojuet-s-antonovym-i-chem-eto-zakonchitsja.html

Heaven and earth. Why Ukroboronprom is at war with Antonov and the aircraft plant will be closed
Antonov has two valuable assets - a fleet of cargo planes and land masses in Kiev. There is a struggle for them

Lyudmila Ksenz
19:53, June 10, 2020

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magnumcromagnon wrote:

Rodion_Romanovic wrote:https://strana.ua/news/272213-pochemu-ukroboronprom-vojuet-s-antonovym-i-chem-eto-zakonchitsja.html

Heaven and earth. Why Ukroboronprom is at war with Antonov and the aircraft plant will be closed
Antonov has two valuable assets - a fleet of cargo planes and land masses in Kiev. There is a struggle for them

Lyudmila Ksenz
19:53, June 10, 2020

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Recently Suckasshivili has been reiterating how there's going to be a multilateral civil war that will break out in to Ukraine soon, with it being partitioned in the coming years....It'd be nice if the Donbass could retake many of these historic factories/plants.

Tsavo Lion wrote:..the AN-225 is able to accommodate up to 950 cubic meters of cargo, compared to 750 for the AN-124 and 650 for a Boeing 747.
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/an-225-worlds-largest-airplane/index.html

..the AN-225 is able to accommodate up to 950 cubic meters of cargo, compared to 750 for the AN-124 and 650 for a Boeing 747.

All engines of Ukrainian "Ruslans" are in poor condition

Text: Yuri Dmitriev photo: Pxhere.com

published on Jul 28 '20 12:24 pm

According to independent experts, the engines of the Ukrainian An-124 transport aircraft require a major overhaul. However, there are problems with this.
At the beginning of July, the Ukrainian aviation giant Antonov, which is part of Ukroboronprom, signed an agreement with Motor Sich for the overhaul of four DT-18T series three aircraft engines.
The contract will cost the company no less than ten million dollars. According to some reports, the engines should return in a modernized form by the end of this year.
But some experts have serious doubts on this score. It is not the first time that the Antonov Corporation has been trying to put the engines of its aircraft in order.
Several years ago, for example, one of the repair firms located in the Zaporozhye region was already undertaking a large-scale repair of Antonov's "engines".
For the test, the repairmen took a couple of engines, however, so far they have not been returned to the customer. And it's been about three years now. And the contract expired a long time ago. So the aircraft manufacturers began to look for new contractors. But there is nowhere else to take them in Independence.
And what is curious, the Antonov corporation has not yet been able to find those responsible for the failure of the contract in Zaporozhye. Either the Chinese are trying to buy the Zaporizhzhya repair firm, then the Americans are breaking the deal so that investors from China will not get anything, then the SBU is looking for traitors to their homeland, but no one gets into the dock.
However, the concluded deal between Antonov and the even more controversial Motor Sich, which is predicted to be almost bankrupt in the future, suggests that Antonov cannot wait any longer with engine repairs.
And experts confirm that if the engines are not repaired in the coming months, it can be assumed that soon Ruslans will stop taking off altogether.

kvs wrote:No way.  They dug their own grave, now let them lie in it.   Russia rescuing these haters from their hate-induced retardation is
not an option.   These Ukr clowns need to swallow reality the hard way.   Maybe they will learn, but I expect them to keep sliding
down the hill.   They will be hungry and naked but will still have their insane anti-Russian complex.  

Tsavo Lion wrote:If the issue isn't resolved, they may have to sell all 7 of them, most probably to China.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov_Airlines#Fleet

Russia will be happy to supply different engines should China need them.

Tsavo Lion wrote:https://nvo.ng.ru/armament/2020-08-07/6_1103_antonov.html?print=Y

Serhiy Korzh: the technical level of Ukrainian aircraft engines basically corresponds to 1990-2000



The further fate of the Ukrainian aircraft industry depends on two fundamental processes - the development of the production and technological base and the gradual entry into cooperation with world players in the aircraft building market. Exploiting the Soviet past, Ukraine will not fly far. The country needs to soberly assess the real possibilities of the industry and compare them with the needs of the market, improve the level of project management, marketing and investment projects. We talked about the state and prospects of the domestic aviation industry with Sergey Korzh, a design engineer of aircraft engines, an expert in the field of aviation and business development.

- We often hear from experts and politicians that Ukraine has a full technological cycle of aircraft production. Why, in this case, after the collapse of the USSR, the production of aircraft was significantly reduced, and after the final severance of trade and economic ties with Russia ceased altogether?


This is a myth that we often hear. However, unfortunately, no one exposes the legends that Ukraine has a full cycle of design and creation of large aircraft (according to ICAO rules, take-off weight over 5700 kg is considered large). Of course, there is no full cycle in Ukraine and never has been. Competent specialists are well aware of this, but for some reason they are silent. 
The full cycle of creating and maintaining the life of aircraft consists of the ability to develop, test and certify, prepare for production, mass-produce for many years, and maintain operation. And then - to modernize the structure, otherwise it will "die" physically, having exhausted its resource, or it will become morally obsolete by its operational and economic characteristics.
Aviation technology is characterized by a long cycle and, if the basic design and layout is successful, it is possible to upgrade and obtain an aircraft with improved characteristics. The practice of producing a family of aircraft and helicopters is very widespread in the world, and then they are further developed and modernized. All participants in the development, manufacture and operation of aviation technology strive to reduce costs, since aviation is an expensive mode of transport per unit of work performed to transport passengers or goods. 
To create a new model of an aircraft or engine from scratch, the country must develop a "portfolio" of innovations in the production and handling of complex structural materials, including titanium, heat-resistant, aluminum alloys, structural steels, composite materials, as well as technologies for manufacturing parts from them and designs.
Also for a "full cycle" requires a long list of units, systems, devices, appropriate developers and highly specialized production. In modern conditions of globalization of information and production, some of the materials and components can be purchased on open trading floors. 

However, a significant part of materials and assemblies cannot be purchased freely, since they are used for dual-use products. Airplanes and helicopters can be civilian and military, carry passengers or military cargo. And the movement of such materials and units is under serious international control.

- What exactly is Ukraine lacking today for a full cycle of production of engines and aircraft?

Many construction materials. First of all - titanium and heat-resistant alloys in the form of flat and shaped products. A special place is occupied by stampings and forgings from these alloys, since they are made individually for each product. The next group of materials are cast heat-resistant alloys for the manufacture of complex turbine blades.
Historically, almost all enterprises that produced structural materials for the aviation industry in the USSR were concentrated on the territory of the Russian Federation. Large-sized blanks for engines and aircraft parts have never been produced in Ukraine. 
After 2014, Ukraine should have thought about creating a press-forging production of blanks for the aerospace and defense industries. But this requires significant investments, design work, serious foreign partners in equipment and much more. This need was not transformed into a national program to replace imports from the Russian Federation. Such a national program also did not exist. The Ministry of Industrial Policy was gone. 
Today there is a lot of talk about the resuscitation of high-tech mechanical engineering and, above all, the aviation and space industries. Without high-tech materials and workpieces of our own Ukrainian production, it will be extremely difficult to revive serial production, especially to master new products.

- To what extent do the technologies of the Motor Sich enterprise correspond to the world level of the so-called "western" aircraft manufacturers?

Take, for example, the well-known D-27 propeller-driven engine developed by Ivchenko-Progress, which was mastered by Motor Sich at one time. It was designed in the late 1980s. In total, about 15 copies were made for testing and 2 aircraft. They were going to be mass-produced in Zaporozhye in cooperation with the Moscow plant "Salut". On the D-27, for the first time in the USSR, they realized the design of a compressor disk with blades from one solid stamping, which was named "blisk" (blade + disk = blisk). Since then, the technology of making "blisk" has gone far ahead. On many Western engines after 2000, solid vane compressor discs are widely used. The D-27 engine has not been manufactured for a long time due to the lack of prospects for the An-70 aircraft. On other engines, 
In Ukraine, after the collapse of the USSR, there was no purposeful work to continue the formation of a scientific and technical reserve for new construction materials and technologies that would allow the design bureaus to more intensively modernize aviation equipment, including engines. 
It is necessary to have modern components and assemblies. Ukraine, for example, has never produced aircraft bearings. Where to get them? After 2014, Russia is not very willing to sell bearings to Ukraine. Thus, if you look at the product catalogs, Motor Sich produces engines of outdated designs. Yes, we can design something modern, but again, a test base is needed to implement the project. Engines must also be tested "on the wing". For this, special aircraft are used - carriers, or "flying laboratory".
In the USSR, there was a single center in which flying laboratories were concentrated - LII im. Gromov near Moscow. There are no such laboratories in Ukraine. Modern software tools make it possible to reduce the volume and variety of flight tests, but by no means completely.
Finally, new Ukrainian developments must be certified. If we are talking about materials, then state laboratories for the certification of structural materials are needed. Not only for the aerospace industry, but for all other industries. Equipping them with special equipment requires substantial funds when it comes to all the main types of alloys, composite and special materials. 
Rather, national technical standards should be synchronized with the relevant regulatory framework and EU standards, which fell within the scope of the Association Agreement with the EU in terms of technical regulations. But the movement looks very slow.

Ukraine has always been proud of the fact that it has presented to the world the wonderful and largest transport aircraft - AN-124 Ruslan. Could it be in demand on the world markets today, if our country managed to restart the program?

The topic of the possibility of restoring production of the An-124 was discussed in the media many times. The answers are known - restart of production is impossible. Most of the unique technologies and production of large-sized fuselage parts, especially wings, as well as blanks for engine parts have always been located in the Russian Federation. But at the same time, the Russian Federation cannot independently manufacture aircraft and engines without the participation of developers - the Antonov Design Bureau and the Ivchenko-Progress Design Bureau. And the D-18T engines were originally completely manufactured in Zaporozhye. It is impossible to produce them in Russia today. In Russia, the issue of making An-124 under a different name and with other engines is being discussed, but it looks like a "project". 

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