Ukrainian Aviation Industry: Discussion

Tsavo Lion wrote:FYI, I was born in 1966 in Odessa, a Russian port city built on earlier Turkish fortress Eni Dünya, to a Jewish family. During the Nazi occupation, my grand grand grand father was killed by his Ukrainian neighbors. Came to the US in 1988.
Regarding the An-178, it could still be redesigned; like with most new planes, its later versions may get a lot better.
The IL-112 also has weight problems & the IL-276 is still only on paper.

Now I understand your pro turkish views ;p

Anyway if you go back enough in time it was a greek settlement, history did not stop with the Turks or with the Tatars....

Yeah the il 112v has (had?) weight problems but Russia has a functioning aerospace industry and it is investing money in it. It was unfortunate that they had quite a bit of issues at the beginning, but they have the capability and the money to solve them... and both of these things are not present in today's Ukraine.

Now I understand your pro turkish views

I got none whatsoever; didn't live with any Turks & didn't like the mentality of Azerbaijanis when traveled to Baku in 1986.

Yeah the il 112v has (had?) weight problems but Russia has a functioning aerospace industry and it is investing money in it.

The Ukr. gov & possibly others will/may invest more in their industry, so I won't bury the An-178 yet.

kvs wrote:Tsavo troll-tard looks to be some yanqui with Ukr ties.  Probably comes from the Nazis who ran away to the west at the end of WWII.

Not a bad guess

kvs wrote:
I was surprised to learn that the An-178 has a serious design defect.   It is unbalanced towards the rear end and requires
1.5 tons of counterbalance behind the pilot's cabin.  

No surprise there, the surprise is that they certified that thing in the first place

The ballast has been known about, but it was meant to be specific to just their prototype or some such. Well, guess not.

I was surprised to learn that the An-178 has a serious design defect. It is unbalanced towards the rear end and requires
1.5 tons of counterbalance behind the pilot's cabin.

That is something that should have been noticed with the first prototypes and eliminated before it is certified... it sounds rather off that it passed tests and was offered for sale in that condition...

The Ukr. gov & possibly others will/may invest more in their industry, so I won't bury the An-178 yet.

The Ukrainian economy is not particularly in good shape, so the risks involved in throwing money into fixing that problem might be considered too much of a gamble... what if other problems crop up... where do you draw the line and say it is not worth spending any more money on.

I understand the Ukraine and Antonov think it is worth it because it is their product and they want to sell it an make money, but why would anyone else spend their money on it when there are probably much cheaper western or Russian or Chinese aircraft being developed that could do the same job for a lot less money and no risk and all the problems already sorted out.

The An-178 was already on thin ice... added problems that will cost money and time to fix you have to start worrying that the money wont be there to fix it... the problem with a burning building is do you keep spending money on water or do you stop wasting water and money and start looking at what you will do next.

Throwing money at Antonov might help because it is in their interests to get these planes working so they can earn income selling them... but the money could just as easily be wasted on stupid shit, or disappear into a foreign bank account of someone realising the ship has sunk and at least they will be getting something out of it.

Interesting the same mistake was made on the Il-112... and a similar amount of weight too... wonder if it was the same mistake...

Ukraine is preparing an order for 4 An-74s

The Ukrainian response to the S-70 Hunter?

Model of ACE ONE stealth UCAV should be presented at the exhibition "Weapons and Security".

Claimed characteristics: the width of the drone is 11 meters, the length is 8 meters, it can carry up to a ton of payload, and it weighs 8-10 tons. ACE ONE's combat radius is 1500 km. The maximum flight altitude is 13.5 km. Maximum speed (equipped with one turbojet engine apparently) - MACH 0.95. The weapons are located in the internal compartments (somehow disproportionate to the size and voiced characteristics-8 places for missiles and bombs). 

There are big doubts that Ukraine has the necessary technologies and enough money for such a complex and technological project. 

Russian_Patriot_ wrote:The Ukrainian response to the S-70 Hunter?

Model of ACE ONE stealth UCAV should be presented at the exhibition "Weapons and Security".

Claimed characteristics: the width of the drone is 11 meters, the length is 8 meters, it can carry up to a ton of payload, and it weighs 8-10 tons. ACE ONE's combat radius is 1500 km. The maximum flight altitude is 13.5 km. Maximum speed (equipped with one turbojet engine apparently) - MACH 0.95. The weapons are located in the internal compartments (somehow disproportionate to the size and voiced characteristics-8 places for missiles and bombs). 

There are big doubts that Ukraine has the necessary technologies and enough money for such a complex and technological project. 

Nice. Like it

Shame the Ukrainians are these days are capable of getting into serial production nothing more complicated than a barn door

IIRC the Ukrainians at one point had a project to make an RD-33 class engine.
But they do not even invest a couple million to refurbish existing tanks so it is basically impossible that they will invest billion for requisite engine in this drone.

Drones are hugely expensive and most projects in Europe have failed because of this despite lots of prototypes being made.
The possibility Ukraine will make a complex drone like this is pretty low.

Russian_Patriot_ wrote:The Ukrainian response to the S-70 Hunter?

Model of ACE ONE stealth UCAV should be presented at the exhibition "Weapons and Security".
...........
There are big doubts that Ukraine has the necessary technologies and enough money for such a complex and technological project. 

.....

I too love getting sued by Northrop Grumman

New Ukrainian UP-277 air-to-air missile

The possibility Ukraine will make a complex drone like this is pretty low.

Companies with a lot more money and production capacity have failed at making such things, despite having customers funding the programmes...

I think it is unlikely this will become operational any time soon, and a lot of their new allies with rival programmes would be interested in this programme failing to avoid any unnecessary competition too.

It's taken Russia (with its resources) and Sukhoi 10 years of development (and allegedly access to the RQ-170 that Iran brought down) to get to the stage where they're building the 2,3, and 4th Okhotnik prototype. Let's assume Ukraine had Russias resources and a designer the equivalent of Sukhoi (they have neither! ), expect ten years before they have anything of worth in the sky.  Then add *Years* more of testing and prototypes before mass production.

It's taken Russia (with its resources) and Sukhoi 10 years of development (and allegedly access to the RQ-170 that Iran brought down) to get to the stage where they're building the 2,3, and 4th Okhotnik prototype.

But Russia is a third world gas station that doesn't produce anything.... surely a better comparison would be the mighty EU and HATO they want to join... of all of HATO only the US makes such products... several dominant EU countries had UAV and UCAV programmes that often looked like this one... a carbon copy of a US or Israeli platform, and it still went tits up.

Love the innuendo suggesting that Russia needs to get its hands on stuff before it can make equivalents... the old suggestion that the MiG-31 was a copy developed from the F-14 the Iranians gave them after they found out how good the MiG-31 actually was... a PESA radar is vastly more sophisticated than a conventionally scanned radar because it is faster and with no moving parts vastly more reliable...

Now a suggestion that they needed parts from Iran to make UCAVs Iran might have passed on bits and pieces but it would not have been for free or out of the goodness of their hearts and would certainly only be after they had a good look first.

The serbs probably would have let the Russians have a look at the F-117, but again that technology would not be amazing to them either... stealth is more about design shape and the Russians already fully understand that anyway.

Let's assume Ukraine had Russias resources and a designer the equivalent of Sukhoi (they have neither! ), expect ten years before they have anything of worth in the sky. Then add *Years* more of testing and prototypes before mass production.

What we are looking at are prototypes and any marketing department can pump these out... they are cheap and simple... all through the 1990s and early 00s Russian arms companies took all their prototypes to fairs and airshows to display what they could make if they had solid contracts (so they could get loans from banks) and money from their customers.

The Ukrainians could start making these products now without orders or funding but even hand making individual products you can use as a demo is very expensive and the first problem you come upon that requires a few billion in research to fix or expensive time in a wind tunnel or other issue and the whole programme crashes to a sudden halt.

We have seen models and examples of the Mi-28 and Ka-52 for about 30 years but only now with their new iterations are the solid combat experienced products worth buying in numbers... before the orders there was no progress or development, which probably saved a lot of money because anything they could have made back then would need a total upgrade now anyway.

This is not a prototype but a stupid paper mache prop such as those used for movies. There is zero engineering behind it. It is
intended to feed the Ukr population a steady stream of feel good propaganda to pacify their daily misery, which is also increasing
by the day. So you have endless reports in the Banderite lie factory media how Russia is really much poorer than Ukraine and how
Russia's economy is swirling the toilet bowl. Well, that's just relativism. It is the Ukr economy that is swirling the toilet bowl so
if they declare that they are doing fine in their reference frame, then the swirling looks like it is happening elsewhere.

It is projection... the padawan has learned well from the master... now I need an image of Creepy Joe as the Emperor and Zelensky as his apprentice.

It's taken Russia (with its resources) and Sukhoi 10 years of development (and allegedly access to the RQ-170 that Iran brought down) to get to the stage where they're building the 2,3, and 4th Okhotnik prototype. Let's assume Ukraine had Russias resources and a designer the equivalent of Sukhoi (they have neither! ), expect ten years before they have anything of worth in the sky. Then add *Years* more of testing and prototypes before mass production.

Underestimating Russia skills and resources and assuming the only way anyone can have a stealth drone is to copy a US one is amusing and just shows how powerful western propaganda actually is.

Russia is used to coming out with aggressive murder tools second, being the victim of the aggression, but lets not ignore their capacity to not just replicate but to improve upon.... Su-27 over the F-15, Su-57 over the F-22 and F-35...

Sometimes they were well behind so copy R-3 and seriously upgraded R-3S before lightweight self defence R-60 and then full on R-73 replacement.

But Russia is a third world gas station that doesn't produce anything

That's a lie...thanks to the import substitution program, Russia has significantly increased the list of manufactured products. Let's take only Rostec and its member companies:

1. Russian Helicopters – military and civil helicopters. 
   
2. Machine engineering technology – shells, bombs, rockets, and technological equipment for the fuel and energy complex, industrial and medical refrigeration equipment, agricultural machinery and consumer goods. 
   
3. Kalashnikov Concern – small arms, drones, motorcycles, medical equipment, microelectronics. 
   
4. Concern Avtomatika – electronic equipment and means of communication. 
   
5. High-Precision Weapons – high-precision weapons, ATGMs, turrets for light-armored vehicles, active protection systems, Information systems. 
   
6. Ruselectronics – data storage systems, workstations, equipment for marking goods, fiscal storage devices, medical equipment, telecom equipment, cryptobiocabins, video conferencing systems, and smart electricity metering devices.
   
7. United Aircraft Corporation – military and civil aviation. 
   
8. KAMAZ – trucks, trailers, buses, engines, powertrains, and various tools.
   
9. National Immunobiological Company (Nacimbio) – drugs and vaccines. 
   
10. AVTOVAZ – cars (Lada Vesta, Lada XRAY, Lada Largus, Lada Grants, Lada Niva Travel, Lada Niva Legend and cars from Renault-Nissan alliance). 
    
11. Technodinamika – electric power supply systems, takeoff and landing gear, hydraulic systems, fuel systems, actuating mechanisms, aerial-delivery systems, propulsion and engine systems, piping and fittings, filters and filtering elements. 
    
12. United Engine Corporation – engines for aviation, equipment for transporting gas and generating power, fuel equipment for gas turbine engines. 
    
13. Shvabe – optoelectronic and laser systems, aerospace monitoring and Earth remote sensing systems, medical equipment, energy-saving lighting equipment, optical materials and scientific instruments. 
    
14. JSC Concern Radio-Electronic Technologies – radio electronics, aviation technologies, industrial products, medical devices. 
    
15. Corporation UralVagonZavod – tanks and railcars. 
    
16. VSMPO-AVISMA –  titanium products (ingots, billets, slabs, large stamped forgings of aircraft engine disks and blades, contour composite forgings for the aviation industry, landing gear and structural stampings, rolled rings, profiles, weldless and welded pipes) and aluminum products (ingots, extruded profiles, panels, pipes, and cold-worked pipes and pipes for the nuclear industry). 
    
17. Stankoprom – machine tools. 
    
18. Kaliningrad Amber Combine – extraction of the unique Baltic amber and manufacture of amber products. 
    

And this is only Rostec, and there are even more different technology companies in Russia.

GarryB wrote:But Russia is a third world gas station that doesn't produce anything.... surely a better comparison would be the mighty EU and HATO they want to join... of all of HATO only the US makes such products... several dominant EU countries had UAV and UCAV programmes that often looked like this one... a carbon copy of a US or Israeli platform, and it still went tits up.

Love the innuendo suggesting that Russia needs to get its hands on stuff before it can make equivalents... the old suggestion that the MiG-31 was a copy developed from the F-14 the Iranians gave them after they found out how good the MiG-31 actually was... a PESA radar is vastly more sophisticated than a conventionally scanned radar because it is faster and with no moving parts vastly more reliable...

Now a suggestion that they needed parts from Iran to make UCAVs Iran might have passed on bits and pieces but it would not have been for free or out of the goodness of their hearts and would certainly only be after they had a good look first.

The serbs probably would have let the Russians have a look at the F-117, but again that technology would not be amazing to them either... stealth is more about design shape and the Russians already fully understand that anyway.

...
The Ukrainians could start making these products now without orders or funding but even hand making individual products you can use as a demo is very expensive and the first problem you come upon that requires a few billion in research to fix or expensive time in a wind tunnel or other issue and the whole programme crashes to a sudden halt.

Do the Ukrainians have a lot of wind tunnels? Antonov is probably their most advanced airframe design and aircraft manufacturer. But I doubt they are the ones proposing this drone.

Antonov has been severely underfunded and the loss of the Russian market must not have been easy. The only other projects they had, the Antonov-132 with Saudi Arabia, the Saudis supposedly pulled the plug. Supposedly also cancelled their orders for the An-178. Additionally I doubt the cancelling of cooperation with suppliers in Russia did not affect the Ukrainian military industry as well and unlike Russia their industry hardly has the resources and capital to come up with replacement parts. Add to that stopping cooperation with China and what do they have left?

The US and its HATO allies will just use Ukraine as a dumping ground for any equipment they don't need anymore and kill whatever resources the Ukrainian weapons industry still has. Now Turkey is getting into their weapons industry, but Turkey wants do develop their own military industry, plus they themselves are heavily sanctioned due to their support of Azerbaijan on the war against Armenia. So how much will they help really?

lancelot wrote:...Do the Ukrainians have a lot of wind tunnels? Antonov is probably their most advanced airframe design and aircraft manufacturer. ...

Antonov makes wood stoves these days

No wind tunnel needed for that