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Premier planemakers |
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By Anatoly Baranov, public relations executive director, Russian Aircraft Corporation MiG |
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| The MiG is an aircraft of global renown. In the mind of top-gun cognoscente, any Soviet-made fighter plane is immediately assumed to be a MiG. Yet it is far from common knowledge that these planes are built by a company formerly known as VPK Mapo, now known as the Russian Aircraft Corporation MiG (RAC MiG). Although a household name the world over, this family of fighter aircraft has never been included in the plane manufacturer’s corporate title until now.
Sixty years ago at Stalin’s behest, Artyom Mikoyan and Mikhail Gurevich took on the directorship of a design bureau that was destined to become one of the world’s most famous centres of excellence. A mere two years later in 1941, Moscow was being defended by 1,200 MiG-1 and MiG-31 fighters. The rapid progress made in aviation in the middle of the century has scarcely been rivalled, even by the pace of developments in computer technology. Certainly, the development time-frame for a new aircraft nowadays is a wholly different matter, and the useful life of the modern airplane has also increased: the legendary MiG-21 that made its maiden flight 40 years ago, is still holding its own in the airforce of many countries, and following upgrade work undertaken by our specialists and those in Israel and Romania, is on a par with planes at the cutting edge of modern technology, and the MiG-29 has been flying for more than two decades. Global problems However, the problems now afflicting the aircraft industry are global in scale. Insofar as the development in aviation can be a bell-wether of a country’s overall technological health, the crisis in aircraft manufacturing carries with it almost an aura of prestige. On top of which, we have our own economic crisis. Since 1992 the Ministry of Defence has not bought a single plane from RAC MiG. For seven years the splendour and pride of the Russian defence sector has been reliant solely on exports. Clearly we cannot afford to maintain an aircraft industry from our own pocket. As a result of economic pressures driven by the downturn in scientific and technological development in the aviation sector, the US, the only country apart from the USSR with the ability to build all types of aircraft, is left with only two major plane-making corporations. Businesses have merged, re-structured, re-profiled and changed their core activities, and in the final analysis the richest country in the world can afford only Boeing and Lockheed-Martin. Unfeigned western sympathy We have perhaps only seven large manufacturing concerns in this sector, with a further dozen independent businesses. They are large in terms of the sheer physical size of their production facilities and declared assets, but in financial terms corporate balance sheets are more likely to provoke unfeigned sympathy on the part of our western colleagues. How could it be otherwise? Based on the number of civil aircraft purchased, our civil aviation carriers are in the same league as the Ministry of Defence. According to experts, only three or four of these plane-building plants are going concerns in any real sense. Most are located well beyond the Urals, as is the RAC MiG industrial base. As for the others, the experts can only lament their passing into the high-tech graveyard of aviation engineering. About 18 months ago an expert commission attached to the Russian Ministry for the Economy carried out an analysis of medium and long-term prospects for the Mikoyan complex and made some alarming findings. Overfamiliarity Demand for the company’s flagship product – the MiG29 – is declining steadily in armaments markets. A trend exacerbated by the erosion of Russia’s global geopolitical standing that is resulting in the loss of several markets to other more adept players. Also, over-familiarity with what RAC MiG is offering has become a factor, and it may be that over two decades a jaded market has simply grown tired of this product and is looking for something new. This could well be the revamped MiG-29SMT, raising a familiar classic to a performance level to rival the next generation of fighter aircraft and at the same time extending the effective life of the plane by 10-15 years. At this point, military hot heads start to enthuse about the unlimited market for MiG-29 upgrades, forgetting that an upgrade programme, though a costly exercise, is around ten times cheaper than buying a brand new aircraft. This is good for the customer. It is also good for companies like Russian Avionics that are not burdened by an unwieldy industrial infrastructure and a workforce running into thousands. In three to five years the market for MiG-29 upgrades could contract to such an extent that RAC MiG, ill-prepared for such a turn of events, might find itself facing bankruptcy. No doubt the intermediary company would be able to accumulate a respectable amount in the short term, but the price for this revenue would be excessive.
Naturally this issue has become a serious concern. However Mikoyan’s firm does have one ace up its sleeve that could put the enterprise back in contention, a fifth-generation multi-role fighter plane that has yet to be given a permanent name. It has not yet taken to the air, but a programme of 27 test flights is planned for the near future. But, according to the report, because no serious procurement orders are expected from the Ministry of Defence in the next 10 years, RAC MiG will have to have a programme in place to bridge the gap between the downturn in the MiG-29 market and the time when the new fighter becomes a fully-fledged product. In the middle of last winter, the new TU-334 medium-haul civil airliner made its maiden flight. At the same time RAC MiG had a change of top management with the arrival of Nikolai Nikitin, who took over the positions of chief designer and managing director. With him he brought a corporate restructuring programme whereby the managing company, marketing divisions, design bureau and series-production plants were to be merged into a single legal entity – the Russian Aircraft Corporation MiG. In essence, Mikoyan’s firm took a lead here as well. This was the first time a design division had been fully amalgamated with the series-production division at the MiG site. This management experiment was new to us, but had already been introduced in world aviation. Within a structure of this kind, the managing company is not tempted to privatise the lion’s share of the profits, leaving production to do the dirty work and pick up the crumbs. There is no room for companies acting as go-betweens in contracts where fast money is to be made and off-loading real work onto the shoulders of designers, engineers and production workers. The TU-334 project An integrated structure of this kind can dig itself out of a hole only as a single entity, and only on the strength of real production. The watershed in achieving this goal turned out to be the TU-334 project. On 5 October 1998 an order was signed for the transfer of series production of this aircraft to RAC MiG. It was then that the problems started. In the close-knit circles of the upper ranks there was dismay, why should civil equipment be manufactured at a military facility? As if during the Soviet era these same factories that were turning out dozens of MiGs a year were not also making the excellent Ilyushin 18, 700 in two decades. In terms of economy and reliability, this aircraft has proved to be an unrivalled example of Soviet civil aviation technology. Some are still flying today. But now that MiG production can be counted in single figures, when the factories are sometimes working part time, suddenly the questions arise. Why take up military capacity with civil production? In this respect the management encountered complete understanding on the part of the workforce and the trades unions, today the workers are scarcely more enthusiastic advocates of the civil project than are management. However, real problems exist. The pace of technical progress has slowed. The same government order recommends that series production of the new aircraft should start in 2002. How can we help but feel envy at the thought of those first 1200 MiGs developed and built in the space of two years before the war? Now we are looking at three years merely to get series production underway. Specialists predict that during this century an aircraft’s useful life will be extended even further, as will its entire lifecycle. A completely new plane, of an entirely new generation, will be developed every 30-40 years. The lifetime of an aircraft and man’s physical lifespan will be viewed in roughly the same terms. Without doubt, 250 new types of aircraft developed over 60 years by the Mikoyan Special Design Bureau is unlikely to be achieved ever again. As for the TU-334, the market for this type of aircraft is virtually wide open, both here and abroad, but will RAC MiG be allowed in? Boeing and Airbus have developed planes of a similar class and the competition promises to be robust. We hear talk only about Aeroflot’s plans to reduce the size of its fleet under the management of V. Okulov. The procurement of new planes is being hampered by a lack of legislation on leasing that in turn promises a bleak prospect for inward investment into our air carrier market. There is hope that the new Duma will pass this legislation before the end of the period laid down by government for series production launch of the new aircraft. Then the way will be open for replacement of the TU-134 by planes that will define Russia’s medium-haul airline fleet at the start of a new era. © Russian Aircraft Corporation MiG |
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