During a working trip to Ulyanovsk, the Minister of Defence of the Russian Federation, Army General Sergei Shoigu inspected the implementation of the state defence order at Aviastar, a PJSC IL enterprise. He inspected the production process of IL-76MD-90A aircraft, as well as repair and maintenance of AN-124-100 aircraft.
UAC Director General Yuri Slyusar reported to the head of the Russian military ministry that today Aviastar is producing Il-76MD-90A aircraft in varying degrees of readiness, as stipulated in the 2023 production programme. The aircraft scheduled for delivery this year will be delivered to the troops within the contractual deadlines. The head of UAC at the aircraft repair and maintenance shop reported to the Russian Minister of Defence on scheduled work on the An-124-100 Ruslan aircraft.
Sergei Shoigu specified the type of engines to be installed on prospective models of heavy transport aircraft, as well as during repair and modernisation of the AN-124-100. Lieutenant General Vladimir Benediktov, Commander of the VTA, reported that “now there are two options of configuration – either modernised D-18T or PD-35”.
Managing Director of PJSC “IL” Daniil Brenerman spoke about the load of the plant. “Aviastar has reached stable rates of serial production of heavy transports, and is provided with orders for the future. Work is underway to develop production for further increase in aircraft output.
Following the results of his work at the enterprise, the Russian Defence Minister held a working meeting with the management of UAC and relevant central military authorities, during which the state and prospects for the development of military transport aviation were considered.
“We will consider today extremely important issues for today – this is the state and building up the capabilities of military transport aviation. Taking into account the special military operation, the workload of military transport aviation has actually increased many times, we have surpassed the workload of military transport aviation in the most stressful times of the Soviet Union by almost two times”, – said the Minister of Defence of the Russian Federation during the meeting.
Sergei Shoigu added that the workload continues to increase. In this regard, he drew attention to the fact that “firstly, we need to maintain the park that we have. Secondly, we need to increase this fleet by receiving new vehicles, which are the latest modification of the IL-76, which we have seen today and which we already have in our combat service. They, of course, show excellent combat characteristics, but there are also opportunities there to continue improving these machines, to increase their range, payload capacity.”
“In addition, today we have to make decisions and consider all the issues on An-124 heavy transport aircraft. By 2025, we must double their number due to the fact that we now have both engines, we have opportunities and capacity to modernise these aircraft. By 2025 they should be doubled,” said the head of the Russian military department.
In conclusion, Sergei Shoigu emphasised that “today we will consider the most important issue that has long required a solution. The solution has been found. Now it is necessary to decide on the terms how soon, and how quickly, we will be able to put this decision into practice, I mean light transport aircraft, which should replace the AN-72 and AN-26. What has been done in this part and what is to be done”.
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