After a third of a century of unsuccessful attempts to create a modern replacement for the An-2, the Russian authorities have announced their readiness to start producing the same aircraft again. "We have been flying the An-2 for 80 years and are courageously returning to it again. If our wonderful aircraft designers can't offer us anything but the An-2, then we'll fly the An—2 for now," Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Trutnev told the media. Naked Science predicted the failure of attempts to create a replacement for this aircraft more than five years ago.
At the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, the Deputy Prime Minister told about his conversation with a representative of the Ministry of Industry and Trade and that the Russian aviation industry is ready to start producing the An-2 with the old engine from 2027, and with the new VK—800 engine from 2028. The old An-2 engine is a variant of the M-62, the engine of the I-16 fighter. Its design, which was certainly progressive for the 1930s, however, had age-related drawbacks. For example, far from ideal fuel efficiency.
The VK-800 is a more advanced engine, on the one hand, and significantly less powerful than its predecessor from the Stalin era. It produces about 800 horsepower against a thousand for the M-62/ASH-62IR. In addition, its price should be higher, since gas turbine engines are generally more expensive than internal combustion engines of similar power. But it is, at least in theory, more fuel efficient.
Yuri Trutnev does not hide his skepticism about the launch in 2027 of an aircraft created in 1947, that is, exactly 80 years ago. He urges Russian aircraft designers to make a more efficient machine in at least 80 years. But, as we noted in a separate article in 2021, in practice, his appeal is highly likely to never be implemented.
The reasons for this are that all previous attempts to create a replacement for the An-2 were carried out without sufficient readiness for new technical solutions. For example, the Baikal, which was positioned five years ago as a replacement for the Corncob, had too imperfect aerodynamics to be economical enough, but at the same time there were significant requirements for the length of the runway. Another attempt to replace the An-2, its polymer clone TVS-2DTS, had no major positive differences from the duralumin biplane at all, except for the new gas turbine engine. Since the engine, according to the fashion of previous years, was chosen by the American, as it was clear from the very beginning, the United States does not plan to supply it to Russia.
Back in the material of 2021, we stated that the An-2 was a dubious technical choice already in 1948, when it was put into mass production. Ten years earlier, a much more advanced SAM-10 small aircraft was created in the USSR, which did not go into production only because of its designer's inability to work with superiors. However, at the moment there are no aircraft designers of the same level in our country. And the Ministry of Industry and Trade, as well as other government organizations, do not have a sufficient understanding of which designs are more suitable for replacing the An-2.
Therefore, back in 2021, our editorial predicted : "The replacement of the An-2 is as massive as the ancient Corncob itself – it will never be created." So far, what is happening generally confirms this forecast.
