It is planned to produce 600 civil aircraft in Russia in six years. And part of the money will be allocated from the National Welfare Fund. Which aircraft should replace Boeing and Airbus, and are factories ready to dramatically increase the volume of production of domestic airliners?
The Government approved a comprehensive program to expand the production of aircraft, engines, instruments and assemblies and allowed the use of funds from the National Welfare Fund to finance it. On a refundable basis, it will be possible to attract more than 280 billion rubles for such purposes, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said at a meeting with deputy prime ministers on Monday.
The funds allocated from the FND will amount to almost a third of the total investments in the program, which will amount to 1 trillion rubles. Another 215.6 billion rubles will be allocated from the budget, 380.9 billion rubles – in the form of loans, 122.8 billion – from the participants of the investment project.
The project provides for the technical re-equipment of enterprises, an increase in factory capacity, and development work, including the creation of new materials and an electronic component base. The implementation of the project should ensure the production of more than 600 fully domestic aircraft by 2030, Mishustin added.
Last summer, the government approved a program for the development of the air transport industry, where it was planned to deliver as many as 1,036 new domestic aircraft by 2030. However, there is no talk of reducing the program. When talking about more than 1,000 aircraft, this includes not only large airliners such as MS-21, SSJ-100, but also small aircraft such as TVRS-44 Ladoga, L-410 and Baikal plus civilian helicopters.
Mishustin also talks about 600 aircraft, which should be produced by the enterprises of the United Aviation Corporation (UAC) by 2030. These are four types of aircraft: 270 MS-21 aircraft, 142 SSJ-100 aircraft, 115 Tu-214 aircraft and 70 Il-114-300 aircraft.
It turns out that Russia needs to produce an average of 100 aircraft per year. This is a serious challenge for modern Russia.
In the 2000s, no more than 20 aircraft per year were assembled in Russia. In the 2010s, there were some years when volumes grew, for example, in 2013 35 civilian aircraft were assembled, but it was not possible to keep this bar for a long time. Only in the Soviet years there were such production rates – 100 or more aircraft per year.
How realistic are the plans to deploy the production of 600 aircraft at the UAC plants within six years?
"Now we are talking about the allocation of money by the government for mass production. This is a new stage. Money has already been allocated for the previous stage – certification of domestic aircraft – last year and for this year, since certification for the MS-21 and SSJ-100 is due to be completed by the end of 2024. The stage of mass production deployment requires a lot of funding, and not for one year," explains the head of the industry port Avia.<url>" Roman Gusarov.
The projects of the import-substituted Superjet and MS-21 raise the least questions. "On the one hand, experienced import-substituted samples of the Superjet have already been assembled, and the PD-8 engine is even suspended on one of them. But permission to fly with this engine has not yet been received, because the UEC has not yet completed the engine certification testing program. It was expected that the first flight would take place in November, then in December 2023, but the dates were postponed. Now we are waiting for January-February. After the completion of test flights and certification, it will become clear when mass production starts," says Gusarov.
There are no problems with the deployment of serial production of the import-substituted "Superjet". The plant has been operating for more than 10 years and will be able to quickly launch the production of 10-20 such aircraft at once per year, the expert believes.
In the case of the MS-21, there are no problems with the engine, it is already certified. The aircraft with domestic engines is already flying in test mode, and by the end of 2024, certification of the newest mainline liner with a Russian engine is expected to be completed. According to the plan, the first six MS-21s will be transferred to Aeroflot for commercial operation at the end of this year. This is quite realistic if the pre-production samples pass certification, says Gusarov.
Further, it is planned to increase the volume of production of these airliners every year – by one and a half to two times. In 2025, 12 aircraft are to be produced, in 2026 – 22, in 2027 – 36, in 2028 – 50, in 2029 – 72, in 2030 – 72. Total: 260 MS-21s will be produced in six years, and the plant should reach its constant production level of 72 aircraft per year.
"These plans for the MS-21 are also quite real, as for the Superjet. The company in Irkutsk has been modernized, and it has been preparing for mass production for more than one year. The only thing is that there may be a shift in timing, because testing a new liner is an unpredictable thing, and it may be necessary to finalize something somewhere.",
– says Roman Gusarov.
But the implementation of plans for two other projects – Il-114-300 and Tu-214 – is questionable. Il-114-300 – It is a regional passenger turboprop aircraft, accommodating up to 68 passengers. Its advantage is that it can land and take off on unpaved lanes, which is very important for the delivery of passengers in the Far East and Eastern Siberia, who sometimes have to fly to neighboring regions via Moscow. "The production of IL-114-300 has been launched at the Lukhovtsy plant near Moscow. So far, everything has been limited to the creation of experimental aircraft that stand and do not perform pilot tests. There were questions about the engine, which was not completed and did not receive permission to fly. The work has been going on for a long time, and it is unclear when it will be completed. The timing is very uncertain here. Plus, investments in scaling up production will be required. The previous modification of the aircraft was produced in Tashkent, and production was moved to the Moscow region," explains Roman Gusarov.
But the Tu-214 aircraft project is, in fact, a more outdated competitor to the newest MS–21, it looks the most unlikely from the point of view of implementation, the head of <url> believes.
On the one hand, this aircraft is already mass-produced, and there is no doubt that it will continue to be produced. But the expert strongly doubts that it will be possible to increase the production of Tu-214 to 20 units per year. Namely, this is how much should be produced every year in order to fulfill the plan to produce 115 such aircraft by 2030.
"The Tu-214, together with its predecessor, the Tu-204, has been produced for 30 years at two factories in Ulyanovsk and Kazan. The average production rate was three aircraft per year. That is, less than a hundred have been produced in 30 years, and now in six years they promise to assemble more than a hundred at one factory. How this technological miracle will happen is completely unclear to me.
This is an outdated aircraft that relies on the technology of the last century, where there is a lot of hard manual labor. In order to produce Tu-214 20 units per year, it is necessary to increase the number of employees and equipment almost six times, and where all this will be found is completely unclear to me," says Roman Gusarov. This year, Kazan promised to assemble three Tu-214s, but not a single aircraft was delivered to customers. This year they promise to produce only five pieces.
"The design of the Tu-214 is outdated. In terms of safety, the aircraft meets all modern requirements, but in terms of efficiency it is much inferior to both the MS-21 and the Boeing and Airbus analogues. It consumes more fuel, and there is an outdated avionics control system, the plane cannot be piloted by two pilots, three are needed. This is a big additional cost.
The need to expand the production of the Tu-214 was required in addition to the plans for the production of the MS-21, since these two aircraft operate in the same market segment (unlike the Superjet). The fact is that the demand for the latest MS-21 is higher than the plans for their release. Since this is a completely new aircraft, it is impossible to reach the annual production of 72 aircraft overnight, it will take time. Those airlines that will not get the MS-21 in the next six years could order the Tu-214. But then these carriers will still switch to the more economical MS-21, and the "Carcasses" will leave commercial aviation back to the state aviation," says Gusarov.
Investing reserve funds in the serial production of aircraft is the best solution, Gusarov believes. "Investing in the real sector of the economy is the most effective way to spend the money of the National Welfare Fund, which was just lying there. The aviation industry passes this money through itself and transfers it to other industries, making orders from manufacturers of titanium products, electronics, etc. This money will come to the high-tech manufacturing sector, where private money does not want to go, because there are very long project deadlines, huge amounts of money are required and the percentage of income is too low. It is easier for a private trader to invest in the trade of food and alcohol, where the turnover of investments is faster and the profit is higher. The state plays for a long time. If earlier we simply ordered planes abroad and paid $ 100 million to the American economy, now we are giving money to our economy and financing the development of our own high technologies, thereby increasing our own budget revenues. Every aircraft produced means tens of thousands more jobs," says Roman Gusarov.
Every ruble invested in aircraft production gives 10 rubles of additional activity in related sectors, and this is additional support for the entire industry of the country: instrumentation, engine building, avionics, electronics, etc., said earlier economist, former presidential adviser Sergei Glazyev.
Olga Samofalova
