As the Tatarstan business resource BUSINESS Online reported in Timur Latypov's material , "He will be responsible for the turboprops: Igor Nasenkov was thrown to raise the small UAC. Ex-Kamaz workers will think about how to build the 400 planes promised to Putin for local airlines," the Tatars continue to storm the aviation industry. Russian Helicopters, Tupolev and Ilyushin have already fallen under their onslaught, and now, according to BUSINESS Online, it is the turn of the Ural Civil Aviation Plant (UZGA). In terms of the number of important aircraft-building topics, it is comparable to the UAC, but the situation is more complicated than with the MS-21, Superjet and Tu-214. Experts advise to withdraw UZGA from the format of "someone's candle factory", and radically revise the projects. As a result, some of them may well end up in Kazan.
The design image of the promising light transport and passenger aircraft LMS-192 "Osvey" jointly developed by JSC Ural Civil Aviation Plant (UZGA) and the Belarusian JSC 558 Aviation Repair Plant (c) JSC 558 Aviation Repair Plant
They are not strangers to Tatarstan
Changes have taken place in the industrial empire of Viktor Grigoriev, which, apparently, should seriously change the implementation of the new program of the Russian aircraft industry in terms of local aviation. Recall that at the end of December, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that over 1,000 aircraft would be built by 2030, 402 of them for local transportation. The Ural Civil Aviation Plant (UZGA, Yekaterinburg) is responsible for their design and construction. According to BUSINESS Online sources in the aviation industry, today this previously independent enterprise joined the Technodinamika holding of the same Grigoriev - the company now owns more than 50% of UZGA shares.
Technodinamika and UZGA did not comment on this information. Such a change has not yet been reflected in open databases. So, judging by the "Contour.Focus", 48.65% of UZGA shares, as before, belongs to NK Bank, where Grigoriev is chairman of the Board of Directors. Other owners are unknown - 48.57% is located in the Central Moscow Depository. Recall that Technodinamika also belongs to Grigoriev (75% minus 1 share from the Dynamics group of companies controlled by him).
As our interlocutors are sure, this change will inevitably affect the aircraft industry segment of Tatarstan.
First, we note the continued expansion of immigrants from the republic to key positions in the aviation industry. Examples of Russian Helicopters, Tupolev and UAC are widely known (recall that the managing director of Tu, Konstantin Timofeev, is also the first deputy general director of the corporation), Ilyushin, headed by Daniil Brenerman from Kazan. And now it's the turn of the CEO of Technodinamika, Igor Nasenkov. He was born in 1975 in Naberezhnye Chelny. In 1997 he graduated from the Kama Polytechnic Institute. In 2000-2005, he was the head of production of KAMAZ auxiliary workshops, Director of the Procurement department of KAMAZ-Metallurgy. In 2009, he was appointed first deputy general director of the Radioelectronic Technologies concern, it was assumed that Nasenkov would later take over the reins of KRET, but in 2016 he headed Technodinamika.
Also, according to BUSINESS Online, simultaneously with the transition under the wing of the holding, the general director was replaced in UZGA. Leonid Luzgin was appointed to them. He is also a former Kamaz driver. His name first appeared in the media in connection with the events at the auto giant in 2012. Then the general director of KAMAZ-Metallurgy, Vladimir Abramov, was dismissed and the director of the foundry, Luzgin, was suspended from work (later it was reported that he was demoted to deputy). The reason is the omissions of an organizational nature, which led to downtime of production lines. Later, Luzgin headed the production directorate at Alnas, and before his appointment to UZGA, he was the general director of Ufa NPP Molniya and the aggregate production association (UAPO), which are also part of Nasenkov's holding.
Secondly, we recall that Technodinamika is firmly rooted in Tatarstan: it manages four local defense industry companies here and owns the Kazan Gipronia Aviation Industry.
Thirdly, UZGA has not been a stranger in the republic for a long time, although it was initially perceived that way - the loud story of the collapse of the OKB was not in vain. Simonov. The plant generally has a solid representative office in the regions (St. Petersburg, Moscow region, Samara, Smolensk, Nizhny Novgorod, Taganrog, Ulyanovsk), but it has a clearly special attitude towards the Republic of Tatarstan.
According to open data, three of the 12 separate divisions of the company are located in Kazan. What two of them are doing is not advertised, and the third appeared relatively recently - in connection with the resonant history of the Kazan company MVEN. In 2021, UZGA intended to subcontract to it a significant part of the engineering work on the TCB-800 training aircraft - the Urals needed specialists and a site. But just at that time, MVEN was mired in litigation and financial problems and, in order to survive, went to another agreement with UZGA: the plant leased workshops and employed most of the Kazan team.
There are a lot of projects, but...
Why is there reason to believe that the changes in UZGA will not stop at changing the owner and CEO (our interlocutors consider Luzgin to be the interim head - for the period of transformation)? Today, the plant has fallen into time pressure mode. The projects that were slowly moving before their own and, accordingly, total sanctions, now needed to be completed urgently. Meanwhile, according to their importance, the enterprise with the modest name "Civil Aviation Plant" fully claims to be a small United Aircraft Corporation (UAC). This is the development and construction of three types of aircraft - Baikal, Ladoga and Osvey.
Moreover, this May, the authorities made a decent "discount" to UZGA. If in 2022 154 "Baikal" (capacity - 9 passengers) were expected from the plant by 2030, now it is 139, and the first 5 aircraft should be delivered not in 2024, but in 2025. The number of Ladoga (44 passengers) decreased from 140 to 105, and the delivery deadline shifted from 2025 to 2028. There is a special story with Osvey. Initially, the Czech L-410 was listed in the niche of the 19-seater car, which UZGA had been assembling from foreign components since 2013. It was ordered to produce 178 sides. But supplies from Europe were sanctioned, and production could not be localized. Now the "Osvey" - 158 cars - hastily stuck in this place.
But even after adjustment, the task does not cease to look low-lift, because until recently UZGA only repaired aviation and gas pumping engines, and also assembled foreign-made aircraft: in addition to the L-410, Austrian training Diamond DA40 and Diamond DA42, as well as Bell 407 helicopters.
If we talk about the design school, then Baikal and Ladoga cannot be called fully UZGA developments. The first is based on the T-101 Grach (from Roks-Aero and MiG) and Viscount V 100 (MAI) projects, which were closed in the 1990s and 2000s. Redesigning into Baikal began in 2019, the car took off for the first flight in 2022... Ladoga is a Czech L-610, created by order of the Soviet Aeroflot to replace the An-24. It took off in 1988, but it never went into production. The development of Ladoga started in 2021 and continues today… Let's add that the TCB-800 is also based on a foreign aircraft - the Austrian DART-450.
In this series, only Osvey looks original, but it is not known at what stage its design is. The prototype is promised to be rolled out in 2026-2027. The aircraft is positioned as a joint development of the Belarusian 558th aircraft repair plant and UZGA. Our interlocutors tend to see in this undertaking more politics than technical content, but at the same time, paradoxically, it is the non-existent "Osvey" that causes them the greatest hopes. "I don't really hope for ours anymore," the source says. "But Belarusians have a lot of ideas, drive and determination."
The next problem is the engines. They are available only for Ladoga - TV7-117CM from St. Petersburg's ODK-Klimov. But it must be borne in mind that this is a completely new product with incurable childhood diseases. But the VK-800S for Baikal, Osvey (and TC-800) is still being tested on the stand. It was started to be developed (for helicopters) back in the late 90s by the same Klimov, but the topic died down. In 2017, the developments were transferred to UZGA. It was reported that the engine will receive a certificate by the end of 2024, however, the VK-800 will have to go through the refinement process. This is 7-10 years, Honored pilot of Russia Yuri Sytnik pointed out in an interview with BUSINESS Online. And then, there are doubts that the industry is ready to produce such a number of engines by 2030 - if we take it side by side, then 665.
Something else is even more serious. Sources believe that the pilot operation of Baikal and Ladoga is highly likely to reveal problems of a conceptual nature. In April 2023, at the general meeting of the Union of Aircraft Manufacturers of Russia, Deputy head of the Control Department (CCM) of the President of the Russian Federation Valentin Letunovsky criticized the approaches to the formation of technical specifications for local aircraft: "We ask the Ministry of Industry and Trade: "How do you form an order for a particular type?" An amazing answer: "We took all the best options, folded, discarded the bad, left the good and issued a technical task." We ask the operators: "Have you even studied this TK? After all, we have a large geography, there are north and south, issues related to landing on different types of sites, and so on." Silence… When we placed an order for another car, we ask: "Where did you put it?" - "From the manufacturer." To develop a new car! "And why the manufacturer? Where is the KB?" - "So they created it a week ago, and we posted it." Imagine that in Soviet times an order for the creation of a car was placed with the manufacturer! This is not his function at all, let alone the quality."
Sytnik makes curious clarifications on the topic: "I had to visit UZGA. There are many ambitions - and as many mistakes. Modern managers and designers do not think through to the end. For example, on one of these planes, they decided to make a side control stick. I ask: "Are you making a car for the North?" - "Yes." - "And how to sit down with this handle in a crosswind, on a snow-covered strip? In automatic mode, the aircraft cannot fly in the north, and it is inconvenient to work with a joystick 'on your hands', an average qualified pilot will not be able to cope. Put a normal steering wheel." "Come on, it's yesterday." Next, I say: "The chassis must be made with a margin of safety." - "It's going to be hard." But at local, and even more so at northern airfields, the landing gear they want will quickly fail. If you want the plane to live like the An-2, An-24, Yak-40, do it with a margin. Well, you invite the engineers of the State Civil Aviation Institute, they will sign everything to you in detail, otherwise the plane will have to be constantly seriously modified and suck money for it. But no, deadlines are tight, there is not enough money for everything. As a result, the debugging will take 2 times longer. Here is Baikal: it takes only 9 people, the length of the take-off run has increased compared to the An-2, it will not be able to work at the same sites. A very crude car… Therefore, I can't say anything good about the plant. But it's also bad, because cognac doesn't flow under the lying captain. We have to do something anyway."
Minnikhanov hits the wedges
According to sources, one could assume that the change of ownership of UZGA is an attempt to transfer responsibility, but Nasenkov is not the kind of person who will allow himself to be made extreme. He has a reputation as a strong leader in the military-industrial circles of Tatarstan. "There are a lot of conversations with all these light aircraft, but there has been no practical way out for many years," Andrei Frolov, a military-industrial expert, associate professor at the HSE, said in an interview with BUSINESS Online. - Technodynamics has proved that it can cope with solving problems of high complexity. The probability that things will go well under her leadership is increasing."
Our interlocutors believe that Nasenkov will have to radically revise a number of projects, some even to the point of stopping. What sauce it will be served with is another question. But in general, work on local aircraft will continue. "There is no way for our country without turboprops," aviation expert Sergey Krutousov stressed in an interview with BUSINESS Online. "But at the same time, we must realize that UZGA cannot be someone's candle factory."
Among other solutions to a number of issues, it is possible to transfer the center of gravity from Yekaterinburg to the regions. Moreover, as one of our interlocutors assures us, the branches of UZGA have already expressed the idea of making them independent enterprises, but under the same guise.
As our interlocutors say, UZGA has a large team and, from a material point of view, the maximum possible carte blanche, but there is a shortage of professionals. In Kazan, the Uralians "assimilated" not only 2/3 of the staff of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but also - almost completely - the employees of the deceased Design Bureau named after him. Simonov.
Moreover, according to a BUSINESS Online source in the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Tatarstan, Rustam Minnikhanov, the President of the Republic of Tatarstan, really wanted to drag the construction of Baikal to Kazan. It was not possible to do this (as it seems, for the best), but our interlocutors are sure that this was not the last attempt with regard to UZGA projects. But will the capital of the republic, in conditions of limited labor and engineering resources, pull another point of aircraft overstrain in addition to KAZ and KVZ?
Igor Nasenkov, General Director of Technodinamika JSC (c) BUSINESS Online
