The flight of a promising medium-haul transport aircraft for
Table of contents
- Monopoly KB Antonov
- The thorny path to Ilyushin
- Is the outcome correct?
- preliminary reasons
In the Soviet years, each design bureauaviation had its own unique style and its own “brands”, although, of course, such a word was not used then. In the pre-war and war years, the leaders were the Design Bureau of Polikarpov, Yakovlev, Ilyushin, Lavochkin, Tupolev and the Petlyakov Special Design Bureau (SKB-029 NKVD, Petlyakov himself died in a plane crash in 1942).
After the war, in the development of combat aviation, the leadersthe MiG Design Bureau (front-line fighters) and the Sukhoi Design Bureau (fighter-interceptors, front-line bombers and attack aircraft) came out. Tupolev was engaged in the development of passenger aviation, as well as heavy bombers. Ilyushin was engaged almost exclusively in civil aviation, long-haul cargo and passenger aircraft.
An-12 landing in real life…
Dmitry Pichugin
Monopoly KB Antonov
Founded in 1946, Antonov Design Bureau is practicallycompletely occupied the niche of military transport aviation. In their segment, these guys have created a string of class-leading machines. An-12 is the most versatile transporter: despite the fact that it was born in the 1950s, it still serves, including in modernized versions, in third world countries.
Completely unpretentious to the landing strips, this aircraft saves the inhabitants of Africa from hunger and disease (humanitarian supplies), however, contributing to their own destruction (weapons are also carried on it).
In the movie "Lord of War" it is on the An-12 that the hero of Nicolas Cage lands on a dirt path in Liberia, escaping from the fighter of the local Air Force under the roof of Interpol.
…and An-12 landing in the cinema
Shot from the film "Lord of War"
In the 60s a new revolution took place:An-22 Antey is the world's first wide-body aircraft. It is thanks to the Antonovites and their developments that intercontinental liners such as the Boeing 777, the 330th Airbus and the Il-96 exist today. Antey himself is to this day the largest turboprop aircraft in the world. But the development of this machine was hampered by difficulties in production and a more successful competitor in the face of the turbojet Il-76.
In the last years of the USSR, "Antonov" went all out and developed the transport giants An-124 Ruslan and An-224 Mriya, the very appearance of which is a whole show.
An-26
An-26 based on the passenger An-24 became a replacementobsolete An-12 at the decline of socialism, and now it's the turn to retire to him. But the Antonov corporation by that time had become foreign in relation to Russia, and its products were imported. The Ministry of Defense, of course, needed hundreds of such machines. The heavyweight Il-76 disdains poorly prepared landing strips, does not like unpaved and improvised airfields (although experienced pilots put the transporter on the dirt road).
Maintenance of remote military bases and presence inThe godforsaken corners of the planet cannot be imagined without a universal, reliable and unpretentious aircraft. It is impossible to imagine without such a machine the conduct of modern mobile warfare, because air communication may be required before normal runways are available.
The latest modernization of the IL-76
Vitaly V. Kuzmin
The thorny path to Ilyushin
It is logical that the task of developing a newIlyushin received a short-range and medium-range transporter, which already had one successful transporter, the I-76, in its arsenal. In addition, the project of a cargo Il-112 based on the passenger Il-114 was gathering dust at the Ilyushins. At the beginning of the 2000s, when the issue of a new transport aircraft began to come to the fore, the project was resurrected under the Il-112V index, but was already a completely new development, without regard to Soviet models.
In 2010, dissatisfied with the timing of implementationproject, the Ministry of Defense refused to pay further, and then they… They just went to the Ukrainians and bought seven copies of the An-140 for testing with the troops in 2011. The concern was offered to find money to build prototypes themselves, if they were interested.
An-140-100 with Russian markings
Mikhail Khokhryakov
But the thorny path of the new Silt did not end there.In 2013-2014, Russian-Ukrainian relations escalated, which complicated the purchase of Antonov's cars, as well as the supply of spare parts. At the same time, the existing An-26s were completely worn out, the car was urgently needed. The new Minister of Defense Shoigu gives the order to refinance the project, and already in 2016 the Il-112V models began to be blown in the TsAGI wind tunnels in Zhukovsky.
Il-112V (model) at TsAGI, flutter tests (vibration of structural elements)
The first flight in 2019 turned out to be fulldisappointment - the aircraft has an excess of its own mass. Yes, such that the car has an almost negative carrying capacity - it is barely able to carry itself. Independent aviation expert Vadim Lukashevich in an interview with The Insider described the situation as follows:
It's a small plane, and when it started to fly,it turned out that it was overweight from 3 to 5 tons, which is comparable to its regular payload. That is, the first sample can only carry itself. As the Ilyushins themselves stated in justification, they recruited young designers and this is how they designed it.
Assembly of two prototypes for flight and for static tests
Artur Sargsyan/TASS
Is the outcome correct?
On August 17, 2021, a disaster occurredIL-112V, three crew members were killed, including test pilot Hero of Russia Nikolai Kuimov. Amateur footage shows that one engine of the aircraft caught fire, after a few seconds the car lost control and crashed into the ground - at such a low altitude, the pilots could not save the car and their lives.
According to experts, in case of failure of oneengine, the aircraft must be able to safely land on the second engine. Instant fire - the fuel that was already flowing was burning, which means that the fuel lines were damaged, the plane began to fall. The aircraft fire extinguishing system was focused only on the engine, it was impossible to extinguish the remaining elements of the aircraft power plant.
Il-112V crash site
investigative committee
But if the failure of the fire extinguishing system -this is a serious miscalculation in the quality of the assembly or design of individual elements, then stalling after the failure of one engine is already obvious, a miscalculation in the design itself.
The worst news is that he diedthe only test copy, and in addition, the already identified errors in the aircraft, in fact, return the work to the design stage, and the designers to the drawings. Accordingly, it will be possible to talk about the timing of a new test flight in a few years. It is not clear how the Russian Aerospace Forces will get out without a whole class of aircraft in the air fleets.
preliminary reasons
It turned out that the Ilyushin company was very afraidto lose a promising order from the military, because they have already become famous for the failure of the project in 2010 due to the initially shortest possible time for project documentation. And this time it was about, in fact, a new task for the Russian aircraft industry (even the development of the Il-76 was partially carried out by Antonov Design Bureau specialists).
© UAC press service
Weight design faded into the background, and gaps in the calculations began to be revealed already at the stage of assembling test specimens - all because of too short design stages.
The TV7-117ST aircraft engine also causes a lot ofdisputes, starting with the choice of this model - its nominal power is 3000 hp, while many similar cars of European concerns have engines one and a half times more powerful.
From the very first flights, it was not without smallaccidents and breakdowns. The problem of oil overheating in the heat exchange system was immediately revealed, the pilots even had to temporarily turn off the engines. There were failures of automatic engine control systems.
Finally, the plane was included in the composition very early.airshow, while it was necessary to continue test flights. Instead, management sought to demonstrate "success" as widely as possible.
In the cockpit
Probably, if more tests were takentime, the causes of malfunctions could have been identified earlier, the necessary changes and improvements could have been made. But in this case, it would not have been possible to carry the Il-112V around the exhibitions. A significant role in the tragic outcome was played by the eternal desire of the domestic bureaucracy to show off.
A year has passed, and the causes of the disaster continue to be investigated. Since February 2022, work on the creation of the Il-112V has been suspended.
In all likelihood, we should expect a new seriesaccidents - how many unpleasant surprises can be expected from the flights of the extremely outdated An-26, one can only guess. The aviation industry will not give anything new to the Ministry of Defense in the foreseeable future.