Bureaucrats take down MTA-
Site Russian Press,Aleksey Nikolskiy,29/Aug/2007,Wednesday
Multi-billion contract with India teeters on edge One of the major international projects so much looked forward to by the Russian aviation industry risks falling apart because of bureaucratic delays. Agreed to during Vladimir Putin's visit to India, the schedule for preparing documents to begin developing the military transport plane MTA (Multirole Transport Aircraft) has been knocked off course, and the Indians are thinking about an alternative to the Russian plane. Oleg Demchenko, president of the Irkut Corporation, called the situation critical: "The bureaucrats have messed things up, so that for two years we have been unable to conclude an intergovernmental agreement," and Russia may lose this project, with India deciding to develop the plane with the Brazilian corporation Embraer, Italy's Alenia, or Spanish CASA. A source in the Defense Ministry said the Russian Air Force has taken a passive view of the program, and the lack of clear signals from command that it is planning to buy large numbers of the aircraft contributed most to the Indian partners' skepticism. All of which may lead to a situation in which Russia loses what little it has of transport aircraft building, because the MTA is the only project of this type which can secure financing from a foreign partner, and the plane itself still claims a unique niche on world markets and, should it be developed, could be sold to third countries, said Konstantin Makiyenko, an expert with the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies. If India turns its back on Russia, Embraer would gladly take Irkut's place. A few months ago it presented a project for a similar plane, the C- 390. As a result, bureaucrats and the military will not only kill the multi-billion project but could leave Russia's Air Force without an aircraft it so badly needs, because the An-12 will soon be written off, Makiyenko said. He cannot recall anything like this stupendous bureaucratic saga. There is nothing to compare it with, the expert said, because the scale of the undertaking is unprecedented. A manager at one of the aircraft building plants estimated it at $5 billion to start with.
notícia postada pelo forista Vector (trabalha na Embraer), no foro defesabrasil.
