Terms and funding have yet to be worked out but it looks as though RSK MiG may be given a second chance, at least in principle (403 words)

Published: 10/5/2001

Recent reports suggesting that a tender for the fifth generation fighter would start in November 2001, attributed to Anatoly Kornukov, Commander in Chief of the Russian Air Force, appear to have been a little premature according to sources within the Ministry of Defence. They have indicated that the terms of a tender may not actually be published until February or March 2002. The same sources have also hinted that, despite Kornukov's enthusiasm, the air force still does not have the funding to finance even the early stages of the programme and any winner of the tender will have to fund the LFI development from its own resources, until the $1.5 billion, cited by Kornukov as the cost of the programme, is found. The funding situation is not entirely surprising, as the primary driving force behind the LFI in economic terms has been the development of an aircraft that, while in principle fulfilling the requirements of the RusAF, has been focussed on developing a viable product to compete against the JSF after 2010. To that end, there has also been discussion of heavy involvement with both India and China, with recent calls for changes in the rules governing military investment to allow MoD funding to be mixed with that of a third country. The Russian Aerospace Agency (RAKA) would not discuss the timing of the tender and indeed the whole issue has become something of an industry saga, in many ways illustrating the changing face of aerospace in Russia, with the domestic customer much less important than in the past. The one unexpected element is the fact that RSK MiG has been given another chance having earlier been ruled out in July, by what appeared to be the award of the tender to Sukhoi, heralding another slide in its role as a fighter design house. It now seems that the MoD authorities are reflecting the increasingly pervasive trend towards government transparency or, at least, being seen to be trying to be transparent. Kornukov, however, held out little real hope for MiG saying that the reason for the tender was the need to comply with the law and that he saw the technologically superior Sukhoi as the clear favourite.

Article ID: 2807