MOSCOW. April 3 (Interfax-AVN) - Results of the competition among advance projects of a light military transport plane will be summed up before April 10, a competent source in the Russian defense industry told Interfax-Military News Agency on Thursday.
"Before choosing the winner in the competition, members of the tender commission have left for enterprises to assess abilities of contenders to implement the project once again," the source said.
"The main contenders are (in order of priority) the IL-112V plane of the Ilyushin aircraft corporation and the MIG-110 designed by the MIG aircraft corporation," he said.
The source did not rule out that both projects will be named winners, and the final decision will be made after Ilyushin and MIG submit conceptual designs of their planes, i.e. at the next projecting stage.
The IL-112 airlifter participating in the competition is intended for transportation of cargoes weighing up to 6t at distances up to 6,000km. The aircraft is to supplant in-service AN- 26 Curl airlifters. Experts believe that the IL-112V will excel the AN-26 in range and flight speed; in addition to that, the new aircraft will be capable of landing and taking off from 800m and 1,000m strips, as well as from unpaved strips. Fuel economy characteristics of the IL-112 are by some 2.4 times better than those of its predecessor.
The MIG-110 multipurpose aircraft has a cargo capacity of 6t, or passenger capacity of up to 48 persons. The power plant of the plane is to include two TV7-117S series 2s engines developing 2,800hp each (foreign-made engines may be fitted to export- oriented aircraft). Fuel consumption will be 220g/t per km for the cargo version and 24 g/t per km for the passenger version. The maximum take-off weight will be 19t with 6t of gross load. The cruising speed of the plane will be 550kmph. The operational range will be 1,680km with commercial load of 4,500kg, and about 4,000km with maximum fuel. The estimated cost of a plane is not more than USD7.5m.
The potential market of the aircraft for the period of up to 2010 is assessed at 100 or 120 planes for the Russian Defense Ministry and 200 aircraft from commercial users.