INDUSTRY TEAMINGS
20 Jan 09. Eurocopter is looking for American partners on a proposed European heavy-lift helicopter and its bid for the U.S. Army’s Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter (ARH), CEO Lutz Bertling said Jan. 20. The European helicopter maker, an EADS subsidiary, is in early talks with Boeing and Sikorsky as potential partners for a Future Transport Helicopter, he told a New Year’s press conference here. France and Germany support the large helicopter project, which is one of the top priorities of the European Defence Agency’s head, Alexander Weis, Bertling said. “There is some trans-Atlantic work to be done,” he said, with the possibility of common standardization between American and European programs. Eurocopter is in contact with American original equipment manufacturers, excluding Bell, to explore the potential for a “joint business opportunity,” he said. The talks were at a preliminary stage, consisting of design discussions, and were being held with Boeing and Sikorsky, said Philippe Harache, Eurocopter executive vice president for customer relations.
Eurocopter also is looking for an American partner to supply military mission systems for the new tender for the ARH program, Bertling said. Eurocopter would supply the airframe to EADS North America, which would act as the prime contractor. (Source: Defense News)
18 Jan 09. As Sukhoi’s SU-30 family of large, multi-role fighters has come to dominate Russian aircraft exports over the past decade, the positions of Sukhoi and MiG have reversed. Now MiG is the deeply secondary design bureau, and Sukhoi is the firm designing Russia’s flagship fighters. Russian weapons exports have risen sharply over the past 5 years, but the overall volume of orders for Russian manufacturers has plunged without the Soviet empire’s vast arms budget,
network of dependent clients, and the global military tensions and warfare that
accompanied its drive for expansion. That has created serious trouble for RAC MiG. Their MiG 1.44 design lost to Sukhoi’s PAK-FA in the competition to become Russia’s future fighter, their MiG-AT lost the future trainer market to the Yakolev/Aermacchi Yak-130, and their flagship MiG-29 now struggles to find buyers on the international market, despite multi-role upgrades. India is buying about 45 MiG-29K aircraft for its aircraft carriers, and the omnidirectional thrust-vectoring MiG-29OVT/MiG-35 variant is a candidate in India’s 126-plane MMRCA competition, but sales elsewhere have been slow. Algeria’s cancellation of its $1.3 – 1.5bn, 34 plane MiG-29 buy has hit the company hard on multiple fronts. Even Russia’s recent $615m purchase of the 28 MiG-29SMT multi-role fighters from that deal will not solve the firm’s $1.5bn in reported debts. 2005 DID article asked if the Russian aviation industry was moving toward a French-style “sesquipolar” design split between Sukhoi and Irkut. Since then, Russian industry appears to be moving toward a more fully unipolar, state-owned model. Both Sukhoi and Irkut have been pulled into the government’s United Aircraft Corporation. Now Aviation Week reports that UAC vice president and Sukhoi general director Mikhail Pogosyan will head up RAC MiG, while retaining his existing titles. (Source: Google)