Since yesterday, the unremarkable and often neglected military transport aircraft Il-76 has gained incredible popularity in the information space on ordinary days. And all thanks to the fact that at least 4 (and evil tongues say that all 7) of these aircraft received damage incompatible with further functioning at the Kresty airfield, for a mysterious reason, which can be conditionally described as “stones from the sky”.
And against the background of this good news, I decided to pay a little attention not to what kind of aircraft it is, what its characteristics are, for what purposes it was used … You can find all this on Wikipedia yourself or other experts and observers will tell you. I was also interested in the question of how painful this loss was for the Russian Aerospace Forces.
And let’s start, as expected, with the price.
The cost of one Il-76MD-90A is an average of 3.7 billion rubles. But there is a nuance. In almost all documentation, the cost of the aircraft is fixed in rubles, but its cost is estimated at the market price in dollars. And the dollar, as you know, is a very unstable currency in Russia, unlike the “stable” ruble. Therefore, the real price of the aircraft is higher than indicated and is about 5 billion rubles.
By the way, this is the problem of almost all production in Russia. Their factories begin to fulfill contracts signed at one dollar rate, and complete at a completely different one. So, for example, the Mi-8AMTSh helicopter is estimated at 1.1 billion rubles, although its real cost is 1.3-1.5 billion, depending on the modification. The Ka-52 is supplied to the troops for 950 million rubles, at a cost of 1.1 billion rubles.
That is, factories operate at a loss.
Now, about the technical and technological capabilities of the production of IL-76.
The homeland of the Il-76 can be considered the “Tashkent Aviation Production Association named after V.P. Chkalov”, and therefore, at the branch of PJSC “Il” – “Aviastar” in Ulyanovsk, he is more an emigrant than a seventh generation local resident.
It is worth noting that the production of the Il-76 in Russia, to one degree or another, has been established. For example, in 2023, 2 new-built Il-76MD-90A aircraft were transferred for the needs of the Aerospace Forces.
But there is a nuance.
To date, this enterprise has delivered 20 aircraft of this type, taking into account the prototype.
The point with contracts is also interesting. In October 2012, the Russian Ministry of Defense signed a contract with the Aviastar plant for the construction of 39 Il-76MD-90A aircraft in the amount of 139.42 billion rubles, or, roughly speaking, 3.5 billion rubles per aircraft. Let me remind you that at that time the dollar exchange rate was 30 rubles, that is, surprisingly, then the plane cost $115 million!
But, 8 years later, in 2020, the contract is renegotiated, with a reduction in the initial order and for the delivery of only 14 Il-76MD-90A aircraft until 2028! And all why? And all because Aviastar critically missed the deadlines for the delivery of aircraft for the needs of the Navy, and there could be no talk of any 39 aircraft, even by 2030.
The plant fulfilled its old obligations only in 2022, having delivered 13 aircraft since 2012, or 1-2 aircraft per year.
True, in 2022, the Aviastar plant handed over five Il-76MD-90A aircraft to the Russian Ministry of Defense at once, which could indicate a sharp increase in the technical and technological capabilities of the enterprise, but in fact, no. These 5 aircraft were handed over, thanks to the accumulation of backlogs since 2012 and the completion of the old, failed contract, and the remnants were transferred, which had been brought to a delivery state for years.
One more point of the contract dated 2012 is interesting. The first Il-76s were built according to the terms of reference of the Ministry of Industry and Trade (the very one whose office not so long ago in Moscow City was attacked by some unknown drones twice), but after a while the terms of reference were changed by the Ministry of Defense. As a result, in connection with such a leapfrog, each aircraft handed over to the customer brought about 1 billion rubles in losses.
It is worth mentioning the issue of product quality.
In 2018, two Il-76MD-90A aircraft with serial numbers 0109 and 0110 were handed over. Before them, the last handover was carried out in 2015, but that aircraft was accepted only in 2016.
The fact is that the delivered aircraft had multiple design defects, and the fans of the PS-90A-76 engines generally needed to be replaced. Later it turned out that the engine itself did not quite match the airframe.
Quantity and maintainability.
About 130 Il-76 aircraft of various modifications are included in the Russian Aerospace Forces. However, not all of them work.
In 2019, it turned out that the serviceability of military transport aviation equipment is 60% and continues to decrease due to the lack of routine repairs and a program to modernize existing aircraft, but at the same time, a growing load on vehicles.
What is most interesting, instead of solving internal problems with the maintainability of equipment, in 2019 a contract was signed for the repair of 6 Indian Il-78MKIs. The process of carrying out repair work for the Russian Il-76, since that time, has not moved to the system plane.
Thus, a fully functioning Il-76 in the ranks of the Russian Aerospace Forces can be an average of 70 aircraft. The loss of even one side is, roughly speaking, a year of compensation for the loss. In the event of the loss of 4-7 aircraft, whether they are completely destroyed or damaged, this is the incapacitation of up to 10% of the operational fleet with vague prospects for repairs and compensation, which can stretch from 3 to 7 years with accompanying multi-billion losses.
Here it is the real effect of the arrival of a certain group of UFOs at the airfield near Pskov.
2023-08-31 09:54:14
#effect #loss #IL76 #Russia
