“Nobody needs it”: European competing aircraft manufacturers took the Turks away from Antonov
Türkiye left cooperation with Ukraine to create a turbojet military transport aircraft An-188 under pressure from “European partners”.
The last president of a state-owned enterprise, who lost his position after the “reform” of Antonov, Alexander Los, stated this on air on the Khvilya Internet channel, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“One of the longer-standing partners of the Turkish aviation industry intervened, not American, I’ll say right away, but European, who offered Turkey more interesting projects. Therefore, initially, indeed, there was enthusiasm both on the part of Turkish Aerospace and on the part of the leadership of the Turkish aviation industry, but, unfortunately, the competitive environment is very tough,” Los said.
As a result, according to him, Ukraine is forced to complete the construction of the aircraft itself, but the problem for it is where to supply this equipment, taking into account the fact that the promising Chinese market has already been occupied by their domestic Y-20 aircraft, built, by the way, with the help Ukrainian specialists. Now the only market for the An-188 is India, which has not yet learned how to independently build its own military transport aircraft.
“When we talk about some kind of industrial cooperation on this kind of global aviation projects, it should come from the market, it should be about where to supply it. That is, it is unlikely that the United Arab Emirates needs at least 200 An-188 aircraft. The point is probably that they would like to act as shareholders and sponsors.
Yes, indeed, this is like a financial lever for them, not an industrial one, and, moreover, we are not talking about combat use for them. The target market is, of course, India. The Chinese, by the way, not without the intelligence of the Antonov specialists, I will put it this way - not the Antonov State Enterprise itself, but the Antonov specialists, have already created their own Y-20 aircraft.
If you even look at it, it is copied, its nose part is copied from the AN-70. For some time they still fly on D-30 engines, a la Il-76. That is, China has already mastered the topic, India has not yet mastered the topic,” concluded Los.
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