Russia has withdrawn from a joint program with Ukraine to produce the An-70 military transport aircraft as the project is outdated

Friday, May 20, 2022

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Russia has withdrawn from a joint program with Ukraine to produce the An-70 military transport aircraft as the project is outdated, the defense minister said Wednesday. "The An-70 project has been being carried out on a technical order initiated in 1984, and no end is in sight," Sergei Ivanov, also a deputy prime minister, said at a meeting of defense ministers from former Soviet republics in the Azerbaijani capital, Baku. "We will see what comes next. We will make a separate statement on this issue." The An-70 program has experienced a number of setbacks since it was launched in 1990, with major concerns focusing around the D-27 turbopropfan engines designed by Ukraine's Progress design bureau. The first prototype was lost in a mid-air collision in 1995, while the second prototype crash-landed in January 2001 during a test flight near Omsk, Russia. The estimated cost of industrial production of the An-70 has been put at $50-55 million. Russia's Defense Ministry originally ordered 15 planes, which would have larger payload capacities than the U.S. C-130 Hercules.

Bookmark Russia has withdrawn from a joint program with Ukraine to produce the An-70 military transport aircraft as the project is outdated