By M A Athul
Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd signed the tripartite General Contract with United Aircraft Corporation -Transport Aircraft (UAC-TA), the Russian partner & their JV-Multirole Transport Aircraft Ltd. (MTAL) for the Multirole Transport Aircraft (MTA) project on Monday, 28th May, 2012.
HAL will carry out design & development of its work share of MTA at ARDC in Bangalore while its Transport Aircraft Division (TAD) at Kanpur will manufacture the prototypes and subsequently the serial production will be at Kanpur, where dedicated facilities are being set up. HAL’s other R&D Centres and manufacturing divisions will share development of systems & LRU’s and manufacture of components, sub assemblies and composite structure. HAL will showcase its expertise in design of aircraft as well as systems, manufacturing & flight testing while jointly working with the Russian team in Moscow as well as in India.
The current MTA pact succeeds an earlier Indo-Russian governments inking an Inter Governmental Agreement for joint design, development & production of
MTA on 50:50 sharing basis and had decided to form a JV between HAL, UAC-TA & Rosoboronexport to execute the project.
The primary objective is to achieve self-reliance in design & development and production of aircraft of this size and also to manage the programme with international collaboration and large number of global suppliers.
"The aircraft will be designed for the roles of cargo/troop transportation; para-drop /air drop of supplies including Low Altitude Parachute Extraction System (LAPES) and is to be co-developed by HAL and UAC & Rosoboronexport of Russia through a Joint Venture Company (JVC)," says a release.
HAL & UAC-TA has proposed to Design, Develop and Produce Multirole Transport Aircraft in the 15-20 tone class, jointly by Indian and Russian Agencies to meet the requirement of 100 aircraft for the Russian Air Force, 45 aircraft to the IAF and 60 for other nations. Total requirement for the present is 205. The MTA project preliminary design will start immediately on signing the follow up contract on preliminary design on which tripartite discussions have been concluded.
