Finally, The Indo-Russian Multirole Transport Aircraft JV


India and Russia have finally agreed on the workshare and shareholders agreement for a joint venture company that will develop and build the Multirole Transport Aircraft, based on the Ilyushin-214 concept. The Joint Venture Company (JVC) is being established with its headquarters at Bangalore, India to execute the MTA project in which HAL and Russian participants will have equal shareholding.

A Defence Ministry statement this morning said, "A Joint Venture will now be formed between Hindustan Aeronautics Limited and the Russian Partners namely United Aircraft Corporation & Rosoboronexport to co-develop and co-produce Multirole Transport Aircraft (MTA)."

The MTA is to be a 15-20 tonne payload capacity aircraft for the Indian and Russian air forces. The main features of MTA are: maximum take-off weight 65 tonnes, payload capacity 15-20-tons, cruise speed 800-km/h, range 2500-2700-km, service ceiling 12-km. The aircraft will have two engines, state of the art features such as fly-by-wire, full authority digital engine control, modern avionics and glass cockpit.

The total development cost is expected to be approximately $600.70-million (approx Rs 2,900-crore) to be equally shared by both the sides. The initial plan is to manufacture 205 aircraft.

MTA Photo By Shiv Aroor, More here

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