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military aviation | project from the Yak-130. To date, the Russian and Italian defence ministries have granted all relevant permissions. Practical work under the programme is beginning”, he told the media in Paris. Many an aircraft maker develops drones in Russia these days. Some progress has been made by Irkut Corp., the Sokol design bureau (Kazan), ENIKS and Novik-21st Century companies and others. However, all UAVs they develop range in weight from a few kilograms to hundreds of kilograms and are designed, primarily, for aerial surveillance and reconnaissance. In 2006, the Sukhoi design bureau unveiled at Le Bourget mockups of its three UAVs of the Zond (Probe) family, weight from 2 to 12 t at takeoff and designed for multispectral monitoring, air traffic control and communications retransmission. Sukhoi is known to work on combat UAVs as well, but no detail on its efforts has been published yet. Two years ago, it became known that MiG Corp. had been developing an advanced UAV too. The programme was launched soon after Alexei Fyodorov (now UAC’s chairman of the board and president) assumed office of Director General and Designer General. Mr. Fyodorov, who is very sensitive to the market, had initiated several UAV development programmes in Irkut he led then. However, for two years, MiG leaders have limited themselves to stating the fact of the programme, but kept mum on detail. By August this year, MiG Corp.’s UCAV programme had reached a stage, at which the management decided it was time to go public with some of the results produced. By the time the company launched development of the Skat, it had had a wealth of experience in pilotless airborne vehicles development. Since the late ‘40s, the design bureau had worked on the first Soviet antiship cruise missiles, the KS and KSS (sort of shrunk unmanned MiG-15 fighter), and then K-10 and Kh-20 supersonic cruise missiles for use with Tu-16 and Tu-95 long-range bombers and had taken part in developing the Kh-22 high-speed cruise missile that remains in the inventory of Tu-22M3 bombers. To cap it all, work was under way on recce and attack UAVs (X-155DR and Krechet), unmanned interceptors (K-155 and Gyurza), etc. in the ‘60s. The design bureau continued its work on unmanned designs afterwards as well. Skat: nuances of design So, what is MiG Corp.’s future combat drone? The Skat UCAV (Skat is Skate, or Guitarfish in Russian) is designed to eliminate pre-reconnoitred hostile static ground targets, first of all, air defence assets, in the face of formidable enemy air defence fires and destroy mobile surface threats in solo and package missions in cooperation with manned platforms. In line with the present-day global trend, the aircraft was designed in the low-observable tailless flying wing configuration, with its airframe heavily using composite materials. The aircraft’s lifting body in planform is a triangle with a leading-edge sweep of about 54 deg. The wing panels have the same sweep. They have the zero-taper ratio and wingtips angled 90 deg. relative to the leading and trailing edges. It is clear from the Skat’s external look that its designers tend to make all airframe lines, panel joints and lines of doors and hatches along only few parallel axes, which meets the radar signature reduction requirements. The aircraft’s basic aerodynamic control surfaces are multifunction deflectable surface set along the trailing edges to provide roll, pitch and yaw control and drag braking. Additional control surfaces are mounted on nearfuselage areas of the wing centre section and feature the forward sweep along the trailing edges (the same 54 deg. or so but in the opposite direction). The Skat’s powerplant is wrapped around a single Klimov RD-5000B nonafterburning turbofan rated at 5,040 kgf and being a derivative of the RD-93 reheated turbofan – a version of the MiG-29’s RD-33, which is mounted on single-engined foreign combat aircraft. The RD-5000B is fitted with a flat exhaust nozzle to reduce its infrared signature. At the first stage of the Skat’s trials, the engine can be equipped with a regular axisymmetric nozzle. The nonvariable air intake is set on top the fuselage nose section. Inside the UCAV’s airframe, there are two 4.4m-long weapons bays with the 0.65x0.75m cross section on the sides of the engine’s air duct and the powerplant itself. Each can house an air-to-surface or antiradiation missile or a 250–500kg smart bomb. The Skat was unveiled mounting Kh-31P antiradiation missiles and KAB-500Kr smart bombs. Its maximum payload is reported to be 2,000 kg. Tricycle retractable landing gear is of traditional aeroplane type, enabling the UCAV to take off and land from ordinary airfields. Each strut is single-wheel. The levered nose gear retracts forwards into a well under the engine air duct, with levered main gear retracting into the centreline wells in the wing centre section. There have been no reports on the Skat’s avionics suite. However, one might guess that, in addition to the integrated control and navigation systems, it is going to have self-contained targeting systems to acquire, identify and engage targets and ISR and ECM gear to ensure its own survival. In accordance with the data unveiled, the UAV has a maximum near-ground speed of about 800 km/h and a maximum Mach of about 0.8. Calculations place its service ceiling at over 12,000 m and range at around 4,000 km. The Skat’s dimensions are comparable to those of the MiG-29 fighter, with its length being 10.25 m, wingspan 11.5 m and height 2.7 m. Its maximum takeoff weight is estimated at 10,000 kg. Cooperation and prospects MiG Corp. has been developing the Skat UCAV since 2005, paying for the programme out of its pocket. Having teamed up with several Russian aircraft industry subcontractors and research institutes, MiG has conducted an extensive research producing a desired design and characteristics and has adopted a schedule to try relevant technologies. The UAV’s aerodynamic configuration has undergone wind-tunnel tests at TsAGI, which proved the design and layout solutions to be right. Under the Skat programme, MiG Corp.’s subcontractors, which logos are spotted by the mockup’s weapons bay door, are the Defence Ministry’s 2nd Central Research 40 take-off november 2007 www.take-off.ru Andrey Fomin
Kh-31P antiradiation air-to-surface missile Skat advanced stealth unmanned combat aerial vehicle (drawing by Alexey Mikheyev) Skat-PD Institute (the military’s traditional supervisor of scientific support of air defence forces), Vega corporation recently appointed UAV industrial integrator by the government, GosNIIAS (aircraft industry’s major centre devising concepts of developing combat aircraft and weapons systems and integrating avionics suites). The Skat’s powerplant has been developed by the Klimov company in St. Petersburg in cooperation with the Soyuz design bureau (Tushino, Moscow) and will be made by the MMP Chernyshev company, if it enters production. Irkut’s subsidiary, Russian Avionics design bureau, is in charge of developing the UCAV’s avionics suite. Another subcontractor, the Hius close corporation (Tver Region), is a new kid on the aircraft-making block, but according to Vladimir Barkovsky, director of the Mikoyan Engineering Centre, it is very experienced in developing and making composite products. Hius develops composite structures to fit the Skat’s airframe. The full-size Skat UCAV mockup shown to the media at MAKS 2007 was made by MiG Corp.’s prototype-making division in summer 2007. It is intended for testing design and layout solutions and optimising the drone’s performance. Next stages of the programme provide for making flying technology demonstrators – the manned Skat-PD and unmanned Skat- D versions – and flight-testing them to debug the Skat and demonstrate all of its technologies, including the use of weapons. Vladimir Barkovsky attributes the need for a manned Skat variant to the Russian law imposing stringent limitations on UAV flights. The applicable law needs updating, and this is under way already. MiG Corp.’s managers decline to specify the date the flight tests of Skat prototypes military aviation | project will kick off. Obviously, test flights will hardly begin in the coming months. However, the priority given the programme by the company gives hope for the Skat’s maiden flight to be round the corner. Should the programme succeed, of which the developer is certain, the Defence Ministry is expected to throw its weight behind it, with the programme to be made part of the governmental defence procurement programme. Given the current trends in military aircraft development, the Skat is facing good prospects on the global market as well. Foreign participation in developing the Skat or its derivative cannot be ruled out, because such large-scale programmes have been increasingly pursued collectively in the West, with the afore-said nEUROn being a good case in point. Thus, the Skat may face bright vistas, given the present-day global combat aircraft tendencies. www.take-off.ru take-off november 2007 41
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Page 22 and 23: Piotr Butowski contracts and delive
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Page 32 and 33: contracts and deliveries | in brief
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