Konstantin Makienko

The personnel crisis in RSK “MiG” and its conflict with UDB “Russkaya avionika” indicated the restructuring that started in the Russian aviation industry. Since the weak bodies of the government administration failed to work out the positive strategy of the aviation industry reform this process began spontaneously.

The reform of the Russian military aviation industry will be inevitably affected by the fact that because of its financial and economic limits Russia is capable to fulfil only one large-scale military aircraft project. As the result only one of the existing aviation industry systems will survive or become a single undoubted leader in the military aviation.

The most possible candidate for this role could be the “Sukhoy” system. Being properly reformed it will be capable to work out the Russian response to the creation of the fifth-generation JSF fighter. It can be either a light fighter of the fifth generation or a heavy battle aircraft complex. Besides Russia such countries as China, India, Malaysia and others can join the project sharing the expenses and specializing in the production of different components.

Besides this scenario the author suggests a hypothesis of the more radical restructuring of the Russian aviation industry when the institutional and brand name landscape will completely change.