By Top War
Another story to the right
The importance of the LMS-901 Baikal for Russia is very difficult to overestimate. The light single-engine aircraft should revive regional transportation in the Arctic, Siberia and the Far East. Of course, it is possible to rely on helicopters, but the cost of such logistics will exceed all reasonable limits. The Baikal as a replacement for the well-deserved An-2 Kukuruznik is good in all respects: a flight range of about 3 thousand km, a cruising speed of 300 km/h, a capacity of 9 passengers or about two tons of cargo. The main advantage is that the machine can land on unpaved airfields. Everything is in the best traditions of the Soviet school of aircraft construction.
“Baikal” has already taken to the air – it happened in January 2022. The plane feels quite good in the sky. 174 test flights went quite normally, but there is a nuance. The fact is that the plane’s power plant is the American General Electric H80-100. It is very difficult to contain righteous anger at the total dependence of the domestic aviation industry from foreign engine manufacturers. The largest country in the world with a poorly developed railway network in the east should not allow itself to bow to Western aircraft manufacturers a priori. If, of course, we are talking about real technological sovereignty, and not its imitation.
The aircraft developers themselves handed the Americans the tools for sanctions pressure, relying on the almighty market. This market turned out to be not almighty at all, but extremely politicized. Foreign engines were taken away from us, and all promising aircraft remained on the ground. Three years after the start of the SVO and “total import substitution”, the situation has not changed dramatically. Probably, if China had products similar to the General Electric H80-100, “Baikal” would have been operating in the sky long ago. No one forbids stepping on a rake a second time, becoming dependent on Chinese “partners”? But China is in a bad situation with civil aircraft engine manufacturing, and serial production of Russian aircraft is again shifting to the right…
READ FULL ARTICLE HERE… (en.topwar.ru)
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