With Superjet, Russia's Back in Aerospace

President Vladimir Putin hopes a new jet and help from Boeing and EADS will bring his country back onto the global aviation scene

by Matthias Schepp

The names alone were enough to instill awe in competitors in the past. Andrei Tupolev and Artem Mikoyan, one of the fathers of MIG fighter jets, still ranked among the world's best, were among the engineers who worked at the Soviet Union's Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute (ZAGI) on Moscow's eastern outskirts.

ZAGI was once the birthplace of countless world records in the Soviet aviation industry. The world's first multiple-engine aircraft built entirely of metal took off from the facility in 1926. ZAGI's engineers set another record on New Year's Eve 1968 with the maiden flight of the Tupolev Tu-144, the world's first supersonic transport aircraft (SST) -- two months before their British-French competitors launched their own version, the Concorde.

But the Russian passenger aircraft industry plunged into a dramatic crisis after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Orders from other communist nations suddenly stopped coming in, and Russia itself was on the verge of bankruptcy. The Soviets were building more than 100 passenger aircraft a year in their heyday, but production had come to a virtual standstill by the 1990s.

Last year the Russian aviation industry delivered all of eight aircraft -- the same number Airbus delivers in a week.

Nowadays the asphalt on ZAGI's seemingly endless grounds is crumbling, while a portrait of Lenin is gradually fading away on one of the facility's more than 100 buildings. Two-thirds of its employees, once numbering 15,000, have been let go. Highly qualified engineers are moonlighting as roofers. Nevertheless, Russia plans to launch the rebirth of its civil aviation industry here.

President Vladimir Putin wants to see his country become a major player in the aviation industry once again. The man favored to succeed Putin in office, Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, who is also now in charge of Russia's military and industrial policy, plans to capture 10 to 12 percent of the world market for passenger aircraft by 2024. Russia's current market share is less than one percent.

A Monumental Task

The man the Russians are pinning their hopes on is Viktor Subbotin, 54, head of Grazhdanskiye Samolyoty Sukhogo (GSS), the civilian arm of Sukhoi, a Russian military industrial conglomerate. Three times a week, Subbotin has his driver take him from his Moscow office to ZAGI, and every Sunday he assembles his senior staff at the giant facility for a blunt assessment of the situation.

Subbotin is in a tight spot, with everyone from the president, the deputy prime minister, the Kremlin and, in fact, the entire country, breathing down his neck. He faces a monumental task: To determine whether the Russian aviation industry can have more of a future than serving as a mere supplier to Western giants Airbus and Boeing. But regaining market share is not the only issue. Indeed, Subbotin and his staff are the vanguard in an effort to restore the self-respect of a once-formidable aviation power. Even Brazil -- a country Muscovites are more likely to associate with the exportation of coffee and football stars -- has surpassed the Russians today, with its Embraer aircraft.

But the ultimate goal at ZAGI is to prove that Putin's new Russia is capable of more than just serving as a major producer of oil and natural gas. The vast country wants to demonstrate that its rediscovered role as a superpower is based on more than its nuclear arsenal and reserves of natural resources. Instead, Moscow plans to develop a third pillar to support its budding superpower status: economic might.

Viktor Subbotin and Alexander Juba, his division manager, also have a lot on their plates. The aircraft fueling hopes here hangs suspended from steel trusses in the middle of Hangar 12: the Superjet 100. Workers are currently testing the load-bearing capacity of the wings.

Subbotin spent three decades designing fighter jets, doing all of his work at the drawing board during and after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. He began planning the Superjet SSJ-100 in 2000, but this time he did all of his designing on the computer. Subbotin has been in charge of GSS for the past three years.