Russia, India launch MTA preliminary design

Russia and India have taken a significant step towards joint development of the long-awaited Multirole Transport Aircraft (MTA). On October 12, the parties involved in this project — the Transport Aircraft subsidiary of Russia’s United Aircraft Corporation (UAC-TA) and India’s Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) — signed the Preliminary Design Phase (PDP) contract with the Russo-Indian joint venture Multirole Transport Aircraft Ltd (MTAL), which acts as the program customer.

The signing of the PDP Contract, which followed the signing of the general contract May 2012, paves way for an immediate start of preliminary design work on the MTA, to be carried out by a joint team of HAL and UAC-TA specialists in Moscow. This phase will take 10 months, after which a Detail Design Phase contract is to be signed in order to complete the design and development phase.

The 15- to 20-ton-class MTA design is being developed to meet the requirements of the Russian and Indian military, as well as for marketing to other countries. According to HAL, the MTA will be designed for cargo and troop transportation, as well as for operations involving paradropping and airdropping of supplies, including with the use of a low-altitude parachute extraction system. The Russian Air Force is expected to order 100 aircraft of this type, while the IAF is to purchase 45. The designers estimate the total demand for the MTA to amount to 205 airframes.

Manufacture of the MTA prototypes and subsequent series production are to take place at HAL Transport Aircraft Division in Kanpur.