Japanese Defence Minister Gen Nakatani’s visit here last week has done very little to push forward
India’s five-year-long attempt to acquire twelve US-2i ShinMaywa amphibious search-and-rescue (
SAR) for $1.3 billion.
The official statement issued after the meeting was vaguely non-committal when it referenced the aircraft purchase. “The ministers commended the effort made by both countries regarding the cooperation on
US-2 amphibious aircraft which was launched in
2013,” the statement read.
While pricing concerns and technology transfer issues are two main sources of contention, there is another equally competent & similar alternative to the US-2i which is the
Russian made
Beriev Be-200 platform.
The Beriev Be-200
Altair is a Russian built multipurpose amphibian aircraft. It was designed by the
Beriev Aircraft Company and built by
Irkut. The Beriev Be-200 is intended to serve as a fire fighting,
Search and Rescue,
Maritime Patrol and even as a
Passenger Transport Aircraft. It can carry up to 12 tonnes (12 000 litres, 3 170 gallons) of water or 72 passengers.
Development
The Beriev Be-200 project was started in
1989 with the purpose of building a water bomber for the
Russian Government which approved the project on
8 December 1990. The design team was spearheaded by
Alexander Yavkin. One year later at the
Paris Air Show the project was made public and a model was displayed at the show. The full scale mockup was constructed by
Beta Air.
The Beriev
Aviation Company was in charge of the design of the Beriev Be-200 together with the Russian
Irkutsk Aircraft
Production Association, which is currently part of the
Irkut Corporation. While Beriev did the development, design and documentation, the testing of the prototypes, the certification and the support of production models, the Irkut Corporation was assigned the production preparation, development of tooling, production of the four prototypes and the production aircraft and the spare parts.
Currently both companies are part of the state-owned
United Aircraft Corporation.
Production
The first production aircraft performed its first flight on 17 June
2003 and it was delivered to
EMERCOM (
The Ministry of the
Russian Federation for
Civil Defence, Emergencies and
Elimination of
Consequences of
Natural Disasters) on 31 July 2003. Out of the seven aircraft ordered by EMERCOM, five have been delivered to the customer in the initial years of production with the remaining aircraft to be delivered by 2008. EMERCOM had also 8 additional options for the aircraft.
European Certification
The fifth production airframe was used for European certification. This process was expected to be concluded by 2008. However the aircraft was certified by
EASA on
7 September 2010.
Design
The Beriev Be-200 is a multirole aircraft. It can be configured either as an amphibious water drop fire-fighting aircraft, either as a freighter or a passenger aircraft with a pressurized cabin and a capacity of 72 passengers.
Technology
The aircraft was designed with some unique fire-fighting equipment which allows it to scoop water while skimming the surface at a speed that is roughly 90-95% of the takeoff speed of the aircraft. The development of this system used a modified Be-12P, which served as a development platform for both the fire-fighting system and the methods of operation. This aircraft which was given the designation Be-12P-200 was later registered as RA-00046.
source page :
http://www.indiandefensenews.in/2016/07/idn-take-us-2i-shinmaywa-has
.html
source : www.indiandefensenews.in
Big Rock -
Take the Lead by
Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
4.0/)
Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100305
Artist: http://incompetech.com/
- published: 23 Jul 2016
- views: 147