You're reading: Luftwaffe to Fly Antonov's An-70?

At the Le Bourget Air Show last week, Ukrainian hopes to stay a world-class aircraft manufacturer were riding aboard the An-70, a ungainly cargo plane designed in Kyiv right after the Soviet military-industrial complex fell apart.

The response of today's German aerospace industry: If you can't beat Antonov, you better join them.

Aero Track GMBh, a seven-member aerospace consortium including BMW-Rolls Royce and Fairchild Dornier, will manufacture 300 An-70s in cooperation with its Russian and Ukrainian counterparts, Antonov spokesmen said last week.

The Aero Track announcement marks the first time a company with real cash has expressed serious interest in the An-70 aircraft.

'We are of course delighted,' said Andry Sovchenko, Antonov Design Bureau spokesman. 'There has been much discussion, but now we are talking about a concrete order.'

Projected to replace the Luftwaffe's aging C-130 fleet, the present An-70 will be modified to meet NATO standards, Leonid Terentyev, An-70 consortium general director, told Reuters on June 20. The Luftwaffe version, tentatively named the An-7X, will begin a three-year production run ANTONOV, in 2002.

The plane will be able to haul a 35-ton load of soldiers or equipment up to 3,800 kilometers. Each aircraft will cost between $60 million and $70 million, Terentyev said.

The deal is not done. European aircraft manufacturers, led by French Airbus Industries, are promoting an all-European aircraft called the Future Large Aircraft (FLA).

NATO nations began discussions on possibly jointly replacing their military cargo aircraft fleets – which consists of 1,000 to 1,500 aircraft, depending on what one considers the An-70 comparable to – in 1993.

Partly because of the expense of developing a brand-new cargo plane for the 21st century, no FLA prototype has flown to date.

The countries that are working on the FLA are Germany, France, Italy, Britain, Spain, Turkey, Belgium and Portugal.

Unhindered by West European inertia, Ukrainian engineers at the Antonov Design Bureau meanwhile have been plugging along. The An-70 was originally designed not for NATO members, but as a follow-on to the some 2,400 aging Russian and Ukrainian military cargo jet and turbo-prop fleets.

The problem is that Kyiv and Moscow have barely been able to scrape enough money to get the first An-70 prototype flying in 1997, never mind replace their fleets. The first prototype crashed in a 1996 air collision.

Like its Soviet-era forefathers, the world's only An-70 is not particularly pretty but quite rugged and far less intimidated by short runways and tough operating conditions than its Western counterparts.

'The Antonov plane is a very good one and represents the very best there is,' said George Robertson, British defense secretary, during a June 18 visit to Kyiv. 'Without Ukrainian Antonovs, we would be unable to move our troops and heavy equipment,' he said, referring to intense NATO use of leased Antonov An-124 aircraft during the recent war in Kosovo.

'This is a wonderful aircraft for medium-range cargo transportation,' said Paul Furlonger, commercial manager of Air Foyle, an international Antonov aircraft operator, according to a June 20 Reuters report. 'The Antonov 70 is particularly well-suited for U.N. relief work, given its payload range and short-field performance.'

Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma and Russian President Boris Yeltsin offered the An-70 as a cheaper and more readily available alternative to FLA in October 1997.

After successful An-70 participation in a tender competition in January, Germany has pushed hard to make the aircraft part of the Luftwaffe fleet. Aero Track, though privately owned and managed, was founded on May 20 primarily to provide a means for German technology and manufacturing standards to be grafted onto the existing An-70 design.

Berlin's support of the An-70 began in 1994 as a facet of the Ostpolitik of then-Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Berlin has not announced a decision date for the 300 aircraft An-70 order.

If An-70 Deutschemark profits do ever reach the former Soviet Union, the profits will be split into many parts.

The An-70 is designed by the Kyiv-based Antonov Design Bureau. The plane's components are manufactured by Russian Aviapribor, Aerosila and Eketromagnetika; and Ukrainian Aviant, Motor-Sych and Progress. Ukrainian-government airplane factories in Kyiv and Kharkiv would do the assembling.

The companies hold a total 74 percent stake in the Russo-Ukrainian group. The Russian and Ukrainian governments each hold a 26 percent stake in the consortium. [Post reporter Nathan Hodge contributed to this story.]