Antonov to build five AN-70s, Mulls STOL version

On August 19, 2009, Dmytro Kiva, General Designer of Antonov ASTC, spoke at the Second European Congress on Transport Aviation, which was held at MAKS-2009. Mr. Kiva told about present status of program of AN-70 STOL military transport and its further development. He noted that the aircraft confirmed its wide ability in the program of Joint state test, main part of which had been already completed. In particular AN-70 confirmed its ability to take off and land at short runways, including unpaved airfields, with length of 600 m only and under such condition carry 20 t of cargo over a distance of 3000 km. The aircraft performs high-precision aerial delivery of paratroopers and freights. On its characteristics, AN-70 overpasses all the existent analogues. For example, European A400M is inferior to it as for cargo capacity and cargo compartment volume. According to Mr. Kiva, “the ramp military airlifters are a field of high technologies where both Russia and Ukraine still have uncontestable competitive advantage as compared to other aerospace countries of the globe”. At present, the partners on the program work on modernization of An-70 and its systems. Serial production of 5 airplanes of the initial batch was launched. Construction of the two first aircraft to be completed in 2010-2011.