On July 26 of this year, a colorful presentation of the new and at the same time the former name of the corporation - Yakovlev, was held on the basis of PJSC Irkut Corporation in Zhukovsky. This event was the completion of the registration of four divisions in the United Aircraft Corporation: 1) Operational and tactical aviation (Sukhoi, MiG); 2) Special aircraft (Tupolev); 3) Military transport aircraft (Ilyushin) 4) Civil aviation (Yakovlev). Thus, it is the Yakovlev Design Bureau, which has regained its historical name, that will be responsible for the design, production and maintenance of modern domestic civil aircraft in the corporation.

Why Yakovlev, and not Tupolev or Ilyushin? Historically, the Tupolev and Ilyushin people, in addition to civil aviation, had unique competencies in the development of missile carriers and transport aircraft, and these areas became the main ones for them in the post-Soviet period. At the same time, despite the fact that Yakovlev Design Bureau in the Soviet period was somewhat overshadowed by such achievements of colleagues as the Tu-154, Tu-144, Il-62 and Il-86, it also has an equally glorious history and traditions.

Yakovlev Design Bureau created more than 200 types and modifications of various aircraft, more than a hundred of which were mass-produced. And the characteristic feature of the Design Bureau was innovation. These are not only combat and civilian aircraft, but also deck-mounted vertical take-off and landing, helicopters and even drones. It is the team of this Design Bureau that today is the advanced detachment of the Russian civil aircraft industry, which has key competencies that allow it to work on the creation of new-generation aircraft MS-21 and SJ-100.

It just so happened that on that day, in the shadow of the news about the renaming of the corporation, the presentation of the new name of the Superjet – SJ-100, which took place at the same event, remained. In my subjective opinion, this is not just the loss of one letter. This is a return to our historical traditions of naming civil aircraft – a two-letter name (Yak, Tu, Il), a mandatory hyphen and a model number. Of course, there is more symbolism in this event, indicating a return to the origins (albeit in Latin for now), but it seems to me that it was extremely important for the developers of the aircraft that the new Superjet took to the sky with a new name.

Why do I so persistently call this aircraft a new one, and not just an import-substituted Superjet? When, back in 2002, Sukhoi Design Bureau won the tender for the creation of the Russian regional RRJ aircraft, there were two possible ways to implement the project: to create an aircraft on the preserved Soviet production base and get a slightly improved Soviet-era aircraft, or rely on modern, at that time, world experience, master advanced digital design and production technologies, create a new production base and attract the world's leading suppliers of systems and aggregates. The first way was easier and cheaper, and the second was riskier and much more expensive. But, fortunately, despite the heated intra-industry battles, the second way was chosen. So the SSJ100 became the first domestic fully digital civilian aircraft and, at the same time, the training desk of the new reviving Russian aviation industry.

In parallel, at the end of the noughties, the Irkut Corporation conceived a project to create a new medium-haul aircraft MS-21. This team worked independently of Sukhoi, but even then could rely on the experience he gained (both positive and negative) in implementing such a complex international project. And this experience, in my opinion, was used 100%. For example, initially it was decided by the main developers of the aircraft's key systems to identify Russian companies (even if using imported components), which, in turn, had to go through a difficult path of acquiring new competencies, developing technologies, training personnel and updating the production base.

The same processes were going on in the UAC itself. Thus, during the implementation of the MS-21 project, the aircraft corporation and many Rostec enterprises underwent modernization by the end of the second decade of the new century and reached a high technological level that allows developing modern components and systems no worse than Western companies.

As for the Superjet, by 2018 it became obvious that broad international cooperation at that time had become a brake on the development of the project. Foreign suppliers of components did not want to consider the Russian manufacturer as a long-term partner. In their eyes, we have remained a competitor to whom you can sell products at exorbitant prices and not always of proper quality. To cope with this problem, it was decided to create a new import-substituted Superjet. Yes, not in 2022 after the sanctions were imposed, but four years earlier and solely for development reasons, in order to untie the knots around the neck of the project, with which the so-called partners strangled it.

And these plans lay well on the ground of developments on the MS-21 project, at that time the aircraft was already undergoing flight tests, and the team of developers and suppliers had accumulated considerable experience. It was decided to transfer the SSJ100 aircraft for escort to Irkut, by including the Sukhoi Civil aircraft team in the corporation structure and combining designers into a single digital field, as well as instruct them to develop a new import-substituted aircraft. Thus, another step was taken towards the creation of specialized divisions within the UAC.

And just as the Superjet once became a training desk for the new Russian aviation industry, the developments on the MS-21, both technological, production and organizational, formed the basis for the implementation of the SJ-100 project. And now, just 4 years later, we see the embodiment of this aircraft in metal. Why everything and why is there still a new plane? Yes, because the Yakovlev Corporation did not limit itself to the direct replacement of imported components with developed Russian analogues. The designers were tasked with creating an essentially new modification of the aircraft, which in its flight characteristics should surpass the previous version of the Superjet.

And they started with the processing of the airframe, about the tests of which we told in the material "SSJ-NEW and MS-21 – TsAGI gives the go-ahead." The operational experience gained, the accumulated experience of modern design, and new achievements of engineering science over the past decade and a half since the flight of the first Superjet were taken into account.

As reported in the UAC, more than 40 systems and assemblies were replaced on the first experimental SJ-100. That is, almost everything. According to the plan, the second prototype should already be with domestic PD-8 engines. Later, a third aircraft will join the testing and certification program. Moreover, one of the main tasks is the maximum unification of approaches to the supply of blocks, systems, aggregates between SJ-100 and MS-21. Thus, significant unification has already been achieved for on-board electronic equipment and composites. So, we can no longer talk about the independent Superjet 100 and MS-21 aircraft, but about the family of civil aircraft of the United Aircraft Corporation, the name of which, perhaps, you and I have yet to choose.