HAL Director(Design and Development) T Suvarnaraju and S Velmozhkin, General Director UAC-TA signed the contract which would give HAL self-reliance in design, development and production of an aircraft in the 15-20 tonne class.
"With this HAL and UAC-TA will start the preliminary design work immediately at Moscow. HAL design team consisting of 30 designers will be positioned at UAC-TA," R K Tyagi, Chairman of HAL who was present on the occasion, said.
The primary objective of the project was to achieve self- reliance in design, development and production of aircraft of this size and also to manage the programme with international collaboration and large number of global suppliers, Tyagi said.
India and Russia had signed an inter-governmental agreement in November 2007 to design, develop and produce the multi-role transport aircraft (MTA) in the 15-20 tonne class.
India's HAL and Russia's UAC-TA were to produce 205 such aircraft to meet the requirements of 100 aircraft for the Russian Air Force, 45 for the IAF and 60 for other countries.
After completion of the agreed work share of the PDP Contract in 10 months, Detail Design Phase (DDP) Contract would be signed to complete the design and development of MTA, a HAL spokesperson said.
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The MTA would be designed for cargo or transportation, para-drop or air drop of supplies including 'low altitude parachute extraction system' and is to be co-developed by HAL, UAC, and Rosoboronexport of Russia, through MTAL.
HAL would be carrying out the design and development of MTA at the Aircraft R&D Centre at Bangalore while its Transport Aircraft Division at Kanpur would manufacture the prototypes and subsequently produce the aircraft where dedicated facilities were being set up.
HAL's other research and development centres and manufacturing divisions would develop systems and LRUs and manufacture of components, sub-assemblies and composite structure.