Article Posted on : - Oct 04, 2008

Alexey Fedorov talking to reporters in New Delhi this week

NEW DELHI(BNS): The fifth generation fighters could be the last ones to be flown by pilots, as the world leaps to a new era of unmanned combat planes, says Alexey Fedorov, the head of United Aircraft Corporation of Russia.

Fedorov, who was in New Delhi with Russian defence minister Anatoly Serdyukov earlier this week, said that the sixth generation fighters would be pilotless jets. The US military while being the only one to have fifth generation fighters, the F-22 Raptors, in deployment, is also showing the way forward by significantly deploying armed UAVs in combat over Afghanistan-Pakistan and Iraq.

Fedorov announced that Russia has made significant headway in building a fifth generation fighter. "The prototype of the aircraft would be ready for trial flight next year," said Fedorov, heading state-owned UAC that has brought under its fold all the major Russian aircraft manufacturers such as Sukhoi, Tupolev and Ilyushin. The MiG Corporation is also on the verge of joining UAC.

The top executive said that the work on unmanned combat aerial vehicles has also started. He said that non-combat UAVs have already been in existence and the technology is evolving by the day.

The UAVs at the moment are essentially used for surveillance purposes by most militaries. "We have gained enough experience to jump onto the next stage of pilotless combat aircraft," said Fedorov.

Fedorov, who took part in talks in India to expand military co-operation said that future combat situations would be of such nature that nations would want to avoid the risk of losing pilots. He said Russia has started work on such an aircraft and hopefully it would be able to achieve the goal.

But before that, work on fifth generation aircraft, probably the last combat aircraft to be flown by pilots, is going on in full swing. Russia is hoping that it would be able to match F-22 Raptors and F-35 of the US.

Russia will soon have India as a partner in the fifth generation fighter jet programme. Fedorov hoped that India’s role in the project would be finalised before the end of this year. He said that building such an aircraft is a complicated process and would require skilled engineers and designers to do the job. The Russian official feels that Indian participation would help the project. It is hoped that the new aircraft would be ready in the next couple of years. Its basic feature would be high amount of stealth technology.

He said that the two sides would also be joining hands in developing a multi-role transport aircraft. This aircraft would be built from scratch with fresh designs and altogether new airframe.