PJSC Yakovlev, the manufacturer of domestic passenger airliners SJ-100 and MC-21, is ready to diversify its business and get involved in the production of unmanned aerial vehicles. This was announced by the head of the company, Andrey Boginsky.
We are now actively working on the drone topic, and I think we are doing it right. We went to the customer - in this case, for us it is BAS LLC. We have already met with colleagues from the STLC [State Transport Leasing Company], discussing what they, as customers, need from such an aircraft. I think that in the near future, before the end of the year, we will try to fix these requirements on paper so that we can move further in this direction.
According to the top manager, launching production is not particularly difficult - it can start as early as 2024, but it is necessary to correlate the customer's requirements with the available component base. And the stumbling block in this case may be the engine.
Drones are not as massive as ordinary civilian aircraft (even the AN-2 format), so they can quite easily manage with electric engines. Here, Android Technics can come to the aid of Yakovlev.