The Russian aircraft industry cannot yet quickly increase the production of the PD-8 engine and other power plants for civil aircraft, following the example of the military sector. Dmitry Dyakonov, chief designer of KB-602 and a university engineering lecturer, explained that the industry faced a shortage of personnel, equipment, and its own production base.
According to the expert, the PD-8 example clearly shows how complex the transition to fully domestic production remains. Civil engines require lengthy certification, extensive testing, and precise tuning of all systems, which significantly slows down the launch of full-scale production.
Launching into mass production, so that every engine is equally high-quality, is a difficult process, with all the growing pains. The task of technologists at the enterprise is to work out the chain so that each new batch of engines comes out without a decrease in parameters, but on the contrary, with improvements. And for this, a support structure for each engine is needed.
Dyakonov noted that the military aircraft industry had operated under a closed cycle for many years and maintained its own technologies, while the civil industry was closely linked to imported components and foreign suppliers.
The expert believes that the production of the PD-8 can only be accelerated after expanding production capacities and training new engineers, technologists, and workers.
