The merger of the MiG and Sukhoi design teams may lead not only to a reduction in specialists but also to the loss of one of two fundamentally different engineering approaches to creating combat aircraft. Nikolay Chikunov, a 1st category design engineer at the A.I. Mikoyan Design Bureau, stated this to "Pervy Tekhnichesky".
According to him, the MiG school traditionally focused on the pragmatic achievement of specified characteristics, while the Sukhoi school more often used unconventional technical solutions.
Our design schools — both MiG and Sukhoi — must both be preserved. In particular, the MiG school is needed to balance Sukhoi's avant-gardism with its pragmatism, which in its extreme manifestations is not always justified from a practical point of view.
Chikunov added that reducing the Mikoyan bureau to the role of an auxiliary unit could lead to its engineering approach ceasing to influence the development of new aircraft.
The flagship projects of the Mikoyan and Sukhoi bureaus are the MiG-41 and Su-57, respectively. But the second fighter is already in serial production, while the prospective interceptor is still in the project stage.
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