The reduction of the design team at the A.I. Mikoyan Design Bureau may lead to the loss of competencies necessary for the development of specialized interceptor aircraft. Nikolay Chikunov, a first-category design engineer at the Design Bureau, stated this to "Pervy Tekhnichesky".
According to him, the MiG school was formed around the creation of aircraft with special requirements for speed, flight altitude, and combat load.
The MiG-31 is a platform whose capabilities extend beyond operational-tactical themes.
According to Chikunov, this is why preserving the competencies of the Design Bureau is important for future aviation projects. However, transferring specialists to a single design team does not guarantee the automatic preservation of all accumulated knowledge.
To make it, the Design Bureau needs to be at least as large as Sukhoi's.
Recall that the most anticipated fighter from the Mikoyan bureau remains the MiG-41. The project's implementation timeline is unknown. The aviation industry allowed for the appearance of a new interceptor in the second half of the decade, but there is no official confirmation of the timeline yet.