Is Russia ready to take its place in global aerospace? Industrially and economically, things look good. Politics could be the problem
Fifteen years after the end of the Cold War, Russia should be poised to become a fully paid-up member of the global community of aerospace nations. Its creaking Soviet-era enterprises are at last being rounded up into something resembling an integrated aerospace business run on proper commercial lines.
United Aircraft (OAK) - as our main business story this week makes clear - will be far from perfect. State-controlled and vertically integrated, its board of directors is stuffed more with Kremlin placemen used to following orders from on high than high-flyers who know about delivering a return to shareholders. But it's a start, and will allow Russian aerospace - which has some of the finest engineering and scientific brains in the world - to move its focus from Cold War military projects to a burgeoning global civil industry in which there is plenty of room for a lower-cost but technically proficient partner.
As our evaluation of the Sukhoi Superjet 100 simulator shows, Russia's first stab at producing a civil aircraft for an international market is being taken more seriously by the day. With a number of blue-chip Western companies involved in the programme, the SSJ is making good progress and its Airbus-influenced cockpit is likely to win fans in the pilot community.
There has been a tide of Western investment into Russian industry in recent years, with Airbus/EADS, Boeing and Safran among early adopters. But it has not all been one way. Audaciously, in September, state-run Vneshtorgbank snatched a more than 5% stake in EADS as a precursor to what the Kremlin hopes will be a more formal involvement in Europe's biggest aerospace player.
Russia enjoys an enormous advantage over its neighbouring would-be big hitters, China and India, in that it has an incredible aerospace heritage and the infrastructure and talent that goes with it, from its early ventures into space to the technology on some of its military aircraft.
With its economy - a basket case under Boris Yeltsin a decade ago - reviving strongly on the back of strong oil, gas and commodity prices, and state coffers filling with hard currency for investment, the former superpower (to paraphrase Margaret Thatcher) looks increasingly like a country with which the Western world can do business.
The trouble is that while Russia is slowly opening up to the West economically, in terms of politics it is showing worrying signs of reverting under Vladimir Putin to many of its bad old authoritarian ways - or worse. A murdered journalist, an ex-FSB agent poisoned in London, bullying and interfering in the affairs of its neighbours, a clamp-down on democracy and a free press: all have tarnished Russia's reputation abroad and turned it - in the eyes of many in the West - from a potential partner in peace and prosperity back into the rather unpleasant and unpredictable bear of old.
For the aerospace industries and politicians of Europe and North America keen to embrace the economic and technological opportunities of the New Russia, the re-emergence of Old Russia may cause them to pause for thought.
Source: Flight International
