Russian designers are working on a marine ekranoplan

A-90 “Orlyonok” at the Navy Museum in Tushino, Moscow The

Central Design Bureau for Hydrofoils named after R.E. Alekseev (Central Design Bureau for SPK) is developing a project of an ekranoplan of the ocean zone with a take-off weight of about 500 tons. On Tuesday at a forum " Marine Industry of Russia ," said the director and chief designer of the group " Morinformsystem-Agat " George Antsev.

The International Forum "Marine Industry of Russia" is held from May 19 to 21, 2015 in Moscow, at the Gostiny Dvor exhibition complex. The forum presents a project of the ekranoplan of the coastal zone with a take-off mass of 60 tons.

“We need ekranoplanes of the ocean zone with a take-off mass of 500 tons or more. Such developments are underway at the Central Design Bureau of Alekseev. Today, the Soviet period’s reloading stage is underway, customer searches, certain research and development, modeling, and prototyping are underway, ”Antsev said. - It has a very good focus - it is needed for passenger traffic, and for the northern tasks, and for the tasks of protecting state borders. He may use the airfield infrastructure and be in some moments, in fact, an airplane. "

The wingedor a dynamic hovercraft is a high-speed vehicle flying at a height of several meters from the surface of water, land, snow or ice (within the aerodynamic screen). This is a kind of hybrid of an airplane and a watercraft - with equal mass and speed, the wing area of ​​the ekranoplan is much smaller than that of an airplane, and according to international classification, it refers to marine vessels. WIGs that can tear off the screen for a long time and switch to the “airplane” flight mode are called ekranoplanes.

The very first developments, like real-life models, were obtained by designers of the USSR. The direction was developed by two independent teams. One, under the leadership of Rostislav Alekseev, who on October 1, 1941 defended his thesis "Glider on hydrofoil." After that, he devoted his life to the development and creation of ekranoplans. The Central Design Bureau for the SEC was founded in the early 50s.

In the early 60s, a test base for these devices was built on the Gorky reservoir. In 1961, the first flight of the SM-1 ekranoslet took place , and the next year - already the SM-2.


SM-1


SM-2

In 1972, the first really working military eclipse "Orlyonok" was built, designed to transfer naval assault forces to a range of up to 1,500 km.



Unloading military equipment from the Eagle winged ekranoplan

In 1986, pilot tests began on the Volga-2, the first civilian ekranoplane in the Soviet Union and Russia, which belongs to the class of river vessels on a dynamic air cushion (DVP).

In 1987, the first flight was made by the Lun, an ekranoplanet rocket carrier. He was armed with six 3M-80 Mosquito guided anti-ship missiles.



After the successful completion of state tests, Lun was transferred to trial operation in 1990. However, the collapse of the Soviet Union led to the cessation of work in this area and the disbandment of the 11th air group of ekranoplanes of the Black Sea Fleet.

Details about the history of the development of ekranoplanes Alekseev can be found here .

The second team was led by Roberto Oros di Bartini , a communist who had left Nazi Italy for the USSR, where he became a famous aircraft designer. In 1955, he introduced the design of the A-55 medium-range supersonic flying bomber boat. After the comprehensive development and improvement of this project, Bartini approached the creation of an ekranoplan.

In the late 50s - early 60s, he created the project of the SVVP-2500 ekranoleta with a take-off mass of 2500 tons in the form of a flying wing with a square center wing and consoles and a power plant of lifting and marching engines.


VVA-14 at the Air Force Museum The

project was implemented in the mid-60s as an anti-submarine VTOL-amphibious VVA-14 amphibian, with which test flights were carried out.

After the death of Bartini, the design of the apparatus revealed flaws that required a serious alteration of it. In this regard, in 1976, it was decided to stop development.

The development of the Bartini ekranoplanes was continued in the early 80s by L. N. Schukin in the EKIP association, where the L4-2 model was designed. It was a wingless disk-shaped ekrolet, with active control of the boundary layer flow, which made it possible to use bodies with poor aerodynamic quality, but with a large volume and carrying capacity. According to calculations, the L4-2, with its take-off mass of 600 tons, could carry a payload of 200 tons at a range of 8600 km.

After the crisis of the perestroika period, the idea of ​​mass production was supported at the state level by the Ministry of Defense Industry, the Ministry of Defense (lead customer) and the Ministry of Russian Forestry. In 1999, the development of the apparatus was included in the country's budget. But funding was interrupted and the money was never received. Lev Nikolaevich Schukin, after numerous attempts to continue the project at his own expense, died of a heart attack in 2001 (at 69 years of age).

In the 1990s, the United States suddenly realized - there were no such developments. A specially created commission received permission to visit the Kaspiisk development base, and to take a detailed picture of the Orlyonok specially prepared for this visit for photo and video film. After this visit, the Americans began to develop their own ekranoleta.

The Boeing company has introduced the concept of a flying mission for the transfer of military contingents and military equipment to conflict sites (Pelican project). It was stated that it would have a length of 152 m and a wingspan of 106 m. When traveling at an altitude of 6 m above the surface of the ocean (having the ability to rise to a height of 6000 m), Pelican will be able to transport up to 1400 tons of cargo over a distance of 16,000 km.

The last mention of the project dates back to 2003 and no information was published on the continuation of work on the ekranolet.

The development of the Central Design Bureau of Rostislav Alekseyev came to China under a contract under which the specialists of the Central Design Bureau in the SEC developed a modernized version of the Volga-2 ekranoplan and transferred the project to the Chinese side. Hainan Yingge Wing conducted flight tests of the CYG-11 (Oriole) on the coast of Hainan Island near the city of Haikou


CYG-11

In the mid-2000s, it became known that South Korea was developing its own ekranoplan (it is not known whether development was carried out from scratch, or whether it was based on all the same Soviet projects). Koreans in 2007 promised to begin commercial use of devices by 2012. So far, nothing is known about the fate of this project.