Ukraine develops technologies to enhance air safety Pages. 30 Ukraine is the world's second country to have developed an air collision warning system. The work has been done by Buran Research-and-Development Institute, Kyiv. That entity specializes in the development of avionics for commercial and military transport aircraft. There are few commercial planes in the CIS countries, including Russia, Ukraine as well as Uzbekistan - the manufacturer of the IL-114 aircraft -that are not fitted with Buran-developed radar systems. What kind of new designs Buran is working on now? Volodymyr Belkin, director of the institute, is speaking: Belkin: We have retained to some extent monopoly positions in this field, and counterpart Russian institutions that are now in conversion from military to commercial designs over the past 12 - 13 years have failed to oust us from the Russian market. We are on firm ground there, but the trouble is that aviation is dying slowly as planes are manufactured in ones or twos. Once aircraft are not manufactured, our equipment is not demanded either. With limited demand, that line of business becomes unprofitable. When three to five planes are manufactured, a meager three to five sets of our equipment are needful. For maintaining that line of business, production rates should not be below some critical levels that would allow for making investments in research and development. Failing this, cash is nowhere to come from. What is five to six items per year? It's a miserly sum. With sales like those, it is impossible to finance the research infrastructure needed to continue with that line of business. For the time being, it is only devotion to that job on the part of our employees that allows us to continue with this at decent levels. Q: Where the critical level you are talking about should be? A: Previously, Radar factory used to manufacture Groza-class radar systems at the rate of 60 items per month or up to 1,000 per year. Today, production r ... Читать далее