Managing a huge aerospace conglomerate is never an easy job at the best of times. Doing so when the president and prime minister of your country take a close personal interest in its progress is positively unnerving. Especially when you know that the president fired your predecessor.
That is the situation facing Mikhail Pogosyan, president of Russia's United Aircraft.
Previously the general director of Sukhoi, responsible for military aircraft such as the Su-27 family of fighters, he retained that position and also remained chief executive officer of RSK MiG when he stepped up to the top UAC job earlier this year.
Both president Dmitry Medvedev and prime minister Vladimir Putin see the aerospace sector as an industry that can help diversify the Russian economy away from its bias towards natural resources such as oil, gas and rare metals. They also see its potential as a valuable earner of foreign currency.
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Pogosyan puts the most positive interpretation on being the subject of close government attention. Commenting that success in the commercial aviation market relies on the combined efforts of manufacturers, the supply chain and governmental assistance, he says: "Certainly, we rely on the government's support."
His priority, he says, is to replicate UAC's leadership in the military sector in the commercial arena. He believes the Sukhoi SJ100 Superjet regional airliner - now entering service - and the Irkut MS-21 150- to -210 seat airliner have real potential in international markets. UAC is in talks with Aeroflot over both types and is also talking to other Russian carriers, including major players such as Transaero and UT Air, about the types.
With this in mind, the Superjet will be in the Le Bourget flying display. "It's very important to demonstrate the aircraft in flight," says Pogosyan.
His goal at UAC is not to develop a new strategy but to consolidate its resources, fully harness its intellectual potential and increase innovation within the company.
One way of doing this is to build international alliances. UAC already co-operates closely with Italy's Alenia in marketing the Superjet, uses western European manufacturers such as Thales and Liebherr as suppliers and in April signed a joint venture agreement with Ukrainian company Antonov.
Pogosyan places considerable importance on the last of these. The new UAC-Antonov joint venture will market and provide after-sales support for civil airliners such as the An-148/158 regional jet and the An-70 military transport.
"To rely on the traditional co-operative ties that Russia has with Antonov makes sense when you're aiming at a renovation of serial production of transport aircraft," he says. "One of the top priorities for UAC is entry into the [military] transport aircraft market."
Uniting the two companies' "intellectual potential" will create synergies that will allow them to move forward much more quickly than if the two companies attempted to operate separately in the military transport sector.
With this in mind, UAC and Antonov are still studying the possible production relaunch of the Antonov An-124 ultra-heavy transport, but in the short term are looking at modernising existing examples.
There is also renewed stress on the Antonov An-70 medium transport, the development of which has languished in recent years. In April, Russian defence minister Anatoly Serdyukov visited Antonov's Kiev plant. The Ukrainian company reported him as saying: "We really need this aircraft," citing a Russian defence ministry order for 60 of the type.
Pogosyan confirms that "several dozen" An-70s are under discussion, and adds that talks are under way with Antonov on a schedule to launch serial production.
Meanwhile, production of the Ilyushin Il-476, a major update of the Il-76 strategic transport with improvements including more fuel-efficient Aviadvigatel PS90A2 engines and a glass cockpit, is under way at the Aviastar-SP plant at Ulyanovsk, with service entry expected in 2013 and an estimated 50 aircraft required by the Russian air force by 2020.
In total, the defence ministry intends to buy around 200 transport aircraft of various types by the end of the decade, adds Pogosyan.
As one of the best-known and longest-serving members of Russia's aerospace industry, Pogosyan has a background of success. He kept Sukhoi's military aviation interests afloat through the difficult times of the 1990s and early 2000s through exports of substantial numbers of the Sukhoi Su-27 family at a time when sales of Russian civil aircraft shrivelled.
When his appointment to his current position was announced early this year, former Flightglobal executive editor and now trenchant blogger Kieran Daly described Pogosyan's new role as "the world's worst aerospace exec job". Possibly so, but if anyone can bring success to UAC, it's Mikhail Pogosyan.
Source: Flight Daily News
