Ukraine offers to build new cruise missile engines for Russia

Motor-Sich is a major foreign economic partner for Russia’s aviation and rocket industry. It supplies engines for Russian X-35, X-55 and X-59 cruise missiles and is building an assembly plant in the town of Dubna near Moscow. “We have developed a new engine for cruise missiles in service with the Russian armed forces,” Vyacheslav Boguslayev said. “It features less weight, better fuel efficiency and is as powerful as the current P95-300 engine.” “We have offered to manufacture this engine for the Russian armed forces,” he said. The new engine is 30% shorter than its predecessor and would allow extending the flight range of the Russian cruise missiles from 130 km to 200 km.

However, Russia is considering replacing Ukrainian-made engines in its cruise missiles with domestic designs in order to end its dependence on Ukraine and fearing that the ex-Soviet state would eventually join NATO. Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said in June that Ukraine would lose industry ties with Russia and suffer reduced trade cooperation if it joined NATO. (rian.ru)