China wants to cooperate with RF in creation of heavy helicopter.

SHANGHAI, March 12 (Itar-Tass) - China is interested in cooperating
with Russia in the sphere of the creation of its own heavy helicopter,
head of the scientific and technical committee of the Aviation Industry
Corporation of China (AVIC) Zhang Hongb_ao said at a session of the
Chinese National People's Congress underway in Beijing these days.
He said in an interview to the Huanqiu Shibao newspaper that a special
working group has already been created in the corporation within the
framework of the activities on the project of a super-heavy transport
helicopter. Chinese and Russian specialists have held a series of
consultations. The sides are considering the issue of possible forms of
cooperation. China would like to develop it based on the example of a
joint project with the European helicopter building group Eurocopter for
the creation of the Chinese medium helicopter Z-15 (Avicopter Z-15).
Russia is a recognised leader of heavy helicopter building. The
created in the late 1970s military-transport helicopter Mi-26 with the
capacity of 25 tonnes still remains the world's heaviest. Several such
helicopters are currently in service in the Chinese army.
The Mi-26 was designed as a heavy-lift helicopter intended for
military and civil use. It was designed to replace the earlier Mi-6 and
Mi-12 heavy lift helicopters, with a design that had twice the cabin space
and payload of the Mi-6, then the world's largest and fastest production
helicopter. The primary purpose was to move military equipment such as 13
metric ton (29,000 lb) amphibious armoured personnel carriers, as well as
move mobile ballistic missiles to remote locations after delivery by
military transport planes, such as an Antonov An-22 or Ilyushin Il-76.
The helicopter was designed by Marat Tishchenko, protege of Mikhail
Mil, founder of the design bureau OKB Mil. The first Mi-26 flew on 14
December 1977, and entered service in the Soviet military in 1983. The
Mi-26 was the first helicopter equipped from the factory with an
eight-blade rotor. It is capable of single-engine flight in the event of
loss of power by one engine (depending on aircraft mission weight) because
of an engine load sharing system.
While it is only slightly heavier than the Mil Mi-6, it can lift up to
20 metric tons (44,000 lb) - 8 tons more than Mi-6. The Mi-26 is the
second largest and heaviest helicopter ever constructed, following the
experimental Mi-12.
The Mi-26 helicopter took part in China's Wenchuan "Quake Lake"
Emergency Heavy Lift Operations. As the result of the magnitude 8.0
Sichuan earthquake on 12 May 2008, many rivers became blocked by giant
landslides, which resulted in the formation of "quake lakes"; massive
amounts of water pooling up at a very high rate behind the
landslide-formed dams which will eventually crumble under the weight of
the ever increasing water mass, endangering the lives of potentially
millions of people if the water is to build up, and then break downstream.
The most precarious of these quake-lakes is the one located in the
extremely difficult terrain at Tangjiashan mountain, accessible only by
foot or air, in which at least one Mi-26 heavy lift helicopter belonging
to a branch of China's civil aviation service is used to bring heavy
earthmoving tractors to the affected location. This was in conjunction
with PLAAF Mil Mi-17 helicopters bringing in combat engineers, explosive
specialists, and other personnel to join 1,200 soldiers who had already
arrived on site by foot. Five tons of fuel to operate the machinery had
also been airlifted onto location, where a sluice was constructed to allow
the bleeding off of the bottlenecked water.
China Aviation Industry Corporation (AVIC) is an ultra large
state-owned enterprise and an investment institution, authorized and
managed by the Central People's Government. It is reorganized from AVIC I
and AVIC II. The Corporation is managed through 10 business units:
defence, transport aircraft, aviation engine, helicopters, avionics,
general aviation aircraft, aviation research and development, flight test,
trade & logistics, asset management. It has nearly 200 subsidiaries
(branches) and over 20 listed companies.
AVIC develops in series fighter, fighter bomber, bomber, transport,
trainer, reconnaissance aircraft, helicopter, attack aircraft, general
aviation aircraft, UAV, etc. It also develops engines and missiles, such
as turboprop engines, turbo-shaft engines, turbojets, turbofans,
air-to-air missiles, air-to-surface missiles and ground-to-air missiles.
It develops and builds brand aircraft including J-10, FBC-1, FC-1, L-15,
JL-9, etc., brand engines such as Taihang, Qinling, Kunlun, etc. It
provides advanced aviation-weaponry to Chinese military forces.
AVIC is one of the leading companies in science & technology
development in China. It has a high-level research network include 33
research institutes and China Aviation Establishment. It has a large team
of academicians and national-class experts. A large number of research &
test facilities take the lead in Asia or in the world. AVIC intranet,
connecting all the domestic AVIC subsidiaries and affiliates, greatly
facilitates the collaboration on information flow necessary for concurrent
design and manufacturing at different locations.
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