Stepanov Slava has travelled to the factory that assembles SU-130 warplanes and has made some very very artistic photos of the process plus he got a story with the photos. And we are having it all here now inside of this post. I really advise you to read it all the way thru as the pics are awesome and lot of small details revealed from the production lines of these planes. Must be top secret just a while ago but for some reason pretty public now. So let’s see it:

First a few words on the plane. SU-30 is a two seater jet. Being assembled in Irkutsk city. The factory is called IAZ – Irkutsk Aircraft Zavod (Factory) and it has produced over than 7,000 warplanes since its start. It exports planes to the 37 countries of the world. Also it makes YAK-130 planes and some pieces of Airbus jets.

SU-30CM is made on a SU-27 base. It is a first plane that achieved “supermaneuverability”
Basically this is a jet fighter. Can also cover the operations on the ground and/or destroy targets on the ground. Multifunctional plane.
This is a modern plane and it’s adapted to the current Russian air force requirements: it can climb up to 16,300 meters high and fly up to 3,000km far. The fastest speed is 2125 km/h


And this is a factory. One of the most important Russian aircraft building facilities.
It marks its 80th anniversary this year.


Looking at this photos I can understand that making a plane is no less technologically complex task than making an iPhone. For sure.
After the factory got some modern equipment the speed of production increased a lot. Like he mentions an example that now one worker in one working shift can make something that required four people team work of one month. Hard to believe. Here we’ve seen two shots from the workshop where the small parts are being pressed. He says over 70% of the aircraft parts are being made there.
The factory even has its own metallurgical engineering – where the molten metals are being used.


This is not a regular paint, this is electroplating. And here is a luminescent paint being sprayed on the parts and then ultraviolet light is used to find the little unseen with naked eye defects of the making.


And that’s only one of a few complex quality control methods being used here.
Like for example this is a ultra-precise measuring with the help some complex machine that flies above the parts and tracks their geometry. If it finds even slightest mistake the part doesn’t passes quality control. I even doubt they do this for the iPhone!


And then the smaller parts being assembled into more complex parts. Making holes takes 80% of the time of this stage. Drilling!




And this unit is a workshop of the final completion. Where the planes are being turned into the working machines. Here are over 300 people test the planes for quality and compliance. Most of the work is manual work. Sometimes people have to crotch themselves to fit into the narrow spots and use the tools inside. Total length of wiring in Su-30CM is 75,000 meters. Today there is over 12,500 people working on the factory with an average age of 40 years old.
And this is a workshop of International cooperation so to called. This is where they make AIRBUS parts, or more precisely the parts for A320 Airbus passenger jet. Almost each third AIRBUS A320 in the world gets a part that was manufactured here.


So when the planes are ready they are being flied to test them. Only after this stage the plane can get it’s “passport” with a mark “ready to use”.
That’s the radar of SU-30M. It spots targets up to 200 km far and can hold up to 10 targets simultaneously. That supermaneuverability we mentioned before is possible thanks to those thrust vectoring engines. They sort of move sides to sides and the jet stream gets twisted to the sides.

After the jet gets passport it becomes a warplane ready for being shipped to a customer. Usually the customer representative arrives to sign the papers and checks the plane. Then the customers pilots arrive and make the test drive. If the pilots are happy with the machine the customer picks up the plane. IF the customers are from Russia they take the plane by air – like the plane flies itself where its destined to be. Foreign customers can’t fly the warplanes across the Russia so they use the transport planes to get their buy. Yes it’s being disassembled before they get it.

You probably wondered how much worth is one plane? We have the answer. One plane is $50 million dollar

Sumur