MOSCOW, September 6. /TASS/. More than once thousand companies will display more than 11,000 samples of weapons and military equipment at the international military-technical forum Army-2016, opening in the Patriot theme park near Moscow on Tuesday, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

This year’s forum will be held for a second time and last till September 11. The demonstration program will be held at three clusters. The latest models of planes and helicopters will be displayed at the Kubinka airdrome, while the ground and water clusters will be located in Alabino.

Army-2016 participants

By tradition the first day of the exhibition is reserved for personal contacts between military specialists and representatives of the military-industrial complex. Participating in the forum, alongside Russian manufacturers, will be companies from Germany, India, Israel, Ireland, China, Malaysia, Thailand, France and Switzerland. As the Defense Ministry has said, a total of 107 countries had been invited to participate. Eighty six of them confirmed participation and 45 plan to send official delegations.

The Kalashnikov concern will for the first time display the newest light machinegun, the automated combat complex Soratnik and a number of other latest products. Russia’s largest manufacturer of armored wheeled vehicles Military-Industrial Company will present a robotized vehicle Tigr with a 30-mm combat module. TsNIITochMash, the designer of the soldier’s combat gear of the future, will display its model that in due time will replace the kit called Ratnik.

Navy, aviation and virtual battlefield

The naval part of the exposition will be larger than last year’s. The design bureau Rubin will present real size samples of two projects: a simulator compartment for practicing fire-fighting operations and a mockup of the mobile autonomous remote-controlled underwater craft Yunona.

Both specialists and guests will be able to see mock-ups of submarines of project 955 Borei, and project 885 Yasen, and multi-purpose submarines of project 971 Bars.

Among the mockups of surface ships there will be the frigate Gepard-3.9, corvette 20382 Tigr, missile carrying ship 22800 of the Karakurt family, patrol ship 22160 and fiberglass minesweeper Aleksandrit.

The Kronshtadt Group company will present a concept of an integral virtual battlefield - a combination of various simulators integrated into a common virtual space. In part, it incorporates simulators for Mi-8, Mi-17, Mi-35 and Mi-26 helicopters, the comprehensive simulator Laguna for training the crews of surface ships, the modular simulator KAMAZ-5350 and the simulator for the BTR-82A armored personnel carrier. 

The newest planes and helicopters, including Sukhoi Su-30SM and Su-35S fighters, multi-functional bomber Sukhoi-34, combat training plane Yak-130 and helicopters Mi-28N and Ka-52 will be shown at the Kubinka airdrome. On the ground the visitors will see the newest transport plane Ilyushin-76MD-90A, and strategic missile carriers Tupolev-160 White Swan and Tupolev-95MS Bear.

The aerobatics show will feature the Russian Knights, Strizhi, Falcons of Russia, and Berkuts teams flying Sukhoi-27, MiG-29 and Sukhoi-30SM planes and Mi-28N Night Hunter helicopters respectively. 

Space industry

The latest achievements in space technologies will feature prominently on the program. The state-run corporation Roscosmos will show what the industry’s leading manufacturers are working on, including the model of a solar energy-driven aircraft La-251 Aist from the Lavochkin design bureau and a real size model of one of its components.

The space rocket center Progress will display mock-ups of the space rocket Soyuz 2.1v and spacecraft Resurs-P, Obzor-R, and Aist-2D, and the VNIIEM corporation, mockups of the satellites Kanopus-V, Lomonosov, and Ionosfera.

The center for the operation of surface space infrastructures will introduce to the visitors an inter-active model of the Vostochny spaceport and the Khrunichev center mockups of the family of future space rockets Angara, including Angara-1.2, Angara-A5, Angara-A5P and Angara-A5B.

Also, visitors will be able to see a mock-up of the new generation manned cargo spacecraft Federatsiya and new generation spacecraft from the space rocket corporation Energiya.