Georgia starts assembling reconfigured Su-25 attack aircraft without Russian components

“The fuselage and the wings for the new Ge-31 attack aircraft will be manufactured in Georgia. As for the radio electronics and navigation systems, they will be imported from the West, as well as jet engines and catapults,” Nodar Beridze, the company’s general director said in an interview with Georgian newspaper ‘Palette Weekly’ published on Aug. 10.

Beridze said that “components will be purchased from France, Italy and the United Kingdom and adjusted on site to the standards of the Su aircraft if necessary.”

“The new aircraft will be totally in compliance with NATO standards,” Beridze said.

After the disintegration of the USSR, the Tbilisi plant launched the assembly of Su-25KM ‘Scorpion’ planes upgraded with the assistance of Israel. Components for the aircraft were imported from Russia then, which became impossible after the Russian-Georgian conflict in August 2008.

Now being a structure of the Georgian ministry of defense, the plant is mostly engaged in repairs of military helicopters and other aviation equipment. Some unmanned aircraft and rotor copters are also assembled at the plant. On the basis of the plant, manufacturing was launched of ‘Didgori’ and ‘Lazika’ armored personnel carriers, as well as the production of other military equipment.

Tbilaviastroy, AO was incorporated in March 2002 on the base of the Tbilisi Aviation Plant that had been formed in December 1941, after Soviet aviation plants were evacuated from Taganrog and Sevastopol to the capital of the then Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic.