Soviet and Russian Aircraft Designations

Since the decree of 9 December 1940 a Soviet aircraft has carried the name of its design bureau rather than its role: bureau prefix, model number, suffix letters, so Su-30MKI reads Sukhoi design 30, M modernised, K export (kommercheskiy), I for India. The one structural rule is the number: fighters took odd numbers and everything else even, which held for every MiG service fighter, at Sukhoi until the Su-25 attack jet and the two-seat Su-30, and never at Tupolev or in the helicopter bureaux. Underneath sits the bureau's own project number — the T-10 that became the Su-27, the izdeliye (product) 9.12 that is the first MiG-29 — and beside it the NATO reporting name the West assigned when the real designation was still unknown.

One lane per bureau, one dot per type entering service. The 1940 decree put the designer's name on everything after it: the wartime Yak, La and Il piston types, the MiG and Su jets of the Cold War, Tupolev's bombers, the Mil and Kamov helicopter lines. After 1991 the dots thin to upgrades of Soviet designs — the Su-30, Su-33, Su-34 and Su-35 are all T-10 derivatives — and the new numbers of the UAC era, Su-57, Su-75 and MiG-35, arrive beside drones that carry no bureau prefix.

Mikoyan-Gurevich counted its fighters MiG-9, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 31 and never used an even number; the MiG-35 continued the sequence in 2019 although, as product 9.61, it is a development of the MiG-29M and MiG-29K. Sukhoi counted the same way — Su-7, 9, 11, 15, 17, 27 — until the two-seat Su-30, which grew out of the Su-27PU interceptor and kept an even number, and the Su-25, an attack aircraft with a fighter's odd one. Every Sukhoi fighter since 1985 descends from the T-10: the Su-27K became the Su-33 in 1998, the Su-27IB the Su-34, the Su-27M was renamed Su-35 for the 1992 Farnborough show, and the Su-35S of 2014 is the separate T-10BM design. The Su-57 kept its T-50 project name until 2017; the Su-75 was unveiled as the LTS at MAKS on 20 July 2021, and its first flight had slipped repeatedly.

Tupolev never kept the parity rule: the Tu-4, Tu-16 and Tu-22 are even, the Tu-95 is odd, and the Tu-128 interceptor even. The suffix carries the history instead. The Tu-22M of 1972 was called a modification of the Tu-22 during the SALT II talks although it was new, and Western intelligence listed it for a time as the Tu-26; the Tu-22M3 of 1983 is the version still flying, and the Tu-22M3M its rebuild under a 2014 contract. The Tu-95MS is the cruise-missile carrier built from 1981, the Tu-160M the modernised Blackjack delivered from December 2014 and, as new-build aircraft, flown from January 2022. Myasishchev's M-4 and 3M ended as tankers. On the tactical side Sukhoi's even numbers mark strike aircraft — the Su-24 (project T-6) and the Su-34 — while the Su-25 shturmovik, project T-8, took an odd one and a suffix family: K export, UB trainer, BM target tug, T anti-tank, SM the in-service upgrade.

Ilyushin and Antonov are the two bureaux that never needed an odd number. Ilyushin's run from the Il-14 to the Il-112 is even throughout, and its letters are the clearest in the system: the Il-76M is the military version, the MD the long-range one, T and TD the civil freighters, and the Il-76MD-90A — Il-476 at the design stage — the re-engined aircraft built new at Ulyanovsk since 2015, with the first production example delivered in April 2019. The tanker took the next even number, Il-78, built on the Il-76MD airframe; its export letters mirror the fighters', so India's Il-78MKI refuels its Su-30MKI. Antonov's An-2 to An-225 are even as well, and the bureau has been a Ukrainian company since 1991, so the An-124 and An-26 fleets Russia still flies are Ukrainian designs. Beriev's Be-12 and Be-200 amphibians and the Yak-40 and Tu-154 airliners pressed into military transport fill out the family.

Helicopters never followed the odd-even rule, and the two bureaux number differently. Mil counts designs — Mi-1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 14, 24, 26, 28, 38 — but gives exports a number of their own: the Mi-17 is the Mi-8M series sold abroad, the Mi-25 and Mi-35 are the export Mi-24D and Mi-24V, and the Mi-35M is the modernised export gunship that Russia then bought for itself. Role letters do the rest: Mi-8T transport, Mi-14PL anti-submarine, Mi-28N night-capable, delivered from 2006. Kamov numbers by role inside one naval family: the Ka-27PL hunts submarines, the Ka-27PS rescues, the Ka-28 is the export version, the Ka-29 the assault transport, the Ka-31 the radar picket and the Ka-32 the civil variant. The attack line began as the V-80 prototype, fielded as the single-seat Ka-50 in 1995, and continued as the two-seat Ka-52, with the Ka-52K Katran for ships.

Yakovlev kept odd numbers for its wartime fighters and gave its trainers even ones — Yak-18 of 1946, Yak-52, Yak-130 — so the training fleet reads as a straight line from the piston Yak-18 to the Yak-130, in service since 2010 after a development started with Aermacchi, whose own version became the M-346. The Po-2 is the oldest designation on the site: Polikarpov's U-2 of 1929, renamed for its designer. Special-mission aircraft take a transport's airframe and, usually, a new number: the Il-38 and Il-20 are Il-18 airliners, the Il-80 command post an Il-86, the Tu-142 is a Tu-95 derivative for anti-submarine work and the Tu-126 a Tu-114 one for radar picket duty. The A-50 radar aircraft is the exception that proves the bureau rule: an Il-76 airframe, but the designation belongs to Beriev of Taganrog, which integrated the radar, as it does for the A-40 amphibian and the A-50U upgrade delivered from 2011.

The Soviet drones were numbered like any other Tupolev: the Tu-123 of 1964, the Tu-143 of 1976 and the Tu-141 of 1979 sit in the main series, odd numbers and all, because the bureau built them. The post-Soviet generation has no bureau prefix. The Forpost is a licence-built design flown under a Russian name, the Orlan-10 and Orlan-30 carry their maker's product name, the Orion is Kronshtadt's, the Lancet ZALA's, and the Geran, Gerbera and Italmas one-way attack drones take the names of plants, in the Soviet codename tradition. Sukhoi's S-70 Okhotnik is the one modern drone with a bureau project number, in the S- series the Su-47 came from, and it has kept it rather than taking a service designation, through teaming trials with the Su-57 that began in 2019.