Antonov

History

The company traces its history to Design Bureau No. 153 (OKB-153), set up in 1946 in Novosibirsk under aircraft designer Oleg Antonov. The bureau's first aircraft was the An-2 biplane, which first flew on 31 August 1947. In 1952 the bureau moved to Kyiv, where it remains; it was later known as the Antonov Aeronautical Scientific-Technical Complex and the state enterprise Antonov, and today it is the joint-stock company Antonov. About 22,000 aircraft have been built to Antonov designs.

Military transport aircraft

Antonov's main speciality is transport aviation. Its military transports include the An-12 (first flight 1957), the An-22 Antei (1965), the world's largest turboprop aircraft, the heavy strategic An-124 Ruslan (1982), the world's largest series-produced transport aircraft, and the An-70 (1994) with propfan engines. The latest design in this class is the An-178 medium military transport, which first flew in 2015.

The company's most famous aircraft was the An-225 Mriya (first flight 1988), the heaviest aircraft in the world. In late February 2022, in the first days of the full-scale invasion, it was destroyed at Antonov Airport in Hostomel; other company aircraft were also damaged, including an An-124, an An-22 and the An-132D.

Drones

Antonov worked on drones even before the full-scale war. In 2017 the company demonstrated the An-BK-1 Horlytsia multi-purpose reconnaissance drone, and from 2018 it developed, on its own initiative, the larger Horlytsia-2 strike-reconnaissance drone, a Ukrainian counterpart to the Bayraktar TB2. There is no information on serial production of these drones.

The company's main drone project is the An-196 Liutyi, a long-range strike drone developed from October 2022 within Ukroboronprom as a Ukrainian answer to the Iranian Shahed-136. Testing began in November 2022, and serial production was established by the end of 2023. The Liutyi has a range of over 1,000 km and carries up to 75 kg of payload; it has become one of Ukraine's main means of striking oil refineries and other targets deep inside Russia. In September 2023 Antonov also opened a drone systems centre that carries out aerodynamic research, builds operator training simulators and supports private drone makers.

In July 2026, at the Farnborough International Airshow in the UK, a Liutyi variant carrying four compact air-to-surface missiles under its wings — with a range of up to 200 km and a speed of about 500 km/h — was shown on the Ukroboronprom stand. This variant can strike without flying up to the target and without destroying itself; no date for its entry into service has been given.