Mil Mi-22 (1965)

Mil Mi-22

Company type	Military transport helicopter project
Industry	Aerospace
Founded	1964
Founder	Mikhail Leontyevich Mil, Marat Nikolayevich Tishchenko
Products	Military transport helicopters (project)
Parent	Mil Moscow Helicopter Plant

This article is about an unconstructed transport helicopter concept derived from the Mil Mi-2 in 1965. For the distinct airborne command post variant based on the Mil Mi-6 introduced in 1975, see Mil Mi-22 (1975).

The Mil Mi-22 (in Cyrillic: Миль Ми-22) represented a Soviet initiative during the 1960s aimed at creating a military transport helicopter. This project originated as an evolution of the Mil Mi-2, but it never progressed to production because the Soviet armed forces opted for the Mil Mi-24 to fulfill this role. The Mi-22 designation, once dormant, was later reassigned to an unrelated airborne command post variant developed from the Mil Mi-6. Initially, the Mi-22 was intended to be a Soviet counterpart to helicopters in the Bell UH-1 category.

Design and development

In 1964, driven by concerns that interest in helicopters within the Soviet military was waning, Mil commenced enhancements on the Mi-2 platform, producing mock-ups that explored two distinct developmental directions. One avenue resulted in the creation of the Mil Mi-3. The alternative concept, called V-20 (in Cyrillic В-20), featured an extended fuselage by inserting a plug section and incorporated a broad sliding door. The original Mi-2’s three-bladed main rotor and wheeled landing gear were to be replaced with a four-bladed rotor and skid-type undercarriage. Performance analyses revealed that the Klimov GTD-350 engines powering the Mi-2 were inadequate for this new design, prompting Mil to evaluate various alternative gas turbines for the V-20, including the GTD-550, GTD-10, and Glushenkov GTD-3, as well as foreign options like the American Continental T65 and French Turbomeca Astazou. Ultimately, rather than being a mere upgrade of the Mi-2, the V-20 evolved into an almost entirely new aircraft.

Despite efforts by Mil’s founder Mikhail Leontyevich Mil and designer Marat Nikolayevich Tishchenko to gain backing from the Soviet Ministry of Aviation Industry, support for advancing this design was not forthcoming initially, but by 1965, interest from the Soviet military grew regarding the V-20 powered by the GTD-10 engine as a potential platform for deploying motorised rifle squads. At this stage, the designation Mi-22 was assigned to this project.

Progress included testing of a new four-bladed rotor mounted on a Mi-2 airframe in 1971, although construction of a full prototype had not been completed before the early 1970s decision to select the Mi-24 for the same operational role. In practice, however, the Mi-24 was seldom used primarily as a troop transporter, which ultimately undermined the original purpose behind developing the Mi-22.