Mil Mi-44

The Mil Mi-44 is a light twin-engine utility helicopter design developed by the Mil design bureau from the Mi-34, meant to replace it with a turbine-powered successor. Studies in 1986 and 1987 showed that swapping the Mi-34 piston engine for the 650 horsepower TV-O-100 gas turbine would need a new airframe, and the mock-up that followed moved the fuel tank under the gearbox and the stabilizer to the tail keel beam. In 1988 Mil proposed a draft with two 450 horsepower engines, for a take-off mass of about 2.2 tons, a crew of two and a maximum speed of about 260 kilometres per hour. In the 1990s the economic decline of Russia left the project without funding and it was abandoned, though later accounts describe it as still under development.