Yakovlev

Yakovlev, formally the A.S. Yakovlev Design Bureau, is a Russian aircraft designer and manufacturer whose aircraft carry the design office prefix Yak, with its head office in Moscow. The bureau formed in 1934 under the aircraft designer Alexander Sergeyevich Yakovlev as OKB-115, with its own production base, although it dates its birth from 12 May 1927, the day of the maiden flight of the AIR-1 he supervised. In the Second World War it designed and produced a line of fighters beginning with the Yak-1 family, and it is best known for those piston-engined fighters. Later work includes the Pchela reconnaissance drone, first flown in 1990. Irkut acquired Yakovlev in April 2004, the Russian government merged the holding with Mikoyan, Ilyushin, Irkut, Sukhoi and Tupolev into the United Aircraft Building Corporation in February 2006, and in August 2023 Irkut rebranded itself as Yakovlev.