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In early 1960s, the Soviet Navy command was
urgently needed a fast military transport capable of carrying a large
payload on the shore of Caspian Sea and Black Sea. The Minister of
Defense recognized a Wing-In-Ground effect vehicle
which basically allowed
for a greater weight aircraft to utilized the low-altitude lift over
water for increased range and better fuel economy.
As Alexeiev's Central Hydrofoil Design Bureau conceived some WIG designs
at the time, the firm received support from
military to build the test platform, the KM
Ekranoplan. The KM provided lots of useful data on large scale WIG
vehicles, and led to the military design, the Lun.
The Lun weighed 400 tons and was built
in 1987. Operating as an
anti-submarine variant, it was fitted with six anti-ship missile
launchers. Each launcher was designed to fire the SS-N-22 Sunburn naval
missile. In 1989, After
the accident of the Komsomolets nuclear submarine near Norway it was
decided to transform the second, partly finished Lun into a Search and
Rescue (SAR) Ekranoplan. A considerable part of the work was under
construction during the collapse of the Soviet Union and work was
stopped.
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