Pashinsky made the remarks during a round-table discussion at the Kiev-based Gorshenin Institute, a think tank.
"The creation of a modern military aircraft is worth at least three billion dollars, while our state defense order for 2016 stands at about 100 million dollars. What kind of a military aircraft in Ukraine can we talk about? Why should we even dream of this topic?" Pashinsky said.
According to him, Ukraine is neither technologically nor financially capable of creating a military plane, even including the lightest such an aircraft.
"Our potential is [tied to] the armored vehicle Dozor and the mortar launcher Molot rather than planes and aircraft carriers. All the industry branches have been destroyed, the potential is zero and there is no money," he said.
In this vein, Pashinsky also pointed to the lack of orders for each and every enterprise of the country's military-industrial complex.
"We have no potential. As for our former potential, it was reduced to the following: we take [the mothballed] T-72 or the T-64 tanks from the Ukrainian Defense Ministry at the price of scrap metal, repair them at an armored plant and sell them for 400,000 dollars," he admitted.
He also recalled that that at the expense of total sales of property after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine once was on the list of the world's top ten exporters in terms of military equipment.
"But let's call a spade a spade: this is the potential of the Soviet army rather than our military-industrial complex. We have just a few military hardware pieces that can compete on foreign markets, while the rest does not work," he added.
Earlier this year, it was reported that the Ukrainian aircraft manufacturer Antonov State Company, which produces only passenger and transport aircraft, had received an order from the Ukrainian Defense Ministry to start developing a plane for the country's Armed Forces.
