IL-76 Special-Mission Modifications

Use these containers to protect the weapon.

Nice images, but not the real thing sadly...

Note the pointed tips of the actual Club missiles means these are the two stage subsonic cruise missile and supersonic rocket powered terminal attack anti ship missiles... rather nice looking weapons...

Nice footage of the 23mm guns being fired at ground targets.

Remember the Il-76 has two twin barrel 23mm cannon each firing at about 3,500rpm... so these two guns firing together will be firing about 120 rounds a second....

The gun is the same as that fitted to the newest Hinds with the chin mounted turret with the twin barrel 23mm cannon.

In modern warfare a single chaff cloud or single flare is not enough to be effective... modern IR and IIR guided missiles target patterns rather than hotspots... it is much easier to load up a few thousand rounds of 23 x 115mm cannon shells than fixed frames holding Chaff and Flare grenades.

The guns also have much better velocity and can be directed to position a chaff and/or flare cloud in a specific place relative to the incoming round.

At the very worst the two 23mm cannon have HE shells much more powerful than the shell fired by the US Navy Phalanx system at a fraction of the weight and almost double the rate of fire.

The rate of fire advantage is magnified because the weight of 6 x 20mm cannon barrels takes half a second to wind up to full speed so it does not fire bursts at the rated 4,500rpm... probably closer to half that, whereas the gas powered twin barrel 23mm gun fire at their full rate almost immediately and don't require a large heavy electric motor to fire.

The current models are getting DIRCMS added to protect from MANPADS, but to protect from small arms with armour would dramatically reduce the aircrafts range and payload performance... having a gun and self defence capacity and ability to bomb just makes it more versatile.

Il-76 as a bomber and a sniper with its 23mm cannon.

Note the 23mm tail turret cannon fire low velocity 23 x 115mm shells... the projectile is the same as with the Shilka, but the ZU-23 guns fire a round with more propellent at higher muzzle velocities. The Shilka and ZU-23 use a 23 x 152mm round.

The 23mm round used on the Il-76 is smaller and lower velocity but with a heavy HE projectile... the shorter cartridge is more compact and lighter overall so lots of rounds can be carried in aircraft... the reduced muzzle velocity doesn't matter but the heavy HE does good damage on air targets and it means it can have an enormous rate of fire without too much recoil.

The ZU-23 and ZSU-23-4 has a rate of fire of about 1000 rounds per minute per gun, but the twin barrel 23mm gun used on the Il-76 and also in the chin nose turret of current model Hinds and also the twin barrel 23mm cannon pod for Soviet and Russian aircraft is closer to 3,500 rpm.

Well it already has the wing hard points... as mentioned in the video, the Gefest & T system is not cheap or simple but if fitted to the aircraft would be rather interesting.

I think they should do it because it could be used to allow bomb drops at altitude so it is safe... dropping bombs from 500m means anyone with an AK or MG can do damage to you easily enough and MANPADS or even ATGMs would be a serious threat.

Installing the G&T system would mean accurate use of bombs from 8km, but it would also be interesting for dropping special payloads... parachute systems would probably be too slow and allow too much time in the air leading to too much variation based on winds etc etc, but some sort of wing based glide system for delivering things that are not so fragile would be interesting, or that have steering parachutes that can steer to the location they are needed would be excellent for silent supply of special forces or trapped units.

You could fill a pallet with HE and parachute it down and steer it into an enemy base... they will likely run to it thinking they are getting their enemies supplies and surprise

The cannon from that altitude would have such a shell spread as to be useless, but keep in mind the guns are designed for shell weight and rate of fire rather than muzzle velocity so their lack of velocity when hitting the ground wont be a problem because they are not designed to be high velocity anyway... lots of small hand grenades detonating around the place... 50 odd a second per gun... there is a reason they use them in the current model Hind and also in the 23mm gun pods used by helicopters and attack aircraft.

Flying at altitude means you can burn less fuel and with a simple optical sensor with a basic steering kit so troops on the ground can mark targets you could fill half the cargo bay with 20kg to 1,000kg bombs in enormous numbers and the other half could be fuel bladders to allow long endurance flights at relatively low speed at altitude...

When needed the bombs can be released with communication with ground forces calling in bomb weights and marking targets... all the bombs could have glide kits so they can reach targets and manouver to get real speed and good precision on target...

Of course some sort of airship could also be used for the same mission at even greater heights... say 20km altitude or higher... paint it pale blue and it would be near invisible from the ground but glide bombs would have enormous speed and ability to fly to targets well away from the airship... the first 10km fall it would be accelerating but the last 10km it can do a pull up and should have enormous flight speed it can turn into range to reach distant targets from where it was dropped.

More importantly an airship could have an enormous radar antenna and communications repeating antennas as well as upward facing satellite links and optical balls for monitoring the situation on the ground and providing direct secure communications etc etc.

The Il-76 or airship option would be vastly superior to a spookie.

The airship could arrive there a week before an attack is planned for a target enemy base or city or location and it could monitor and observe... if you made it big enough you could have a flat top made of solar panels that you could land and take off UAVs from... you could operate it at 10kms altitude or fly it up higher... 20km or more depending on the design...

You could carry enormous amounts of bombs and enormous sized radar antenna and have the bottom of it covered in comm links and antenna for communication on the ground... it could command Uran 9s with a direct line of sight link... and glide bombs could be used and released in any direction.

You could mount a 57mm gun with thousands of HE rounds... you could fly it directly above the enemy base and drop bombs directly down on to it... the point is that it would not need to move around which means it could operate for months at a time providing continuous information and views of the target area

Operating at 10km altitude you could fly HALE and MALE UAVs that could land on its flat top and deliver munitions to moving targets all round the battlefield.

Its lower surface could have a dozen optical balls for looking for targets with laser target markers for supporting artillery and laser guided bombs dropped from the platform itself.

An Il-76 with a huge bomb rack makes sense but the aircraft is big and relatively heavy and really would not be great at loitering over the target for hours simply because of the rate such a big aircraft burns fuel... even if you shut down three engines you might get 6 hours over target but you are burning a lot of fuel to carry these bombs... and Airship could power itself with solar panels and electric motors and hydrogen fuel cells and of course hydrogen filled bags of gas.

Speed is of zero importance in this case though... an you are suggesting an Airship would be vulnerable but an Il-76 wont be?

An airship a few hundred metres long would have enormous internal volume for gas bags... we are not talking about a hot air balloon or party balloon where one sharp object bursts it and destroys the entire structure.

At 10km altitude there is probably not enough oxygen for the hydrogen to even burn and the fragments from even a large air to air missile likely wont destroy enough internal hydrogen filled bags to do more than make the entire airship start to descend.

Dropping ballast and releasing the HE payloads and it might even maintain flight.

Airships would certainly only be able to fly at speeds of 80-110km per hour which is not fast, but whether it is operating over a group of surface ships as an AWACS platform, or as a recon system operating over ground forces... there is little need for it to fly any faster.

Speed offers it no benefits and would reduce its endurance to hours.... an airship could operate for months...

If the enemy masses an enormous force and attacks then a few Il-76s with he bombs rolled out the rear in a carpet bombing role might make sense, but most of the time you want pinpoint hits with relatively small bombs... you don't need heavy bombs if your aim is good... heavy bombs just kill other people and destroy a town you eventually want to restore and rejuvenate to normalcy at some stage.

If the enemy are the Muj and they have a huge base in the mountains then sure... 60 ton bomb payloads from Il-76s make sense, but in terms of endurance and time over target most drones and airships are a much better choice.

Strong winds occur at specific altitudes and can be used to transit distances at rather useful speeds... I assume you mean the trade winds... they are at specific altitudes and can be mapped and tracked and used to move efficiently.

Electric motors are becoming very powerful and very efficient and things like hydrogen fuel cells and solar panels should mean energy could be the least of the airships problems.

The outer structure of the airship containing the hydrogen gas bags could be purged of air and its entire internal structure could be filled with Nitrogen... any external explosion would damage the structure but blast waves are greatly reduced in the thin air at that altitude and fire would likely not even start.

The Il-76 is a very versatile and capable platform... for jobs like fire fighting and cargo transport and inflight refuelling as well as AWACS duties and parachute drops it is an excellent platform, but for a bomber it is really too big an heavy to be a cheap bomber... its size and weight means it burns a bit of fuel just travelling around... if the job is to loiter for long periods then drones are much better solutions, while smaller lighter transports will be lighter and cheaper yet still have the capacity to carry a heavy load of bombs and other weapons.

A fully loaded Il-76 carries different payloads to different ranges.... with a 20 ton payload it can fly 8,500km, which at 770km/h cruise speed means it remains in the air for about 11 hours which is pretty good but it does that by carrying 40 extra tons of fuel over its max capacity... that is an enormous amount of fuel to carry and burn just to be there in case a target pops up... these big transport types burn a lot of fuel just flying around and are not particularly efficient in terms of loitering performance... the A-50 and A-100 are or will be Il-476 because it means they can operate from shorter airfields around Russia... an airliner aircraft is designed for long flight low drag low fuel burn cruise flights...

I am not suggesting an Airship for use against HATO... the US would never bother using AC-130s against Russian forces either because it would not last very long against a real air defence force.

An Airship however... if it is well designed and modern could be a very difficult target to bring down in modern war... it would have room for all sorts of jammers and decoys and DIRCMS systems... not to mention it will be operating over friendly IADS of which it is a giant all seeing eye...