In a sense it is much like the F-35 in that it has a fan linked to the main engine to provide extra thrust on take off... of course there are some fundamental differences like the F-35 uses the fans for vertical thrust to take off vertically, whereas this aircraft uses them for short takeoffs and probable isn't mechanically linked to the main engines... it might use electrical power take off to power the electric motors rather than batteries which are heavy and just dead weight for the entire flight... the same thing that made VSTOL aircraft like the Yak-141 less efficient with two vertically mounted jet engines being dead weight for the entire flight.
Having said that a light metal screen over the large fan intakes could be designed so that supersonic speed air flows over them rather than through them so that later on when engine technology improves and variable cycle engines from turbojet to turbofan to scramjet could allow an aircraft with a higher wing sweep fly faster.
I personally don't see the value in hypersonic transport aircraft, or even supersonic transport aircraft, but the flying wing design is certainly more aerodynamic than the more familiar designs we are used to and their much wider shape would allow a bigger range of bigger items to be transported safely.
Reminds me a bit of that green cargo pod carrying Thunderbird... but even cooler.
At take off and landing the high volume of dense air blowing through the fan system should make landing and takeoff speeds much lower and greatly improve low speed handling performance.
This would be very important for such large aircraft.
I rather suspect that with two engines in the small model and 6 in the biggest there would not be any need for batteries for the electric fans as they could be powered by takeoff power from the engines. For engine out landings with a fully loaded transport plane you are pretty much screwed... even with an optimum shape the enormous weights it will operate it will not be very manageable with just the fan engines and will likely drop like a brick.
Perhaps as an option you could design a light truck with a huge battery pack that you could drive onto the aircraft and plug in to power the fans when operating at lighter weights where landing by fans only would be survivable, but keeping heavy batteries in the aircraft all the time would reduce its efficiency without greatly improving survival potential as the aircraft should have at least two engines anyway and once it has taken off it should be OK with just one engine to be able to fly around and land safely.
I should point out that the engines on aircraft rarely operate at full thrust all the time and transport aircraft only really use full power for take off. Most of the time they just idle... a good example is the engines in the Il-76... the PS-90A which produces 16 tons of thrust at max power rating at sea level at take off, while its power rating at mach 0.8 at 11,000m, which is its cruise height and speed is 3.5 tons cruise rating.
This means that if it never had to take off it could probably safely cruise around with just one engine at mach 0.6 or so.
Having electric fans greatly increases the mass of air pushing the aircraft forward.
You know better than that WW, the Americans will say:
1) Ooh, that was a special case, cause only one was made.
2) That was made during Soviet times, Russia doesn't has the ability to make those anymore.
3) That was made by Antonov a Ukrainian company, without Ukraine Russia can't make aircraft like those anymore.
Russia needs something that can wipe Americas smugness of the face of the earth.
Only one was made because only one was needed to ferry large components from where they were made in the Soviet Union to where they were needed in the Soviet Union.
They were made because they were needed by the Soviet Space industry. Now the Russian Space Industry wants them.
There is no reason why Russia can't make them now... and Antonov himself was Russian... the Soviets had a policy of spreading the work around so that all the high tech stuff was not all in Russia. This eventually bit them in the ass, but they are now correcting that. Before the US built the space shuttle the US couldn't build space shuttles?
Rockwell in the US designed and built the US Space Shuttles.... now that they are defunct as a company I guess despite Boeing buying up their aerospace assets that the US can't make space craft any more?
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