Il-276 (SVTS) Medium Transport

AC-130 is dreadfully vulnerable to any sort of air defence... for the USAF that is generally MANPADS, but for the Russians their opponents have had orders of magnitude better air defence systems to worry about... like BUK in Georgia and the Ukraine...

Russia does not need gunship transport planes... using transports as dumb bombers perhaps for satellite guided bombs would probably be the cheapest option... fly at 10,000m and roll sat guided bombs out the rear...

An onboard WiFi network should allow the bombs to be given the coordinates of the target before release.

In fact the structure used in Il-76 aircraft for transporting troops looks like a stand at a stadium but square rather than angled for viewing... something like that could be used to hold an enormous number of bombs... big and small in an arrangement so they could each be stored in each side and then moved to the centre conveyer belt to take it to the extreme rear and out the back of the aircraft.

The main doors could be opened in flight and a conveyer system extended out so it clears the aircraft structure for a clean consistent release.

In such a case simple cheap dumb bombs could be used from set altitudes to engage all sorts of targets...

The new Il-476 could carry 50 tons of bombs, which is better than a Blackjack...

It could drop a lot of very heavy bombs, or it could carry an enormous number of cheap simple medium to light bombs and just hang around all day.

In fact a big plane like that, you could have an extra crew compartment/pod, and have a dozen wing mounted SAPSAN type pods.

With coded laser beams each pod could control a laser target marker, with an individual crewman aiming that laser or searching for more targets.

Laser guided bombs are not that expensive, and with newer CCD seekers they could be even cheaper.

Could even release the bombs through a hole in the aircrafts cargo bay floor near the front...

They have racks for installing inside standard cargo planes for when large numbers of troops are to be carried... they also have special equipment that allows a standard cargo plane to hold water for water bomber roles and to hold fuel so it can act as an inflight refuelling tanker.

They could modularise a system that holds and ejects bombs, so that any transport aircraft that can open its rear doors in flight can be a troop transport, an inflight refuelling aircraft, a water bomber, or a bomber within a few hours...

Makes all of your transports more useful.

Transport planes are like churches.... some times you need them and some times you don't.

When you build a church you can design it to take all the people who come for Christmas mass or Easter celebrations... which might be hundreds, or you might build it for regular Sunday service where you might get a dozen people or less each week.

If you build for hundreds then most of the time it will be mostly empty and expensive to heat.

If you build it for a dozen then it will be too small for weddings and funerals and christmas and easter.

The secret is to make a compromise somewhere in the middle.

For transport planes you get the same problem... for a big exercise you need as many transports as you can get, but when you are not performing big exercises then you don't need nearly as many. By making them modular and flexible you can buy a few extra aircraft and use them for different things... when there is no exercise dropping loads or transporting forces, they can be used as inflight refuelling tankers, or to fight fires around the place, or to move troops.

I wonder who the morons were who decided to cut the funding for this program by x10 times

"Oh yeah, we have a bunch of +50-year old An-12s as the only aircraft in our fleet for the 15-20t payload role, they haven't been produced in 45 years and it's a real pain getting spare parts for them and keeping them flying, we estimate we can only keep them going for another 5 years. And when they're gone, we'll have to use our Il-76s for these tasks at much lesser efficiency, but oh no no no no - it's totally not a major priority to replace them, no sir"

It's times like this I wish the NKVD was still around.

Logistics has traditionally been a weak point for military forces that don't fight much... I suspect Russia is learning a lesson with Syria, but it was pretty obvious to those aware of the issue of the Ukraine jumping ship...

Why enlarge an An-12 to make an An-12 replacement?

That would give the An-12 replacement commonality with the An-12 which they want to get rid of because the hostile foreign country that controls the design patents refuses to cooperate with Russia.

What they are doing is correct... make a shrunk down version of the new Il-476 so there will be a much simplified design, and common parts and support with an aircraft they use and own.

The Il-276 might become an F-35 but I doubt it... Russia doesn't have 1.5 trillion US dollars to waste on it...

And hopefully the Il-276 might become an Il-112 which is going to be an ideal An26 replacement that is new and Russian and once they have fixed the bugs should be a rather good aircraft that suits their needs.

They already own the design rights to the Il-76 and Il-476, and it makes sense to make an An-12 replacement based on an existing type rather than a foreign type.

They will benefit from commonality with the IL-476s they will be operating... there would be no benefit going from a four engined turboprop Soviet aircraft low Ukrainian to a Chinese built four engined turboprop... they can enlarge an An-12 as easily as China could but they clearly don't want that.

A jet powered aircraft is faster and can operate at higher altitudes and fly further.

They could probably scale it up to the level where it could carry 30 ton payloads when needed which would make it more useful than the An-12... and with only two engines should be cheaper to operate and maintain.

They operated, overhauled & maintained it for decades. It remains to be seen if they'll repeat the success Brazil made with replacing C-130s by C-390s.

What can I say... the Herc was a popular piece of crap... lots of countries all over the world used it, but it was slow and noisy and not pressurised so you flew through weather rather than over it.

But of course in the west it is lionised as wonderful... the An-12 is no different really... the same features and the same basic flaws...

The Il-276 has more chance of being bought by foreign countries than any aircraft made by China, but it all depends on how many export orders they get for Il-476s.

The problem for Russia will always be that it has lost the warsaw pact set of customers they used to have, though I think a few in the EU might consider transport aircraft less than half a billion each like the US C-17... With regard to the rest of the world if they had a level playing field they would likely do rather well, but there is no such thing of course... New Zealand would never have operated C-130s... we are 2,000km away from Australia and otherwise surrounded by water so a C130 makes little use in practise... we sent the armour we did have by ship simply because with a 20 ton LAV III in the back our C-130s wouldn't make it to Australia without inflight refuelling... we would have been much better off with Il-76s but politically that wont wash.

faster, but not further in this case:
An-12 Range: With maximum fuel: 5,700 km (3,078 nm, 3,540 mi)
With max. load: 3,600 km, > than the Il-276 by 1,600km:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov_An-12#Specifications_(An-12)

Y-9 Useful load: 25,000kg > than the Il-276 by 5T Range: ~5,700 km, > than the Il-276 by 3,700km:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaanxi_Y-9#Specifications_(Y-9)

Funny, because the projected ferry range of the Il-276 is 7,300km which is only 500km short of the Y-9s ferry range...

How about we wait till they have a flying prototype before speculating?

u can't put "probably' in the bank.

If they actually wanted a 30 ton payload capacity transport that would be the spec requirement for the Il-276... the fact that it isn't means it is clearly not important to them.

They have quite a few 40 ton payload capacity Il-76s still in service so a 30 ton payload capacity aircraft will be too big to be efficient for 20 ton payload missions.

I would suggest the An-12 does not regularly operate at max payload weights, and spends more time with full fuel tanks on longer range flights than with full cargo bays.

The Il-276 has an inflight refuelling probe as standard so its range can be anything they need it to be.

Instead of betting on just IL-476/276s, they need to work on An-70 4 & 2 engine equivalents in parallel. The IL-276/112 r half measures IMO.

They have a requirement to replace Il-76, An-12, An-26, and An-72 aircraft with modern Russian aircraft. They have fully upgraded and reengined the Il-76 into the Il-476 to replace a 40 ton capacity aircraft with a 60 ton capacity upgraded model, the An-12 they are replacing with a reduced size modular version called the Il-276, which has the same payload and will likely have similar range in the end... the Il-276 also replaces the An-72 in terms of higher speed small jet transport except it will have a 20 ton payload instead of a 6 ton payload. The Il-112 and Il-114 can both replace the An-26 in use.

There are no problems really as the An-12s were rugged aircraft and will continue doing a good job for a few years yet.

The only gap is the An-70 for the very specific role of supporting the VDV and as mentioned an Il-476 with propfan versions of their jet engines would be fine.

If short field performance of the Il-276 is lacking... though with proper wing mounted high lift devices and a good thrust reverser it should be OK, but if it isn't then a propfan version could be tested too.

I would also add that a lot of the demands from India effected the design of the aircraft... for instance they were not wanting to replace just the An-12, they also wanted to replace their An-32s which have engines that are twice as powerful as the An-26 and are optimised for hot and high altitude airfields.

India also wanted all sorts of weapon options that the Russian Military might not be interested in now that it is the sole customer for the programme (now that it is no longer the MTA programme ).

Why would they look to a foreign country for an aircraft design when they need well over 50 aircraft.

Perhaps if they wanted only half a dozen, but with that many and with civil aircraft needing replacement too... it makes sense to make their own.