Russian Transport Aircraft fleet (VTA)

Tsavo Lion wrote:

..half a billion dollars for one C-17,..

Unit cost US$218M (flyaway cost for FY 2007)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_C-17_Globemaster_III

You forgot to add Fiscal Year 2007 was almost 13 years ago (remember inflation), and the cost is after humongous govt. subsidies, tax breaks, special economic zones for plants. Without those advantages your talking about +$800 million per aircraft.

In June 2017, the U.S. Department of State approved the potential sale of one C-17 to India under a proposed $366 million U.S. Foreign Military Sale that includes spare parts and support.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_C-17_Globemaster_III#Indian_Air_Force

It's a moot point: unless their production is restarted-highly unlikely- only used 1s can be sold now, if at all, & at a reduced price.
The Japanese Kawasaki C-2 may be an alternative to some:
Unit cost approx. US$136M- 2 will cost $272M, up to $94M less than, & carry 36Tx2=72T, almost as much as a single C-17:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kawasaki_C-2#Sales_efforts

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kawasaki_C-2#Specifications_(C-2)

In 2017, 1 A400M with 37T payload cost RM600M=$143.69M, or $7.69M more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A400M_Atlas#cite_note-124

This is an interesting, somewhat unconventional project with an elliptical fuselage (not sure if it's been mentioned previously)

M-60 by Myasischev...it was talked about as one of the candidates for the PAK-TA

It is true that it was a production fsctory for Mc Donnell Douglas and boeing only inherited with their acquisition of their former rival. They could have produced something else st that plant... this is almost so stupid as the russian destruction of Saratov Aircraft plant.

The US factories were political in nature and never made a profit, for making commercial aircraft they were useless... they only made sense as unstoppable producers of US military crap... not matter how bad... it is a setup recreated for the F-35, which is why that programme steams on ahead despite repeatedly failing to achieve adequate performance goals.

Th C-17 was so successful politically because all its factories were in economically depressed areas with current sitting senators that had influence on military related matters... generally boards that allocate funding to production of transport aircraft.

Got to the point where the Pentagon stopped asking for new aircraft but would get funding for them anyway by these senators who wanted to keep these high paying jobs in their voting constituents areas.

Australia ended up paying $400 million dollars per aircraft, and were also told they could not take off from rough strips or short strips or it would invalidate the high operational airframe hours guarantee.

And Australia is a loyal poodle when it comes to US allies... turn the lights off and put on an American accent and they do all sorts of tricks... hahaha.

M-60 by Myasischev...it was talked about as one of the candidates for the PAK-TA

They would need to be exceptionally powerful engines, and their location would make maintenance and just general engine access a pain in the ass.

Simple clean design though.

https://iz.ru/export/google/amp/908099?__twitter_impression=true


Rob Lee
@RALee85
·
1h
Another Syria lesson. The Russian Air Force has begun placing missile defense systems on all Il-76 military transport aircraft. When Russia first intervened in Syria, it used helos with missile defense systems, to cover the take-off and landings for Il-76.

GarryB wrote:

M-60 by Myasischev...it was talked about as one of the candidates for the PAK-TA

They would need to be exceptionally powerful engines, and their location would make maintenance and just general engine access a pain in the ass.

Simple clean design though.

It would be a pain for the maintenance crew, but ultimately be more safe for them as that the engines are located above the fuselage and it makes it harder for them to be accidentally sucked in and shredded up by the jet engine. As far as the PAK-TA goes, the best idea would be for Tupolev and Illuyshin to cooperate with each other and combine resources and manpower for a related development of PAK-DA/TA on a blended wing-body design.

It would be a pain for the maintenance crew, but ultimately be more safe for them as that the engines are located above the fuselage and it makes it harder for them to be accidentally sucked in and shredded up by the jet engine.

Well I see what you mean, by safety you mean people on the ground near the aircraft with engines running... you don't normally do maintenance on aircraft while their engines are running, that is just not safe practise.

Those images of flying wings are interesting, but my favourite is one shown on the TSAGI wind tunnels with a tail section that had the engines mounted on it with horizontal tail surfaces angled up at 45 degrees I think from memory...

The main hurdle is western stereotypes about Russian aircraft and whether a radical new design would be accepted.

GarryB wrote:

It would be a pain for the maintenance crew, but ultimately be more safe for them as that the engines are located above the fuselage and it makes it harder for them to be accidentally sucked in and shredded up by the jet engine.

Well I see what you mean, by safety you mean people on the ground near the aircraft with engines running... you don't normally do maintenance on aircraft while their engines are running, that is just not safe practise.

Those images of flying wings are interesting, but my favourite is one shown on the TSAGI wind tunnels with a tail section that had the engines mounted on it with horizontal tail surfaces angled up at 45 degrees I think from memory...

The main hurdle is western stereotypes about Russian aircraft and whether a radical new design would be accepted.

Never underestimate stupid people not paying attention, there's been cases where people for whatever reason managed to get sucked in to the fan blades of a jet engine. One famous case where a guy on a US aircraft carrier got sucked in to the fan blades of a Harrier jet engine, and by stupid luck survived:





There was another case in a Texas airport where a guy got sucked in to a commercial passenger plane engine and he wasn't so lucky. I'm not going to post the photos, but lets just say he was a human being one second and was 'magically' transformed into a strawberry banana pineapple smoothie!

For most airports the airstairs prevents accidents with people getting sucked in to jet engines most of the time but with ground crew it comes down to training and communication... don't take short cuts past running engines...

The location of engines on most civil aircraft is not an accident... easy access on the flight line without the need for machines or vehicles to reach the engines makes routine engine maintenance and engine checks easier and faster and therefore cheaper.

Look at the history of the An-72... the location of the engines on top of the wings improves low flight speed and short takeoff and landing performance... the engine exhaust attaches itself to the top of the wing so when the ailerons are deflected down the jet wash is also deflected down like a TVC engine... this is excellent for short field operations.

The location of the engines themselves however make maintenance a pain in the arse... so with the end of the cold war they stopped making them and infact modified the design with a more common underwing engine location... ie the An-140 et al are just An-72s with conventional wing locations for their engines.

Performance was less impressive, but simpler and cheaper to operate and maintain.

In other words it is a problem if the only aircraft at the airport that requires a special vehicle for the engine crew to reach the engine is yours. When you fly to another airport and they don't have a suitable vehicle?

Not good.

Tsavo Lion wrote:Can China help Russia to create the IL-106 transport?
..if the Ukrainian Motor Sich redeems China, then in the future there is a chance to acquire the D-18T , but not from Ukraine, but from the Chinese owner . Then the new STVTS of Russia - “IL-106” will appear and fly . Let UEC then make at least PD-18, at least “RF Product”. In the meantime, only optimistic promises from the leadership of the domestic aviation industry about new domestic engines are heard .

I do not think it would make sense to invest in foreign platforms based on outdated engines.

Especially since those engines are not anymore in production even in Ukraine. Yes they can manufacture spare parts to keep existing engines operative, but restart production of newly built D-18T would require at best a couple of years and a not small investment.

Would it be worth for Russia to spend money on it for a foreign engine to act as an inefficient stopgap that has also a different architecture from the future pd24 and pd35 (3 spools the D18T, like the Rolls-Royce RB211 and the Trent Family engines, and 2 spools the PD35 and PD24, as the General Electric GEnx and the PD14)?

By the time they'll really need IL-106s, I hope there'll be new Russian made engines for them.

There will be Russian engines before there are Chinese ones of Ukrainian origin.

Even if there were Chinese Ukrainian engines ready... why would Russia want to put AN-124 engines on their new Il-106 transport for?

Even as a stopgap measure it would make little sense.

In the meantime, only optimistic promises from the leadership of the domestic aviation industry about new domestic engines are heard .

Yeah, what sort of dumb logic is this?

The Russian domestic aviation industry is the one that they need to rely on because that is the industry developing not only the Il-106 aircraft but also its new engines too.

In comparison this person is suggesting that they should hope that the Ukrainians sell AN-124 engine technology to China and China put it in to production fast enough so they can sell it to Russia so they can use it while they are waiting for much better Russian engines to be fully ready.

Why don't we just wait for the right engines and stop thinking about silly and unrealistic alternatives based on old cold war less reliable less fuel efficient old engines... that the Chinese... despite all their cleverness would be unable to improve in the available time scale let alone be sure of getting production right.

GarryB wrote:Note post regarding Il-96 moved to civil aviation thread:

https://www.russiadefence.net/t7724p575-russian-civil-aviation-news-3

Read an article not long ago that the 4 Il-96-400M being built are all for the Russian Military / Security forces with 3 going to Defense and the other to the FSB. The original placement may prove to be correct

After moving it I found the content repeated there anyway...

As I was saying: Russia Shows Wind Tunnel Model Of An "Elephant" Airlifter Replacement For The An-124

What a shit article.

This is the Slon model of the aircraft to replace the An-124 which explains why it is designed for a standard payload weight of 180 tons.

The Il-106 is smaller than the An-124, not bigger.

And that dickhead talking about this new aircraft being a copy of the C-5 Galaxy can go fuck himself... the Galaxy is terrible and they know it... just like the C-141 was terrible too... comparing either to new Russian aircraft is just sour grapes.

As I was saying:
Though relatively low-density, the existing An-124 fleet has clearly proven its worth and would seem to support the idea that developing a replacement is a worthwhile expenditure of limited time and funds. The wind tunnel model at TsAGI indicates that Russia is definitely moving ahead with at least one program to develop a successor design.

The only reason to replace the An-124s is their engines are Ukrainian and their designs are Ukrainian too... so they need to be replaced with something from Russia that they can use and also make money exporting.

The only reason to replace the An-124s is their engines are Ukrainian and their designs are Ukrainian too...

there's another reason: the Slon will have 30T more payload & longer range.

the Galaxy is terrible and they know it...

it can carry ~25-30T less, but other upgrades r being made & they have 7 more of them-12 active, 14 reserve & 26 civ.=53 An-124s vs. ~52 active+8 reserve=60 C-5Ms:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov_An-124_Ruslan#Specifications_(An-124-100M)
https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/c-5.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_C-5_Galaxy#Specifications_(C-5M)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_C-5_Galaxy#Operators

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/11014/air-force-now-wants-to-get-sidelined-c-5-galaxy-transports-back-in-the-air

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov_An-124_Ruslan#Operators

there's another reason: the Slon will have 30T more payload & longer range.

I would suspect the reason the Slon has more payload capacity than the An-124 is because the Il-106 will probably be in the 100-110 ton payload range with newer better engines than the original was designed with, it was supposed to be an 80-90 ton payload capacity replacement for the An-22.

By having Slon at 180 tons and the Il-106 at 100 tons payload then the next aircraft down would be the Il-476 at 60 tons payload... the smaller aircraft would be used in greater numbers... I rather suspect they wont be operating at max weight very often except for special situations.

it can carry ~25-30T less, but other upgrades r being made & they have 7 more of them-12 active,

The Galaxy is in need of replacement with nothing in sight... the An-124 is a much better aircraft and only needs replacing because of the design rights are foreign to Russia now, but they clearly are working on its replacement and it pretty much comes down to engines which are the main feature holding back production of a replacement but it is being sorted.

I believe that there was quite a bit of misunderstanding due to not clear statements from Russian air force and industry officials, and this caused different interpretations from the media (and from us).

For the Il-106, It Is not clear at all if it will be an aircraft smaller than the an-124, a modernised an-124 with modern Russian components and Russian engines or the Slon.


The only thing we know for sure is that they will reuse the designation il-106, and that will be a different aircraft from the one that should have been built in the 90s

The Galaxy is in need of replacement with nothing in sight...

if need be, the C-17s could be stretched like C-141s were. Trump &/ his successor will pull out Ks of troops from Europe & Korea, so the C-5s r not going to be that essential anymore.

..the An-124 is a much better aircraft and only needs replacing because of the design rights are foreign to Russia now,..

they'll be used for decades more, just like the An-22s & IL-76TD/MDs.

The only thing we know for sure is that they will reuse the designation il-106, and that will be a different aircraft from the one that should have been built in the 90s

Since it is supposed to have the An-124 cargo hold dimensions, it would be at least as big as the An-124.

For the Il-106, It Is not clear at all if it will be an aircraft smaller than the an-124, a modernised an-124 with modern Russian components and Russian engines or the Slon.

Lets be clear the Il-106 was a replacement aircraft for the An-22 which was planned to be withdrawn from service a long time ago... it was not intended to replace the An-124 because at the time the An-124 didn't need replacing.

Now however it seems the log jam is engines and when new engines are available they will probably be PD-35s which are vastly more powerful than the engines used on either the Il-106 or the An-124 so it opens the possibility of having a twin engined Il-106 with two PD-35s which could easily replace the An-22 but could also probably carry heavier loads as well, and of course fitting four PD-35s to a bigger aircraft like the Slon means replacing the An-124 would make a silly design because it would have three engines for the 120-140 ton payload capacity... so obviously with rather more powerful engines it makes sense to increase the Il-106 to a higher payload capacity of 100 tons with two PD-35 engines, and to also take advantage of the extra engine power and size of the Slon with four PD-35s and make it a 180 ton payload aircraft so together they can both replace the An-124... remember the An-124 has replaced the An-22 so for missions requiring 70-80 tons payload they would either split the load with two Il-76s, or one An-124... with their new aircraft they could use an Il-106 which will be lighter and cheaper to operate than an An-124 with only two engines of more modern design.

The only thing we know for sure is that they will reuse the designation il-106, and that will be a different aircraft from the one that should have been built in the 90s

I doubt they would modify it too much... technology and design haven't moved that far over such a short period of time... the biggest change would be in terms of engine technology and they are going to use their best engines.

Will be interesting to see what designation they use for Slon... will it be Il-206?

For all we know this modular design for the test wind tunnel model might be because the new Il-106 is actually a smaller two engined Slon like they said they were going to do years ago... twin engined 100 ton payload Il-106, four engined 180 ton payload Il-206, and six engined 250 ton payload Il-306 for moving large external loads for the space industry.

if need be, the C-17s could be stretched like C-141s were.

Haven't they stopped production yet?

Trump &/ his successor will pull out Ks of troops from Europe & Korea, so the C-5s r not going to be that essential anymore.

Yeah, America is going to stop fighting all round the world and are not going to need C-5s and aircraft carriers... or guns...

they'll be used for decades more, just like the An-22s & IL-76TD/MDs.

If nothing replaces them they will, but they are still not that good.

Since it is supposed to have the An-124 cargo hold dimensions, it would be at least as big as the An-124.

With only two PD-35 engines it might have a smaller wing and have a payload capacity of perhaps 100 tons... plus inflight refuelling capability...

..the possibility of having a twin engined Il-106 with two PD-35s which could easily replace the An-22 but could also probably carry heavier loads as well,..

I doubt they'll do it for safety & design reasons. Easier to have 4 engine planes in basic, stretched &/ super stretched/shortened versions with different engines like the IL-76 has.

Haven't they stopped production yet?

they r, but the existing planes can be stretched as all C-141s were. They may even buy some A-400Ms to boost the C-5/17/130J fleet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A400M_Atlas#Exports

Yeah, America is going to stop fighting all round the world and are not going to need C-5s and aircraft carriers... or guns...

the existing fleet is enough. If need be, the Antonov Airlines has 7 An-124s that could be chartered/leased: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov_Airlines#Fleet

I doubt they'll do it for safety & design reasons. Easier to have 4 engine planes in basic, stretched &/ super stretched/shortened versions with different engines like the IL-76 has.

What other engine are they planning to use? What other engine could they use?

Most of their fighter jet aircraft are twin engined so what sort of safety or design issues are you expecting?

They are planning to replace the four engines on the Il-96 with these new engines and they only need two.

You can't just bung any old engine layout on a design... putting PD-35s on an An-124 would actually ruin its performance... because it would be far too over powered for its current roles, and likely too small for the new roles its engine power would enable it to perform.

If you wanted to, you could easily put four PD-18 engines on an Il-476 and eventually that is probably what they will get, but you could just as easily put two PD-35s instead with only two engines reducing engine weight and drag with just two engines being fitted and simplification of the design because you only need to pump fuel to two engines instead of to four...

Maintenance on two engines instead of four is better too, but engine safety is only effected based on the reliability of the engines.

The current engines in the An-124 are not super reliable and do occasionally have issues... the PD-35 will be rather more reliable using new technology and improved design... so two engines would probably be more reliable than four in this case.

the existing fleet is enough. If need be, the Antonov Airlines has 7 An-124s that could be chartered/leased

The danger there is that funding to get them air worthy might disappear into pockets and on to Swiss bank accounts and the aircraft might not be as reliable as they hope...