An-124 Strategic Transport: News

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov said in late July that the existing fleet of An-124 aircraft could be used until 2050 as long as their electronic systems were upgraded and Ukrainian-produced engines were replaced with Russian-made ones. https://www.urdupoint.com/en/business/russia-begins-producing-parts-for-ukrainian-m-427175.html

GarryB wrote:This is good news for the current Russian company operators of the An-124 and the Russian military operators, but it will be even better when they have a new engine to replace the Ukrainian engine completely.

With new Russian electronics and Russian engines then new transport become less urgent, but I would say that a new shorter An-124 with only two engines with a payload capacity of 70-90 tons would be interesting, but at the end of the day a new redesigned aircraft family that can fill the three roles needed... ie the An-22, An-124, and the An-225 roles would be very useful.

The problem is that they are never going to need more than 2-3 An-225 class aircraft, so having a unified design, which means adding or removing wing and body sections and of course engines would be a valuable thing... you could operate them all as 2 and 4 engined versions until you need to move a big bulky component for the space agency and you can pop on two extra engines and at the H tail so the large external load does not effect stability of the tail... you wouldn't even need to extend the fuselage as the loads are generally carried externally on the An-225 anyway... so that should make its performance even better as it will be lighter.

If you need to transport a heavy load internally then extra fuselage sections could be added then as well as engines...

An-225 was designed for launch the Soviet Space Shuttle without rockets..
An-225 has no military value, Ukraine only continues to operate it as propaganda,..

No U.S. air carrier can offer a comparable solution, and no other airplane in the fleet of Antonov or any other air carrier can match the capacity and flexibility that a single AN-225 flight can offer. http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/23486/heres-the-justification-for-fema-chartering-the-worlds-largest-jet-to-rush-supplies-to-guam

Tsavo Lion wrote:

An-225 was designed for launch the Soviet Space Shuttle without rockets..
An-225 has no military value, Ukraine only continues to operate it as propaganda,..

No, it wasn't designed for launch the Soviet Space Shuttle Buran, only transport it from plant to cosmodrome & back. They earn a lot of $ with it.

No U.S. air carrier can offer a comparable solution, and no other airplane in the fleet of Antonov or any other air carrier can match the capacity and flexibility that a single AN-225 flight can offer. http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/23486/heres-the-justification-for-fema-chartering-the-worlds-largest-jet-to-rush-supplies-to-guam

The landing test of Enterprise STS prototype was launched from a Jumbo, I supose Buran also

An-225 is a living relic of the past. Ukraine has no industrial capacity to build anything after having squandered the Soviet legacy

Next year, the North Stream will be finished, Russia will stop using the Ukrainian gas pipelines and Ucrania will return to the stone age

The AN-225 has no military value..

Hole wrote:Really stupid from Antonov not to re-settle to Moscow or St. Petersburg. They would be back to the top of the transport aircraft business in an instance. Do they really think they could sell one of their aircraft to the west?

Country 404 want to restart production of the Ruslan without Russia....

Tsavo Lion wrote:

Country 404 want to restart production of the Ruslan without Russia....

But do they have firm orders from any1? Sure, China, Japan, India & maybe the US could buy/lease a few. It won't be feasible w/o large orders, so good luck with that!

country 404

Tsavo Lion wrote:

country 404

- which 1 is that?

Rodion_Romanovic wrote:

Banderastan AKA the ukraine

GarryB wrote:
Antonov is dead in Russian service... the An-124s will likely be the last to go, because with new Russian engines they can probably soldier on for 20-30 years, but their light Antonovs like the An-12 and An-26 and An-32 and An-72 wont last beyond 2030 so their replacements are being prepared and there is no suggestion that new engines could solve the problems of keeping them operational.

The only other Antonov flying will be the Siberian modified composite version of the An-2 which might keep flying forever because nothing else comes close...

GarryB wrote:The problem there is that even if everything goes perfectly in the Ukraine... they realise the error of their ways and have open free and fair elections and the new government does not want to ban the Russian language in schools and government documents... the design bureau called Antonov is dead and would need enormous investment to revive to a level where it can work again... the west is not going to fund that because it would be creating a competitor to its own products for the international market and the Russians likely wont fund the Ukrainian MIC for some time to come... just in case it does not happen again.

No one in the Russian MIC will want to operate under the Antonov design name... for the same reason they don't want to operate under the trade name of Coca Cola... it is just not theirs.

Their might be a number of very talented engineers who have moved from the Ukraine to Russia but I doubt they will all get together and create Antonov Russia... if anything they might go to work for the UAC but I doubt they will put them in a Ukrainian division of their own either.

I suspect, in the early 2030s when the light planes... An-12, An-26/32, and the An-72 are all out of service and the only planes in Russian service still called Antonovs are the upgraded An-124 and the An-2s that they will probably give the upgrades new names.

The An-2s will be all new construction with new materials and hopefully new all Russian components so perhaps a new name is in order?

The fact that the announcement of the development of the new build came from Sukhoi suggests they might be behind the programme...

https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/modernised-an-2-demonstrator-completes-first-flight-413382/

They might end up calling the new plane the Su-59 or something.

EDIT: oops, of course it is a transport and not a fighter so it would be Su-58 or Su-60 of course...

For the An-124 I suspect they will continue to call it the An-124 and its components and electronics and engines being replaced by Russian components over time until it is all Russian... eventually it will be replaced by an all new Russian design probably with the same new engines, so I suspect in the future only the An-2 will continue in Russian service simply because there is nothing really that can replace it properly.

Rodion_Romanovic wrote:
I agree with your points. What I mean is that by 2030 Ukraine could be only composed by Galicia so all the Soviet industries and brands that ended up in.a foreign country could be again directly Russian.