An-124 Strategic Transport: News

GarryB wrote:

At the end, Ulyanovsk factory made 2/3 of all An-124

Yup, they did and short of a replacement engine they could easily make new An-124s... but why bother when they could make something newer and better and 100% Russian.

What is the problem with this ?? Ukraine ??

Fuck Ukraine

It is actually the Ukraine trying to fuck Russia... and by keeping Antonovs in service Russia would be giving them all sorts of opportunities to do so...

As soon as replacements are ready they should put them into production and withdraw those Soviet aircraft as quickly as possible.

Antonov was a Soviet company, Russia has the same right than Ukraine ,in fact Oleg Antonov was from Moscow and the main thing is by 2050 The Ukraine will have disappeared

All very true, but by 2050 they will have all new transport aircraft and there will be no Antonovs left in Russia... except probably a few An-2s because they will likely last forever...

GarryB wrote:
With modernisation they could keep using An-22s and An-12s too... the An-22 would actually be easiest because they still use those engines in significantly upgraded form on their Tu-95s... but they have not.

The plan is to retire Antonovs and replace them with Russian platforms.

This is an opportunity to take what they have learned with a few decades operational experience with An-124s and design something better while they are waiting for new engines to be developed to replace the Ukrainian engines currently used.

Yup, they did and short of a replacement engine they could easily make new An-124s... but why bother when they could make something newer and better and 100% Russian.

GarryB wrote:

Well, the An-2 has already a 100% russian made successor reading for mass production.

True, but if it keeps working and you can keep going it is always going to be cheaper to use something you already own than to buy something new.

Of course not, An-12 resource is exhausted is better make a new airplane (first flight of An-12 in 1957), it is necesary a new and modern design, and good for export.

An-2 first flight 1947, and there have been several replacements developed and put into service but none of them offered the same performance for the price and it has outlasted most of the replacements so far.

The Il-276 will be quite a different plane... sort of a cross between an An-72 and the An-12 with jet engines for higher speeds, but it should be a good replacement for both with higher speeds as a bonus.

An-22 is the same (First flight in 1965) and the replacement are the An-124 of the reserve that remain to be put into service

The An-22 was popular and could easily have been upgraded and still be in use today, but they have a policy of getting rid of Antonovs and using Russian aircraft wherever possible.

An-124, like C-5 Galaxy will have no replacement, simply beacuse a project of this magnitude to manufacture only 30 or 40 machines is not economically viable nowadays. That only happened in the cold war

They can make it viable by making it modular allowing a 90-100 ton payload, a 150 ton payload, and a 180 ton payload design be developed using related engines.

It actually sounds like they want a 100 ton payload aircraft in the form of a modified Il-106 and a 180 ton payload larger aircraft called Slon, with the potential for a model for external loads to be developed from the latter aircraft too.

IL-76 is in service since 1974, Il-76MD-90A will be manofactured until 2040 or more and will be in operation until 2080 at least, this is more than 100 years of service

They make fun regarding the image but the same image can be made for Soviet interceptors flying with B-52 that were made in the 1950s and 1960s... the Tu-95s currently in use were made in the 1980s and 1990s... the US B-52s made in the 50s and 60s will soldier on till the 2050s based on current plans.

However, An-124 will continue in service for several decades, it is a unique case due to its large size and the impossibility of replacement nowadays
In any case, the russian An-124´s are Russian aircraft, they was manufactured in Aviastar and the factory has full capacity to do it again.

They have plans for a replacement aircraft that is waiting for new engines. Those new engines could be used on current An-124s, but the Russian military is not buying new An-124s... it might reengine the ones it has and use them up, but it will also build new replacement aircraft with those new engines too and produce them and gradually retire their An-124s.

The thing is that they are hardly going to encourage existing An-124 uses to keep using them... especially Russian airlines... new aircraft as soon as possible...

Russia should concentrate its efforts on the Il-96 to make an MRTT, increasingly scarce resources cannot be wasted to manufacture something that does not offer a quantitative or qualitative leap and also with the An-124 in the middle of its useful life .

I disagree. Killing off the An-124 as fast as possible is a good thing for Russia... the fewer there are around the place the more drips and drops of life support for Ukraine... why keep that zombie alive... develop a replacement with better performance and avionics and equipment and new engines that make it much more affordable and sell it to the current users of the Soviet aircraft and take that market...

Russian can make a new engine 100% russian, as the current engine (Soviet= Russian). No hurry for that, it will be necesary only after 2040

The Russian Air Force does not have a huge number of An-124s and has even fewer engines. They will start making replacements for the An-124 probably as soon as the PD-35 engine is ready which will likely be the middle of the 2020s... they can start by re-engining the An-124s and perhaps the Il-106s they might have already with PS-90 engines to upgrade them from 90 ton payload An-22 replacements to 100 ton payload aircraft replacing some An-124 missions.

But once the PD-35s are ready Slon will be built and at first suppliment the re-engined  An-124s but as numbers increase they might sell off An-124s with PD-35 engines to private operators and replace their fleet of An-124s with Slons and Il-106s.

They only built 55 AN-124's in almost 20 years.

They also had about 4 economic collapses during that period and lost most of their international trade links to friendly countries around the world.

It would make far more sense to reengine with derated PD-35s and either resume production of the modified version or upgrade the fleet and build a larger plane based on the IL-76 like the Chinese did.

They already have the Il-106 programme in the C-17 size weight class... and it should sell rather well internationally with better performance and a fraction of the cost.

I cannot see Russia really needing much more then 25 AN-124 class planes, 50 at the very most. Especially when they are backed with a large fleet of IL-76s.

Russia is going to need to expand it international trade links, and while a lot will go by sea some of it can go by air... the Russian military has plans to make its lighter forces (Kurganets and Boomerang) very very mobile and large aircraft will be a key part of that change in strategy.

But how many do they really need and how far can they get my reconditioning the ones they have and also reengining them? AFIK they all have pretty low hours, with new engines they can easily last to 2050. The cost is not just the design, but the supply chain and tooling to manufacture. This is a HUGE cost made larger by small volumes.

Most of the upgrades for the An-124 could be used on the Slon... part of the upgrades for the Il-476 were improvements in manufacturing wing components that were made larger and stronger and in fewer pieces...

New materials and new designs and new shapes offer potential performance improvements, but they don't have to make it completely alien tech super plane shit that has nothing compatible with what they are currently making.

They could in fact make it a modular enlarged Il-106 that could be scaled to any size load you need without massive redesign...

For years the New Zealand military has been using C-130s which lack the range... with a full payload it is not a strategic transport it is a theatre transport...

New Zealand would have been better off with an Il-76 and today even more so with the Il-476, but an Il-106 it would be even better... we could fly to the Pacific Islands and back without using up their supplies of aviation fuel... without needing to hop from island to island...

The military are paying for these aircraft... they want aircraft and they don't care how much they will cost.

GarryB wrote:
Russia is going to need to expand it international trade links, and while a lot will go by sea some of it can go by air... the Russian military has plans to make its lighter forces (Kurganets and Boomerang) very very mobile and large aircraft will be a key part of that change in strategy.

mnztr wrote:

GarryB wrote:
Russia is going to need to expand it international trade links, and while a lot will go by sea some of it can go by air... the Russian military has plans to make its lighter forces (Kurganets and Boomerang) very very mobile and large aircraft will be a key part of that change in strategy.

Military airlifters are NOT very good cargo planes. The AN-124 exists in a small niche market for outsize cargo. It cannot compete for regular cargo as it is too inefficient. Also you have to realize that this is including the fact the privately owned frames were acquired at post Soviet collapse fire sale prices. An airlifter built at todays costs would still be incredibly inefficient due to its massive cross sectio, have massive capital costs, and also will not have passanger traffic to subsidize its cargo ops and frequency. All the major airfreight companies use airliners to move cargo. So when you boil it down to purely military requirements, how many frames does Russia need for this type of super heavy airlifter? If they want to move freight across Russia MC-21 and CR-929 freighters would make far more sense. Even cheaper, used Airbus A330 freighter conversions.

Rodion_Romanovic wrote:
 possibly that was the reason for which the Slon was presented in 2 version: one with a cargo bay 6.4 m wide (as the An124) for the military and one with a 5 m wide cargo bay for civilian use (mainky volga dnepr).
1
Of course if you use them to trasport just standard pallets, a cargo version ot a civilian airliner (like a il96, a  reengined tu204 or mc21, etc similar... no need to use foreign types especially since for the engine you pay for the flight hours normally) would be more efficient and less expensive.

mnztr wrote:

Rodion_Romanovic wrote:
 possibly that was the reason for which the Slon was presented in 2 version: one with a cargo bay 6.4 m wide (as the An124) for the military and one with a 5 m wide cargo bay for civilian use (mainky volga dnepr).
1
Of course if you use them to trasport just standard pallets, a cargo version ot a civilian airliner (like a il96, a  reengined tu204 or mc21, etc similar... no need to use foreign types especially since for the engine you pay for the flight hours normally) would be more efficient and less expensive.

the narrower version is still wider then the current AN-124, which means it will be purely for outsized freight and not viable for mainstream air cargo ops. I was kinda hoping that is they do build it, they would build a lifting body design. It makes a lot of sense in an airlifter with very heavy  loads.

GarryB wrote:...
If you look at the circus that is HATO, when they turn up to a conflict every single one of them has fighter planes... when there is rarely an enemy air capacity that would require it... you would think they would get a clue and realise transport planes and inflight refuelling planes would be of more value than just sending a few more fighter planes and fighter pilots to talk shit and drink a lot.

New Zealand would have been better off with an Il-76 and today even more so with the Il-476, but an Il-106 it would be even better...

GarryB wrote:Obviously the larger the transport the smaller the numbers you need, so they will need a lot of the Il-276s and Il-476 sized transports, which is OK because their smaller size makes them cheaper to buy and cheaper to operate than the larger types.

With the larger aircraft however there is a flexibility too because for transport around the world a bigger aircraft can transport medium sized loads much further than a smaller lighter transport operating nearer its max weight.

Being able to fly long distances in a single hop can make things faster and cheaper... it very much depends on how well things are managed.

Their truck mounted ICBMs are about 50 tons for the missile alone... even with a really heavy truck that means they are probably less than 100 tons per vehicle... certainly not that heavy to be carried around the world in a Slon or similar aircraft...

For airlines the big planes are useful for big loads that can't be broken down easily, so the cost of flight is less important than the fact that it can do it...

Moving outsized loads is always more expensive than normal loads... but there certainly is a market and I would think a few military forces around the world would think a few large planes would be useful.

If you look at the circus that is HATO, when they turn up to a conflict every single one of them has fighter planes... when there is rarely an enemy air capacity that would require it... you would think they would get a clue and realise transport planes and inflight refuelling planes would be of more value than just sending a few more fighter planes and fighter pilots to talk shit and drink a lot.