In VDV & other sp. mission roles they & other helos IMO r more suitable & versatile.
The VDV have a history of customised vehicles for their use, because their need are quite specific and quite different from the needs of other branches of the armed forces.
The BMD is pretty much a very light weight BMP, but while it has the same fire power generally it has reduced armour and size because it needs to be air dropped.
In terms of aircraft the whole point of the An-70 was for VDV use as a medium transport that can operate from rough airstrips and land forces at lower flight speeds, which meant more compact groups and shorter periods of time needed to assemble and get moving after landing.
What they want is the An-70 but that is no longer an option for them... the Il-476 is little different from the Il-76 they have been using all this time, the Il-276 is too small for much of their equipment and would have similar speed issues being powered by the same engines as the larger Il-476 but with two instead of four.
The Il-476 with propfan engines would retain the weight capacity of the Il-476 but would allow lower flight speeds for landing vehicles and troops in larger but still compact groups.
They prefered the Il-76 and its higher speed to the An-12 with its lower payload and lower flight speed even though on paper the An-12 offers the lower speed they want... they clearly want fewer aircraft in the sky and the longer flight range of the Il-76 over the lower flight speed of the An-12.
The An-70 would give them everything they want... large capacity of vehicles and men and long range with lower flight speed for more comfortable jumping and smaller landing groups that can form up faster and get under way faster after landing.
The obvious solution therefore is a propfan version of the Il-476 which would be fairly simple to achieve... they just need to develop a new propfan version of the PD-14 or PD-35 engine they are going to use for it... which is not nothing, but certainly much less than developing the An-70 and engines as well.
As I said those propfans could be used on the scaled down Il-276 to make a handy rough strip landing mediumlight transport...
The Il-112 may not be made as good as they hope, while the Il-276 is a paper plane that may have similar problems.
The Il-112 just needs to do the job of the An-26, so it should be fine.
The Il-276 is a scaled down Il-476... same airframe crosssection, half the number of engines... slightly shorter body... should not be a huge problem.
The An-8/12/124s & the Il-76s had long histories of upgrades &/ deep modernization to improve their performances over many years; the same will happen with Il-112/276s.
Agree... the Il-276 is just a modification of the Il-476 to fill a gap left by the An-12 being removed from service and the Il-112 is there to replace the An-26.
Once they have the PD-35 working they can upgrade the An-124s with them and then look at the design and work out what changes they want to make for the replacement.
To hedge their bets, development & fielding of those rotary wings should be put on the same footing, esp. since they stated there's a need for them anyway.
I totally disagree... those tilt rotors are totally unproven and the existing range of helicopters have replacements ready to go, not to mention high speed helo models whose new blade and engine technology could be applied to existing types to make them useful for a much longer period.
The Il-112 and the Il-276 and the Il-476 are important because the An-26 and the An-72 and the An-12 are coming to the end of their lives and need replacement... and the An-70 is never going to be in the Russian military.
Replacement for the Mi-17 is the Mi-38, there is a new middle class helo being developed by Russia and China, but there is still Mi-26, and also the modified Russianised An-2 for use in the far east and arctic... there is no urgent need for tilt rotors or tandems or anything risky and unproven like that.
The Soviets tried tandems and had problems with vibrations and other issues that killed the idea... even if they had solid solutions there is not enough of a market to justify the development costs of designing a new aircraft for one or two sales...
Otherwise, why would those designers bother wasting their time on producing those concepts I posted?
Designers design... that is their job, but for every successful design there are literally thousands of designs that never get off the design board to prototype stage and for every serially produced aircraft there are thousands of prototypes where problems were found but solutions were not.
There'll be plenty of small & big local conflicts, infrastructure projects & natural disasters, incl. in remote locations, in the next few decades for them to keep their jobs.
There are already a wide range of platforms that can get the job done from Mi-8s and lighter and heavier helicopters through to hovercraft and air ships...
Sometimes a concept could be also parked for years, waiting for proper conditions (e.g. the existence of an initial (potential) customer for the product and/or the need of some associated required technologies to mature to an acceptable level) and then later "resuscitated".
Indeed the concept of the Harrier jump jet is fine but without a turbofan engine it is dead...
Equally the development of fuel cell technology and electric motors and composite materials that are very light and yet very strong and can be made fire resistant and add things like solar panels and large radar antenna arrays and of course small compact nuclear power batteries then the day of the Air Ship is coming back...
Who will be first to spot it?
Doesn't Putin want to revive Russia's aviation industry?
The aviation industry is being revived, new designs are being talked about and being put into production and testing... they need a lot of new engine types that are on the way, which is the stumbling block at the moment, but things are moving forward fast enough without wasting time and money on exotic very niche technologies.
It would be of more value to them to have high speed rail networks and more airfields around the place than tilt rotors and tandem helos.
There is a reason the USSR/RF produced the most powerful helos & other vehicles to reach the remotest of places.
IMO they can start building prototypes even if some technologies r not mature enough yet.
Immature designs and technologies kill, and create a bad name for technologies.
Look at airships... the first thing people think of is the Hindenberg and you lose them.
Safety and procedures and technology could make them completely safe these days but few will touch them... mostly because of a negative image...
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