An-124 Strategic Transport: News

It would've replaced the IL-76s; the IL-476 is a necessary measure to plug that gap.

They likely would have made the An-70, but it was a specialised aircraft especially for the VDV... for other users it is a bit slow, but they probably would have built the Il-476 anyway because for the majority of users it was the better aircraft.

They probably would have been looking at a new upgrade for the An-12 as well which would probably have led to a competition between the Il-276 and the Tu-330 and something comparable from Antonov.

It would have been a bit of a mess because there would be no incentive for new engines and new engine families... Motorsich would still dominate their engine production for An-124s, and Mi-26s, and other helos and jet aircraft engines... of course they would have engines for their new ships too... but likely soviet technology level and stagnating production technology.

they ordered those C-17s before the 1st IL-476 wasn't even built & tested; that still would take a long time & Indians didn't want to wait.

They could have bought the design in a joint venture with Ilyusion and produced them in India... their might have been a delay but for a fraction of the money they spent on C17s they could have built several factories and made huge numbers of aircraft for themselves and to sell internationally.

India would also not have gotten any strings they got when they spent big money on American products... but the problem with US politics is that those strings are strings... they are not ropes... you might think you can change direction but the instant you pull the string breaks... as Venezuela found with its F-16s which quickly become useless without spares and support...

Did buying Skyhawks get Argentina any favours regarding the Falklands dispute against the UK?

Not at all, so the money spent can often mean nothing at all... worse than nothing because if they had bought MiG-23s instead of Skyhawks they might have been more successful...

then, the IL-106 also isn't needed for another decade or more, esp. since more IL-476/8s r inducted.

You can carry an 80 payload in a 120 ton capacity aircraft like teh An-124, but it might not fit into a smaller aircraft with a 60 ton payload capacity... not all payloads can be split.

they would be used a lot longer- if only to preserve better planes by reducing their wear & tear.

Once the new PD-35 engine is ready then there is no need to preserve the An-124 for anything... its main value is that it is made in Russia, its main vice is that its engine is now rather old and was never super reliable, and that new more powerful and more reliable engines should make it a much better aircraft till a better aircraft called Slon is ready.

I saw their pics being parked in the open-most of them r probably not worthy to return to flight status & r being used for parts to keep the other An-124s flying.

They already make all the parts except the engines, so they don't need to keep them in great condition... in 5 years time they will be withdrawing them completely and likely either selling them or scrapping them.

the ethnic Russian population ID themselves as Russian, & many have close relatives & graves in the RF. 1991 is only 1-2 generations away in the past.

Not enough to reject their own governments russophobic policies. There don't seem to be any movements to stand together and reject this western propaganda... they are like our Serbian friend... they have embraced their American future and have accepted the Borg, sorry the American culture as their new overlords.

no, Ukraine is the problem- w/o it, all the problems it created will disappear. On their own, they won't fix them.

The Ukraine is a chain smoking gambling drunk who can handle his addiction to P... he just needs to steal a car so he can sell it and pay for his next fix to get him by until the IMF gives him some more money he can transfer to overseas private accounts... if the people of the Ukraine don't give a shit why should anyone in Russia?

Probably it would be however better to produce a modernised An-124 under the IL brand, maybe under the IL-106 designation.

Why? The Slon programme is to replace the An-124 and they can name that anything they want. They might be adapting the design of the Il-106... they certainly have time until the engines are ready, so given the chance to make it slightly bigger then why not make the changes now.... the An-124 was in service for years before they introduced the An-124-100 that had a 150 ton payload capacity and larger structure/design.

Doing it at the design stage is much cheaper and much simpler.

The D18T was a good engine when it came out more than 30 years ago, but now it is quite outdated.

Wasn't the most reliable engine... I remember one of the six engines of the An-225 failing at Farnborough in the 1980s during an engine run up prior to a take off run...

The good question now if Russia has got spare parts to refurbish the engines of the airplanes in service and in reserve, to allow new an-124 (even if under another name) to be built or reconstructed until the new generation of Russian engines (PD-24, PD-26, PD-35,etc) is certified and serially produced.

Well they make An-124s themselves, they only need the engines... the better question would be do you have enough transport capacity for the moment where they can just continue to quietly develop replacements for the An-22 and the An-124 and wait until the new engines are ready before putting them into production and service.

Btw, for the new large Russian engine it is not clear if they are going only with the design of an upscaled PD-14 from Aviadgavitel, for the PD-35 and derivatives,

Or if they are also developing at the same time an "easier design" reusing the core from the NK-32 (the engine of the Tu-160),' as it was announced 7 years ago.

My understanding is that they want to develop a new generation engine from the current NK-32, and then base an entire scalable family of engines based on the core to standardise their engines into a range of sizes and power outputs to quickly produce a wide range of engines for a range of suitable purposes from aircraft to land based generators and marineised ship based versions as well.

As civilians, the Volga-Dnepr can import new/refurbished engines from Ukraine for their An-124s, officially state "we installed them", & then give the older 1s to the VTA. There r always ways to circumvent restrictions & sanctions.

They could say that but the Ukraine government might say that engine parts could be smuggled or just handed over to the Russian military so no deal.

Smart move, by getting these old ones out of the boneyard and back into service they could double the number of Condors available

Should greatly help with weathering the shortage until new transport is sent to production

Exactly... the position is that the Ukraine probably couldn't produce any new An-124s even if they had export orders for them because they make the engines but less than 50% of the rest of the aircraft and even then you might be pushing it these days.

For the Russians if they had different engines they could put them in to mass production... they could fit rolls royce or american engines and they would be fine because they pretty much make everything except the engines.

In five years time when the new engines are ready they could make an interrum upgraded An-124 but lets face it... in that time they should be seriously ready to test fly the Il-106 and the Slon by then so why piss around... they could take a couple of airframes out of storage and put new engines on them as their stopgap... if their bone yard burns down they could build some from scratch if needed, but why bother with Chinese or modified versions of planes you plan to replace anyway... especially at a time when the engines will be almost ready anyway.

I remember reading about a year ago, they had something like 20 left in storage....so plenty left

They also have the capacity to make them if they really need them... worst case scenario fit them with six engines from the Bear and make it a turboprop with D-27 propeller blades...

Well if they want the Il-106 to be able to carry up to 120 ton payloads with reduced fuel loads, it sounds like they want to scale the Il-106 up to replace the An-124, and an An-124 sized aircraft with PD-35s already has the engine power of the An-225 with just four engines... I suspect Slon could be slightly bigger than the An-124 and come with a Slon-2 that has an H tail structure and much bigger wings but smaller lighter body optimised for external payloads like the An-225 carried on its back, and the VM-T also carried.

They might want 4-6 such aircraft at the very most, but the normal Slon could be made in large numbers to replace the An-124s in service and be used for very long flights with heavy payloads.

The problem with the An-124 is not the engine, it is ownership of the design... Russia does not own production rights which makes it useless to them.

Much better to move on with better designs... they have plenty of experience with these aircraft... both An-22 and An-124, so this is an opportunity to make changes to make the new aircraft better in every way.

Is this correct?

Well you would sell Greenland to the US if you could and you seem to trust everything they say about Maduro or Iran...

The issue is that the Ruslan has enourmous potential for modernisation. Even more than the il76, and the latter was given a new life, with the newly started production of modernised il-476 with better engines.

It has already been modernised before... the avionics and equipment in them are not 30 years old.

The point is that they now have the opportunity to make a completely new design from scratch to replace it... it has been called Slon or PAK TA or something and they are working on it.

What you are talking about is like suggesting that... well the T-90AM is actually a pretty good tank and we can build it now... lets just forget about the whole new concept of armoured vehicles with the Armata and Kurganets and Boomerang and Typhoon vehicle families and just called the T-90AM the Armata tank.

The point is that the new engines are still a few years away... one report I read said 2027 for the PD-35 before fully certified and ready for serial production... now with that sort of lead time they have plenty of time for a new from scratch design to replace them completely... an Il-106 that can carry full fuel and 80-90 tons payload or reduced fuel and up to 120 tons of payload that is physically bigger to take more bulky loads could be a great fill in for the An-124 as it winds down and the replacement comes in to replace it... the 106 might be smaller lighter and less powerful, but should also be cheaper and actually a better fit for some jobs and it could start with 18 ton thrust PS-90 engines and perhaps get bigger ones as they become available.

They tried for 50 years to replace the An-2 and I think the current model just being an An-2 with refined design and materials and structure suggests it was an excellent design to start with. The An-124 is just really big with really big engines and it should be quite straight forward to work out what can replace it with improvements in most areas... it was a capable aircraft but was certainly not perfect.

The goal is to get Ukrainian aircraft out of service and replaced by Russian aircraft that Russian companies own the rights to, that means the An-22 and An-124 have to go. The Il-106 was designed to replace the An-22, though there was no money to fund its production and the west likely killed it as a threat to the C-17 commercially. Well now there is money and they are refining the design and selecting a new engine. In the mean time the An-124 can fill the gap, though the refinements of the Il-106 seem to be aimed at allowing the Il-106 to fill the gap of diminishing numbers of An-124s while the final replacement for that aircraft is set in stone and produced which is waiting mainly for a suitable engine.

Producing new An-124s or putting the An-22 back in to production or buying Y-20s ignores the goal at the start of the previous paragraph... get Ukrainian owned aircraft designs out of Russian service.

Are you trying to get a precise location so your new friends can send the black helicopters?

The problem is not just the engines, they no doubt will have a lot of other components from other countries they will need to replace as well in the upgrades... so this will be good for Russian engine makers, but also KRET and other Russian companies who will need to replace any foreign components remaining in the older aircraft...