Possibility or usefulness of a Russian AF purchase of Y20 aircraft.

This is a PM discussion I have been having with Tsavo Lion that is taking up too much space in my PM log.

This is where we are up to:

Tsavo Lion wrote: - for the war in Ukraine, it should be fine, with 2-3 converted to A-50s doing a job of 1 A-50U/100.

If there are any A-50s not getting upgrades it is probably for very good reasons like not worth upgrading.

Digging up old airframes with even older electronics just complicated maintenance and support and compromises performance.

- I googled it & found nothing! That plane could have a T or twin-tail & large cargo rump in front/back like the C-5/An-22/225, with better than the Slon performance, not to mention a smaller variant as alterntive to the Il-106.

I assume you mean you googled PD-50 and found nothing... that is because the PD-35 was designed with the intention of being used at 35 tons thrust (hense the 35 in the name) but also to be able to expand thrust up to 50 tons in an updated and modified (and bigger fan) version.

The PD family are supposed to cover all their engine power needs from a PD-8 up to as I said potentially a PD-35.

They are not going to make dozens of different engines in different thrust classes... just useful thrust classes.

- The upgraded An-124s were produced in Russia just like now they produce the Il-476s that were produced in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, so both of these r not foreighn planes anymore.

The An-124s were produced in Russia and now they have solved the engine problem it makes sense to continue using them. Il-476 are Russian planes that were designed in Russia whose design is owned by Russian state owned companies. The An-124 can be made in Russia but with plans to make PD-35 engines and put two and four on transport aircraft it does not make sense to keep the An-124 which is designed for 24-25 ton thrust engines. Putting PD-35s in it would be like putting a V16 engine in a Mini Cooper.

- I'm sure they r buying enough parts to last them a long time while even under sanctions;

Are they? Right now they are sending every resource they can spare to Ukraine to fund their war... do you honestly think they will be sensible and buy extra spare parts and support equipment at the same time on top of that or will they cut budgets for spare parts and support equipment for their own gear and direct those funds to Kiev?

India & UAE can reverse engineer them just like Iran & China did with their current planes.

If they did how are Iran and China treated by the US in particular and the west in general?

They are not amazing planes... it is not worth the fight to keep them flying when Russian alternatives become available... until then try not to use them too much.

- if it's so good, then it's well worth it; I heard 1 mil. expert talk about feasibity of restarting the Tu-95 production.

Do they still have the production equipment and tooling to make An-22s... and even if they did they would have to totally redesign it for all new equipment and systems.

They might as well update the Il-106 design which is rather newer and more advanced.

They have built a factory to make Tu-160s that they intend to later produce PAK DAs... putting Bears back into service makes no sense because when they start making PAK DAs they are going to get lots of extra Bears that they don't need for the strategic role any more so they are going to have lots of redundant aircraft.

China too upgraded its MiG-21s, Su-30/33s, Tu-16s, An-24/8s & now is happy with the resulting J-7/8/11/15/16s, H-6s, Y-7/8/9s.

With upgrades they are probably reasonably decent but not amazing types. They would fill gaps and allow numbers of aircraft to be deployed.

What is useful for China is not so useful for Russia.

You either start using lots of old engine types which complicates support and maintenance requirements, or you modify older aircraft to use new radar and engines and avionics which creates a big bottleneck for those systems because now instead of needing hundreds you would need thousands.

.- that's in ur opinion; u can't put "likely" in the bank! to me,

A new organisation called BRICS which is created in response to the west is likely to want non western products and that includes military and civilian transport planes.

That would be Brazil, Russia and China at the moment... maybe India might start working on its own aviation industry too.

BRICS is about cooperation and support so it is more likely these countries might work together than compete... but we will see.

it's more likely to have development costs overruns & delays, just like with the MC-21 & Il-112 that r overweight; it took many years to increase the Il-76 payload from 27-48T to 55-60T.

Not really comparable... the MS-21 was full of western systems and equipment because they wanted to sell to a western market as well as a domestic one and domestic and western airlines seemed to buy western systems and equipment. The Il-112 was largely because they were trying to use an engine that is going to be widely used on Il-114 and Mi-38 so that they didn't need a brand new engine. It clearly didn't work and now they are looking at PD-8 engines for the Il-212 instead. They have improved the engine and the propeller of the Il-114 to improve performance and reliability so they might put that on the Il-112 anyway because if they continue with the Il-212 they could reduce the payload requirements of the Il-112 as heavier weights could be carried by the Il-212 instead.... a sort of An-72 replacement.

The il-106 was essentially fully developed and was ready for prototypes and test flights and fits in a niche that is currently only held by the C-17 which is horrendously expensive and very very American so for many countries not an option at all.

let's hope u r right!

Can't be 100% sure but, it looks like a no brainer to me... the Il-106 replaces the An-22 and also An-124s with light loads and perhaps Il-476s for very long range flights without having to stop off. (what I mean is that if you have to fly 80 tons 5,000km then right now your only option would be by An-124. The Il-106 would be lighter and cheaper to operate than the An-124 for such a role. If you needed to fly a 50-60 ton payload 3,000km then the Il-476 would be a good choice but if you wanted to fly it 8,000km then you would need to plan a route that might take you in all sorts of directions via friendly airfields that might end up needing you to fly 12,000km in total even though the direct line of sight flight might be 8,000km. With an Il-106 you should be able to carry a 50-60 ton payload and have extra internal fuel tanks... plus perhaps inflight refuelling after you take off so you can fly heavier than your maximum takeoff weight allows and then fly to the destination 8,000km away without stopping.)

The Y-20 is a reduced performance Il-476 of foreign design that uses old engines.

The Il-476 isn't coming as fast as they need it but that is a question of finding the bottlenecks to production and sorting those out.

The solution to the An-12 problem is a reduced size Il-476 in the form of the Il-276 means you could build extra factories that could start by making more Il-476s after it has made half a dozen Il-276 prototypes for testing. This will boost Il-476 production while the Il-276 design is optimised and then you can swap the factory to production of serial Il-276s when it is ready... in the mean time you have 4-6 years of Il-476 production.

Once the Il-276 design is finalised and serialised they can revert to making the smaller aircraft which should be faster and easier to produce being a rather smaller aircraft.

You can then alternate between production of types at each factory depending on demand for domestic and international customer orders.

The commonality would make the two types complimentary and the enhancement over the An-12 would be useful as a jet it would be faster.

Perhaps moving the engines to an above wing position for the Il-276 like on the Il-212 and An-72 might allow rough field performance too.

When the PD-35 is ready then the Il-106 should be a priority and would likely be more useful in significant numbers than the An-124 was.

The production sites for An-124 can be converted to Il-106 production to properly utilise their production capacity.

Existing An-124s should be able to handle most transport tasks assigned to the air force until new aircraft are ready.

Interesting you talk about PD-50s as an impossible dream despite mention of engines up to that level of thrust being options they might take up later on, yet you mention new PD engines in the 26-28 ton thrust for an An-124 upgrade as being a given yet there has been no mention of such a requirement.

I would say production of parts for the D-18T to allow the An-124s to be used moving forward is a stopgap measure and that when the PD-35 design is ready for serial production that the factories making parts for D-18T engines should shift to making PD-35 engines instead and new PD-35 powered aircraft can be built to fill the gaps and replace the older types.