Neither do I deny that cost-effectiveness does play a role in the military, the very fact that an upgrade path with PS-90As exists for the Il-76 is testimony to that. What I’m disputing is that the PS-90A’s lack of success in the civilian field indicates inadequacy in the military role. This is not the case because its performance is far from the only reason for the former, i.e. the engine is actually a decent design for all its shortcomings compared to the latest western turbofans.

I may agree with all of the above, I’m not disputing that the PS-90 is such a bad engine, but you’re still not addressing the main starter question of this thread and the point that I made above… would the Il-76TD be any more cost effective than the C-130J or C-17 over the long term?

Perhaps for poorer countries, for whom the initial purchase price of the C-17 is too much, they should think about buying second hand MD-11Fs instead?

Regarding this paragraph, I refer you to SOC’s comments about how prolific the Il-76 is in said War on Terror It does have a solid reputation for robustness, I can’t see how anyone could deny that.

Never said that the Il-76 was not doing sterling work for the various nations involved in the “War of Terror,” or that it wasn’t a robust aircraft – but it can only become cost effective when it is being operated and repaired by people who are on a fraction of the salary of most NATO and Western airmen.

THe engine is german TI french and tracks imported. Why would it cost any less than western tanks??:D

In which case buying in major components and subsystems like the powerpack and TI “of the shelf”, instead of the Indians trying to develop them themselves, may, in fact, help to bring the overall R+D costs down if anything else, wouldn’t it?

The Boeing 777 is no doubt superior, but an equally important consideration is that there is no support network to speak of for either the Il-96 or its PS-90 engine outside Russian territory. A P&W powered version was killed by withdrawal of US investment during the 1998 Russian economic crisis – just as it had received its FAA certification. A Triple-Seven would still have been more cost effective, but you do have to wonder about the timing.

Also, military service and airline business are very different beasts, as Boeing discovered when they tried to sell a civilian C-17 derivative – with all the military goldplating that could not be completely undone (STOL etc.) it simply turned out to be overengineered. Even in the civilian sector itself there is a big difference between passenger and cargo operations – the MD-11 was relegated to cargo duties exactly because it could not match the B777 and A340, yet it was and continues to be much sought after as a freighter. I’d have expected a new-built P&W powered Ilyushin to be quite competitive with a secondhand converted MD-11F and even the PS-90 version should probably do alright.

Comparing the Il-96 and Il-76 in this way is an apples and oranges comparison to a significant extent.

I don’t deny that military aviation doesn’t have the same pressures for cost effectiveness upon it that commercial aviation has, but it’s still important! One reason why the C-5 Galaxies in the USAF are receiving their C-5M upgrade is not only to improve performance but also to reduce operating costs, the USAF wouldn’t be forking over the billions of dollars that such an upgrade project costs, in order to make such long term savings, if such long term costs weren’t so important in the first place, now would they?

In the end, the cost effectiveness of an aircraft becomes more and more important for a particular type of aircraft, the more often it actually has to fly in day-to-day operations. So in the “War on Terror” with transport aircraft literally being flogged to death flying the four corners of the world, making savings on fuel consumption and man-hours becomes crucially important. The less an aeroplane has to fly, the less important its cost effectiveness becomes – in some countries, aircraft are nothing more than flying parade floats, needing to do nothing more ardous than carry out a fly-past during “El presidente’s birthday celebrations…:rolleyes:

US defence spending is a long way below 9% of GDP, that sort of level of spending could seriously hold a country back.:eek:

Of which there are a few countries suffering already (Syria, Pakistan?).

P.S. Either way, this have nothing to do with technological achievments of USSR. As i said, general economical rules still applied there. Tu-144 failed becouse Aeroflot couldnt charge such ridiculous prices as Concord, and for average ticket price Tu-144 was not economically viable.

Why did the Soviets build an airliner that no one could afford to fly on, what as the point of that? What did they expect the running costs of the Tu-144 to be anyway? The people who ordered the development of this aircraft must have known that its running costs would be several times greater than that of a conventional subsonic airliner!
In fact, I don’t think that the price of a ticket would have been the determining factor on who got to fly on the Tu-144. Most likely to be army officers, and high ranking party officials who all had some vital, pressing need to reach Khaborovsk from Moscow in half the time of an Il-62.

Certainly the fact that the Tu-144 had to go through a lot of basic redesigning and three different engines wasn’t going to help keep costs down!!

Question:

Which do you think will be more important, the race to hypersonics or the race to airborne lasers?

I would back lasers every time. It seems with the US chasing a hypersonic bomber they’ve missed a trick :confused:

I thought they were chasing both (and the only country to be making progress with either one of them)?:confused:

Why not? The B-52 can be regarded as a successful nuclear bomber, but it never dropped an atomic or thermonuclear weapon in anger.

Hardly a good analogy. There was no other way to build a long range strategic nuclear bomber in the 1950s other than build it like the B-52, or its turboprop compatriot, the Tu-95. Even today, both designs are still viable as strategic bombers. But there were many better ways of building a PVO interceptor in the 1960s instead of the MiG-25.

SOC
FOXHOUND was intended to do things that the MiG-25 couldn’t, namely locate and destroy low-flying and low-RCS targets, in particular cruise missiles.

…which was already the only role of any PVO interceptor even by 1970 (after the retirement of the B-58 Hustler). The MiG-25 was definitely the wrong design in this respect.

GarryB
Only at the time. Currently Mig-31s and S-300s etc would make fairly short work of SR-71s.

So you admit that the SR-71 was almost invulnerable for the first 15-20 years of its service career?

How many B-52s got past it?

Over Iraq in 1991, yes, quite a good few in fact.

Deterrent. If the Soviets had not bothered to keep interceptors or SAMs covering their territory the west had a habit of getting lost in planes with so much electronics in them they would never get lost.
They had a policy not to fly over the Soviet Union but they kept that policy because they knew what would happen to their planes if they did.

I should think that it was the S-200 SAM that was the main deterrent for the SR-71, it could probably shoot down one alright, but the MiG-25 couldn’t.
After all, no aircraft ever shot down a U2 spy plane – only surface to air missiles.

The Mig-25 was operational in more roles and for longer.

Irrelevant!

Mach 2.3 might sound pathetic compared to figures given for the F-15 and indeed the figures given for the F-111 but the Mig-25 could fly as long as it liked at mach 2.3 without problems. Not many other aircraft can manage even that.

Funny that you should mention the F-111.
By the end of the 1980s, the Soviets would replace all their Cold war PVO interceptors such as the Tu-128, Su-15 and MiG-25 with the MiG-31, which would finally provide the USSR with an aircraft capable of shooting down the targets that mattered, very low flying targets. But such an aircraft could have been available in 1970 if it weren’t for one or two small, uuhh, political issues.
How about the F-111B as a PVO interceptor??;)
It was probably faster than a B-1B at low altitude, perhaps even fast enough to catch an SR-71 at altitude, (if you really needed a deterrent), probably had the range of the Tu-128 as well, along with its AWG-9/AIM-54 weapons system that should still be the equal of the MiG-31’s Zaslon/ R-33 combo.

The F-111B wasn’t much good at landing on carriers, but I shouldn’t think the Soviet air defence system top brass would be worried about that. :rolleyes:

Robert McNamara could have been the best “PVO commander” the Soviets never had!!:diablo: