Pulling out an older quote from this thread related to the tankers

I don’t want to either….. but last years hot debate was all about showing how everything and anything related to IL-76/78 was bad…in that debate it was also mentioned how backward Il-76 family was with no supercritical wings, which even the C-17s had. But the fact is no amount of supercritical wing is going to automatically make a dedicated transport aircraft into the leauge of commercial airliners, not even C-17 with supercritical aerofoil. I had made a comparison chart for that specific stuff last year but somehow it missed getting posted. Saw it now, so posting it with few lines to accompany.

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From the general data publicly available for the three aircrafts we can make some comparison and try to see how much a “superior” critical aerofoil for wings can make a difference to an aircraft in its fuel efficiency.

In simple terms lets try to see if we can convert a bull (IL-76, C-17) into a horse (A-330MRTT) with super critical aerofoils.

C-17 and A-330MRTT carry more fuel compared to the IL-76 and both these aircrafts also weighs more than IL-76 whose empty weight I had taken as 95 tons.

From the above comparison we can see that even though both C-17 and A-330 MRTT have over 30% greater internal fuel than the IL-76, the A-330 have a ferry range that is 45% greater compared to IL-76. In contrast, the C-17 just about manage 13.6%.

This in itself shows that if there is any advantage with the supercritical wings, its marginal and was probably not worth the cost involved. This could be the reason why Ilyushin JSC did not go for a wing with supercritical aerofoil for IL-76 family earlier and now with the IL-476.

I would like to end my discussion on this topic here. If anyone wants to have their last words, go ahead.

The C17 is an airlifter !!!!

It has to carry a ramp to quickly offload your payload in remote (unsupported) airstrip. This cut a large section in the back of your plane that induce a large amount of drag**. You can’ts compare it with an airliner fuselage and its cigar shapes which are NLF oriented*!!!

*Natural Laminar Flow (browse the web – there is an excellent NASA paper on it)

**the genius of MD was to to stretch the fuselage’s tail section in that long unmistakable (and copied) pointy end-shape (à la C141) and plays on side flow to re-balance the loss in laminar flows (something AIRBUS didn’t manage to copy somehow – Sections commonality perhaps ?).

Actually it’s less stupid than one may think.
[…]

That’s why I wrote “a deliberate act of…. behavior”. It was a reference of another post I made (and deleted afterward).

Nothing in my mind makes me think that at this level of command somebody is really stupid. But acting, well that’s another question.

The prob for the USN/USAF is that they are the one at disadvantage having years of experiences. No fail will be excused. Meanwhile, in the opposite team…

@Halloweene: IMOHO, the Liao Ning is at the very center of the story. Reading that article, it seems the US are playing the Navy card (more time to think, more death to assume). As I wrote before, it might be that anchoring an AEGIS would deny any advantage the PLAAF might want to gains.

An act of deliberate stupid behaviour

Here we are….

Source:
CNN.COM

A nonsense comparison to stay polite. The nature of air combat has nothing to do with close-in combat. Just 10% of all missions in a war had something like an encounter between hostile fighters if at all, when most attackers will run into ground based defences or ships depending on the target. In the meanwhile it is a combat between the systems at hand and not the kinematics of the carriers. Today fighters are operating in a network. None has the number in fighters and the related weaponary at at hand to generate the number of missions in need without such a support.

Sens, with all my respect I can’t see how you can’t see by yourself that the handheld weapon is a metaphoric representation of an aircraft weapon system as opposed to a mission cartridge loaded into a cruise missile (and this is an exaggeration too!).

I am not advocating the resurgence of bi-planes, white scarfs and whatever fits the romantic view of dogfight (if there was ever one) but one of the first rule of warfare is to put pressure on your opponent.

And still it does not include the cost of all the sitting Typhoon MkI that are of no use.

yes absolutely ridiculous. Smokes screen indeed. But for what?

[…]
Here is a comparison between F-22 & F-15
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This is pure sex. Where did you get that?

US to airlift French and African troops in CAR*

Troops will be airlifted from Burundi to Bangui to speed-up the deployment process

Source:
CNN.com

*Central African republique/République Centrafricaine