Again, so what? In what way does that improve the value for the end user, rather than just increasing costs to him for re-certification of the changes? And why does that make it better than the An-70?

Shorter life plans dont have future now. as these things are bought for 30 to 40 year operations with more intensive flight operations.

Compared to the An-70/D-27. That combination will carry a 35 ton payload over a distance of 5100km and use ~ 40 tons of fuel to do so – the Il-476 carries 35 tons to ~ 6700km, but uses almost 90 tons of fuel in the process. Over 100% more fuel burn for only 30% more range and on a typical 5000km mission the difference in cruise speed will only amount to about 45min – Volga-Dnepr are not Ryan Air, that’s hardly going to bother them at all.

A plan that goes 3000km with 47 ton cargos suddenly has range of 5100km for 35tons cargo. so 12 tons difference created 2100km range increase?. A 10 difference in cargo weight translate into 1800km more range on An-400m. and that aircraft is way more advanced. All this specification of Antonov are spurious. Even that A400 are still on paper. Remember maximum fuel load of A400m is 50.5tons. with 37ton maximum cargo
http://www.antonov.com/products/air/transport/AN-70/its.xml
http://www.airbusmilitary.com/A400M.aspx
http://www.a400m.com/Specifications.aspx
http://www.volga-dnepr.com/eng/charter/fleet/il76/specific/
How exactly IL-476 going to carry 90tons of fuel?. MTOW of 195tons with 50 cargo gives 145tons for fuel and empty weight. and non one is going to believe that IL-76 weighs only 55 tons. IL-476 will be 10 to 15% more efficient due to new wing than IL-76. The weight of A400m is atleast 54 tons.

The An-70 has a glass cockpit too and how on earth do you figure it is built to lesser standards than the Il-476?

It does not take a rocket scientist to figure this thing out.

Specious arguments. If Boeing has even half an inkling that there might still be some sales potential left in that market by 2015, they will NOT close down the C-17 line. Should they do so that would be a very good reason to believe there are no more customers left for the Il-476 to capture (other than those who want C-17s, but can’t have them for political reasons). And thanks to its tiny fuselage cross section many potential Il-476 customers will prefer to order A400Ms, even if the C-17 is not available (or the An-70, unless the Il-476 backers have succeeded in killing it).

Boeing does not want to deal with 8 to 10 airframes per year product over long term. one that depends on uncertain USAF budgets.

Again, with the aerodynamics of the Il-476 being so hopelessly outdated even the very promising PD-14 will not be able to qualitatively change the fuel burn picture.

You dont have any relabile data of comparable aircraft in service aircraft.

It’s actually almost the same size (diameter & thickness) as the E-3 radome, give or take 5%. Don’t be fooled by the bigger engines on the new A-50EI which make the radome appear to almost reach the inboard engine pair. Since the Il-96 is larger overall and has a bigger fuselage in particular than both the Il-476 and the 707 there should be absolutely no problem at all with fitting a similar size antenna.

It is not same size. Look at the top engines. The antenna reaches there but not in older A-50. There would not be problem with IL-96 but there is problem of designing and testing the aircraft for this purpose. All three A-50EI are built and tested.

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-2028301/British-firms-miss-chance-cash-6bn-air-show.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
British firms miss chance to cash in on £6bn air show

Why does RR have so many acq outside of the UK? Answer thats where the money is! Nothing to do with R&D, RR like BAE Systems has been buying up the US and other countries aerospace sectors due to the UK being a **** poor market. Its also very much a result of globalisation, actually I would say its more about buying up installed client base to advance the services side of the business. Buying Allison for example brought a massive amount of customers into the RR fold and its services business. The only part of the engine business RR doesn’t have direct IP rights over is a small part of the ex Allison business which is held behind a business firewall for national security reasons in the US. What modern fighter engines does RR hold rights over? whats it matter? We are talking technology here! RR easily has the technology to independently design a modern fighter engine…well they did its called the XG-40 and was the development basis for the EJ200 an engine that they hold significant IP rights over. Lots of helicopters fly with RR engines in particular those that use the M250. RR probably has more time building fighter engines then any other in the world! It has significant IP rights and R&D capability based inside the UK.

PW PurePower and CFM LeapX? What have they got to do with the price of fish? Neither engines compete with the Trent range! They are aimed at the narrow body market which RR doesn’t participate in except for partnering with the IAE V2500. The IAE V2500 still has a strong market for many years to come and even if it looses share to new generation engines like PW PurePower and CFM LeapX its hardly going to cause an engine GIANT like RR to crumble. The next generation Trent 1000 is extremely sophisticated and RR will certainly have the next generation well in hand.

I don’t care who India selects to help develop its next generation engine but please don’t harbour ideas that RR wouldn’t be up to the job if asked!

I think your still not getting the point. India does not have unlimited money and time. It needs to do job done in fixed time and Fixed amount of money.
for example If $1b R&D tender is announced. for 5th generation compact engine. Who will be better partner RR or Klimov?.
RR cannot produce light weight 3D TVC for that amount of money. nor RR can produce >10 TWR engine. Klimov can do it as it has done RD-33MK at fraction of amount of this money in 4 years. why u think AL-55 cost only $200m worth of R&D?.
It is not easy to built a customized product for particular aircraft. RR simply dont have rights to engine of LCA/AMCA size and it will create very long time and money to create something from the ground.
RR does not have monoply over its nich large engines. Once massive amount of money flows to CFM and PW from it engines. (They are selected by Chinese/Japanese/Russians state funded aircraft monoplies) RR simply will not have money for R&D to next level. Most of its brightest engineers will simple leave it for firms that are cash rich.

You don’t get to be the second biggest builder of jet engines, & the only one of the Big Three outside the USA (a huge disadvantage commercially), without doing something right, & jet engine success is absolutely technology-driven.

If Snecma or Klimov were in the same class as RR they’d be far bigger companies.

Second biggest does not mean it has more knowledge. It is only good in one area. infact RR is the most vulnerable to competition. RR is not a diversified firm . I dont think RR has 100% IP to all components otherwise whats the point of RR Deutchland. I am not sure RR can built modern fighter engine by itself. Klimov has more experiance in heli engines. and first 3D TVC.
French has more balanced portfolio of Turbomeca and Snecma. Snecma has agreement with GE through CFM international that they would not enter into large size engine market without GE. It is more like business decision rather than lack of ability.

Hello JSR,

I keep bringing this up on this thread, but you need to look at what the RAF intends to do with the Typhoon in order to understand the future of the aircraft that may be the MRCA.

It is old news to suggest that Typhoon is a bankrupt product with no future. It has an AESA that is slated for service in just over 3 years time that is funded and supported by the partners (and possibly the Saudis). Incidentally the Captor is so good that the partners have had to be pushed into AESA probably a bit earlier than they had planned.

By 2020 the RAF Typhoon will most likely use its AESA for electonic attack and intelligence gathering. The RAF will only gradually get its F35s so between 2015 and 2020 the bulk of it’s offensive capability will be on Typhoon’s shoulders, and as such its vital that it is as capable as any aircraft out there.

Captor is good because partners invested in Mechanical scan radar. IF US didnot fund AESA and keep investing in Mechanical scan radar for ever. It would have achieved better results with time. Similar is Russia PESA. when you continue to invest on the same technology for long time. things improve but the whole supply chain get used that system. and its difficult to move on to next level.

The countries supporting ECD and that include Saudi economic and political problems are going to be magnified with time not lessen. on top of that there is multiplier effect.
BAE will start facing losses in US market due to defence cuts.
EADS cannot recoup its Chinese investment. Dassult is not worth considering. look at its recent financial result.These firms are not in position to afford offsets, establish manufacturing,trained workers in reasonable time. and there is no guarantee that end product will be of desired quality and within specification of IAF.
Boeing can afford offsets as it sold $4b worth of C-17. so it can plough back $1b. C-17 is pretty standard sauce from Boeing Production line. No transfer of technolgy/manufacturing or tickering allowed with product.

There is simply no guarantee that PAK-FA can be ready to enter FOC after 2020 ~ Just look the mess of F-35 project, what can make IAF so sure that the similar things (delay, delay, delay, and over-budget, over-budget, over-budget….) won’t happen to PAK-FA once again??

Not to mention AMCA ~ IAF hopes that it will be able to enter service at the time of 2025. However, if it takes LCA project almost 30 years to reach FOC, how IAF can be sure that the much more advanced and complicated AMCA will be ready with just half of time that Tejas needed ??

IAF needs to retire 150-plus MIG-21bis before 2017, and around 80 MIG-27 before 2020. Moreover, it wants to increase the number of operational fighter squadrons from 34 today to 42 at the time of around 2020. In total, it needs no less than 350 brand new fighters before 2020, and both PAK-FA and AMCA can’t help this requirement.

Tejas MK2 shall be smaller and lighter than Gripen NG, I guess that IAF doesn’t think it can do the all jobs that IAF wants MMRCA to do.

I think the only possible, reasonable, and practical replacement for 126 to 189 MMRCA for IAF right now should be producing more Su-30MKI. However, since IAF doesn’t want its own fighters to be “Russian takes all”, then……

F-35 is expensive for the same reason that Rafale is expensive. The more electronics/fuel you stuffed inside a smallish airframe with high weopon load requirement the costly is the weight reduction techniques and materials to balance the performance/life span. building carrier variant at same time can increase cost even more.
Twin engine large airsuperiority fighter has surplus of power. and airframe is not stressed to the same extent with loads.
There is no BS like Omni Role or Swing Role from the start. I like idea of old fashioned single role fighters.

What makes you think ECD with much more sophisticated structures and electronic components can be done in India in reasonable time & cost?. when you have this example right in front of you that is delayed and overbudget.
http://www.glgroup.com/News/Airbus-China-Year+-Behind-Schedule-21837.html

Neither ECD industrials have the money to meet offset/technology expectation nor India has the ability to absorb this manufacturing. The crux of matter is both sides either dont know or dont wanna admit weaknesses to each other.

The problem for ECD is that there is no guarantee for its 40 year upgrades. Funding squeeze will pretty much rule out any major upgrades. so they are likely to be obsolete rather quickly.