Alexander Kopitar - AviMedia
June 17, 2021
Photo: Ainur Kazymova
The super-heavy domestic transport aircraft An-124 “Ruslan” are planned to be modernized again. According to the Interfax agency, more than a billion rubles will be needed to develop a new technical aircraft modernization project alone. A deeply modernized version of the legendary military transport aircraft will receive Russian-made equipment. The modernization project will affect both the replacement of avionics and general aircraft systems.
An-124 “Ruslan”, created in the USSR by the specialists of the Antonov Design Bureau, is still a unique aircraft and the most cargo-carrying aircraft among all serial samples of such equipment. The first flight of the super-heavy transport aircraft took place on December 24, 1982. The aircraft was mass-produced from 1985 to 2004. During this time, 55 Ruslans were produced. 36 of them were assembled in Ulyanovsk on the basis of the large aviation enterprise Aviastar-SP. It is in Ulyanovsk that since 2004 the modernization and repair of Russian Ruslans has been carried out.
A modification of the An-124-100 aircraft for the VTA was created especially for the armed forces at the enterprise in Ulyanovsk. It is these machines, which are in service with the Russian military transport aviation, which are planned to be modernized in the near future. According to the annual bulletin The Military Balance 2019, the Russian military transport aviation is armed with 9 An-124-100 Ruslan aircraft. Also, the operators of Ruslan aircraft in Russia are the 224th Flight Squad (a subsidiary of the Ministry of Defense, specializing in irregular commercial cargo transportation), there are at least 8 Ruslan aircraft in the company’s fleet, as well as the Volga-Dnepr cargo airline, in The fleet of which has 12 An-124-100 Ruslan aircraft capable of transporting bulky cargo weighing up to 120 tons.
Photo: Pavel Adzhigildyaev
What will be replaced in the An-124 Ruslan planes
After the modernization, the flight performance of the updated An-124 Ruslan heavy transport aircraft will remain the same. This means that the altitude and maximum flight speed, as well as the set of geometric characteristics, will not change in any way. The main tasks of the aircraft modernization: the transition to Russian-made equipment and components, a significant extension of the airworthiness of the aircraft, as well as an increase in flight safety and protection against possible attacks from the ground.
It is planned that in the course of modernization, the service life of the An-124-100M aircraft will be increased to 50-60 years. At the same time, a special program for maintaining the airworthiness of aircraft that have served more than 45 years will be created. Initially, the service life of An-124 aircraft was 24 thousand flight hours or 25 years of operation. And if the planes do not approach the first indicator, then for a quarter of a century almost all Ruslans have already been exchanged, the construction of the overwhelming majority of which was completed before 1995. After 1995, only three An-124 aircraft were completed in Ulyanovsk.
As part of the modernization, military transport aircraft An-124-100M will receive modern avionics (avionics). The airborne communications complex, the sighting and navigation aerobatic complex, as well as the onboard information system will be updated. Will affect the modernization of military aircraft and airborne transport equipment, lighting, oxygen and household equipment, the entire power supply system. The workplaces of the transport aircraft crew will also be replaced. Ultimately, the modernized version of Ruslan is planned to completely replace all obsolete, not manufactured by industry and imported equipment.
Photo: OAK
A distinctive feature of the An-124 aircraft being modernized in the 2020s will be the presence on board of a special defense complex, the main purpose of which is to protect the transport aircraft from being hit from the ground by MANPADS with radar and optoelectronic homing heads of anti-aircraft missiles. The terms of reference states that the onboard self-defense system installed on board the Ruslan should automatically protect the aircraft from damage in one attack with a probability of at least 90 percent of the following portable anti-aircraft missile systems widespread throughout the world: Stinger, “Needle”, “Mistral”.
Also in the terms of reference, some of the features of which were made public and were published in the Russian media, it is said that the upgraded An-124-100M aircraft should become less visible to the enemy’s radar. In particular, it is planned to carry out work to reduce the radar, laser, acoustic, optical and radio signature of military transport aircraft.
Fully “Russian” An-124 will retain Ukrainian engines
After modernization, the military Ruslans will finally become Russian aircraft in every sense of the word. Finally, it is planned to put into practice what was said throughout the 2010s, especially after 2014 – the An-124 aircraft will receive exclusively Russian equipment and assemblies. True, one “but” still remains. The modernized version of the transport aircraft will retain the Ukrainian D-18T engines.
Photo: Igor Bubin
D-18T engine
In total, during the deep modernization of the aircraft, which, according to Denis Manturov, will allow the aircraft to be considered Russian, it is planned to completely replace 29 Ukrainian-made units and three production systems of NATO and EU countries. The issue of import substitution in the development of experimental design documentation for the aircraft being upgraded is specially spelled out in the terms of reference.
Moreover, everything is more or less clear with the engine. Developed back in the 1980s at the Progress Zaporozhye Machine-Building Design Bureau, the D-18T turbojet bypass engine was specially created for the An-124 Ruslan and An-225 Mriya super-heavy aircraft. In Russia, this engine at this point in time simply has no analogues, as the General Director of the Central Institute of Aviation Motors named after P.I. Baranova Mikhail Gordin.
In this regard, numerous statements by Russian officials, who for a long time discussed the possibility of resuming serial production of the An-124 Ruslan aircraft in Russia, in the current political situation seem to be common populism. There would be nothing to install on new aircraft, since the available fleet of Soviet-made D-18T engines is seriously limited.
Photo: wikimedia
In the absence of new engines and the termination of cooperation with the Ukrainian company Motor Sich, Russia was able to establish repair and maintenance of D-18T turbojet engines with a take-off thrust of 23,430 kgf. The fact that in Russia it was possible to establish a full-fledged repair of these engines became known in July 2019. In an interview with Interfax, Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov, who oversees the country’s military-industrial complex, said that the first repaired D-18T engines had already been received. In the future, it is planned to start repairing 12 such engines a year, which will allow upgrading or extending the flight operation of three aircraft. According to Borisov, such a rate of repair is sufficient to improve the serviceability of the entire fleet of aircraft.
In the distant future, Russia will create its own high-thrust aircraft engine. This project is known under the designation PD-35. This new Russian by-pass turbojet engine is intended for installation on promising military transport aircraft, as well as wide-body civil airliners, including the Russian-Chinese passenger aircraft CR929. In terms of its capabilities, the PD-35 should significantly surpass the Soviet D-18T engine. The new engine, which Mikhail Gordin refers to as the sixth generation models, will have a thrust of about 35,000 kgf. True, at the present time the project is still at the stage of research work. The first demonstrator sample is planned to be presented only in 2023, and the full completion of the engine development is scheduled for 2025.
Billion project
Design work to modernize the world’s most heavy-duty production transport aircraft will cost the Russian budget in excess of a billion rubles. According to the information contained in the SPARK-marketing system, during 2019 the Ilyushin company managed to conclude 15 contracts for the main part of the development work to create a modernized version of the An-124-100M aircraft for the needs of the Russian military transport aviation … It is expected that the design, scientific and technical groundwork created within the framework of these works will be used in the future and in the creation of a promising aviation complex of military transport aviation (PAK VTA) in Russia.
The total cost of design documentation for the creation of a modernized version of a military transport aircraft and its units exceeds one billion rubles, while the lion’s share of the allocated funds will go to EMZ, the Myasishchev Experimental Machine-Building Plant (EMZ). It was with this company that Ilyushin signed a contract worth approximately 830 million rubles. The contract provides for the creation of a technical design for the An-124-100M aircraft, the expected completion date is the end of this year.
There are also preliminary figures for the cost of converting the existing An-124-100 military transport aircraft into the An-124-100M modification. Back in mid-2019, it was reported that the Ilyushin Aviation Complex expects to modernize the first An-124 Ruslan aircraft by 2022. The work will be carried out in Ulyanovsk at the facilities of the Aviastar-SP company. Earlier it was reported that the transformation of one aircraft into the An-124-100M version, as well as its comprehensive tests, would cost the Russian budget 3.5 billion rubles. Thus, one can roughly imagine that the modernization of all 9 An-124-100 aircraft of the Russian military transport aviation will cost more than 30 billion rubles, and if the modernization of the aircraft used by the 224th Flight Squad is carried out in the future, then the costs of the project will more than double.
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