China Is Bringing Back the World's Largest Plane
The An-225 "Mriya" was built to carry the Soviet Space Shuttle
September 8, 2016
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China and Ukraine have agreed to resume production of the An-225 Mriya strategic airlifter. The gigantic transport jet is the largest in the world, and could give China's military an unparalleled ability to move heavy military equipment anywhere in the world on short notice.
As China grows as a military power, its requirements for strategic transport are increasing. The country's sheer vastness, coupled with the fact that it shares borders with countries from Afghanistan to Vietnam, makes the ability to move heavy military items from one end of the country to the other in a matter of hours an attractive proposition. China also has sizable military forces abroad performing peacekeeping missions abroad, and is becoming increasingly aggressive in its demands for disputed territories in the South China and East China Seas that it has traditionally considered part of China.
Rather than reinventing the wheel, Beijing apparently has decided to fund the restart of an existing heavy transport production line. And it's no ordinary heavy transport. The colossal An-225 Mriya (NATO code name: Cossack) was built to haul the Soviet Union's copy of the Space Shuttle, Buran. Mriya could ferry the spacecraft and rocket engines from factory to launchpad and collect the Buran from whatever point in the Soviet Union it landed.
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The hulking transport is 275 feet long, with a wingspan of 290 feet. It stands 59 feet tall—as high as a six-story building. The plane has a cargo hold 14 feet tall, 19.6 feet wide, and an amazing 142 feet long. It can carry 272.5 tons of cargo—that's nearly four 70 ton Abrams tanks at once.
The USSR built a single An-225 and a second is estimated to be 60 to 70 percent completed. According to Jane's, the joint China-Ukrainian project will complete the second aircraft by 2019, and then presumably build an unknown number of brand-new airplanes.
As exciting as this sounds, there are reasons to be cautious. Airframe #2 has been sitting around unfinished for more than 20 years and may need structural repairs before it can be completed. Nevertheless, the idea of completing a single plane that is as large as a ship by 2019 isn't unfeasible.
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What is considerably more difficult is actually starting up the production line. The tooling to make the aircraft parts may no longer be available and could need to be remade. An entire assembly line workforce needs to be recruited and trained. Finally, AVIC—the Aviation Industry Corporation of China—will need to restart production on the giant Progress D-18T turbofan engines.
There may be more to this deal than meets the eye. Even the Soviet Union, which built big things and spanned twelve time zones, built only one Mriya. It's quite possible that China, which has ran into difficulties developing an engine for its Xian Y-20 military airlifter and has recently created a new jet airliner engine manufacturer (partially owned by AVIC), is more interested in the technology behind the D-18T engine than the An-225 itself. That tech is now China's, and the Y-20's engine woes are now over. The engines could even be the basis for gas turbine engines to power Chinese naval ships. China will also gain insights into large airplane construction, which translate into both military and civilian aircraft. This deal for the world's largest transport may spread ripples far and wide across China's military industry.
