Airbus A400M Atlas "tired" before the start. Replace with An-70?
Just over a year ago, on May 9, near Seville, the military transport aircraft Airbus A2015M Atlas fell. The beauty and pride of the Airbus concern, the fruit of an ambitious program designed to show the world whose aircraft are the best.
The airliner was empty - the flight that was to come was a test flight. A400M fell, plainly and without taking off: the chassis broke off the runway from concrete just a few meters, after which the crew suddenly decided to land the car. In response to a request from the airport’s tower: “What do you have?” The commander answered briefly: “We are falling,” after which the four-engine colossus really crashed down to the ground. Two members of the crew of six survived by luck.
The crashed aircraft was the twenty-third vehicle of this type, built at the Seville plant of the European consortium Airbus Military. Upon completion of a series of test flights, this aircraft was to be transferred to the buyer, the Turkish Ministry of Defense. The cost of the fallen plane was 165 million euros.
Naturally, after a state of emergency, inspections, inspections, technical examinations and so on began. A400M program is not that stopped, but hung. The budget of its designers was originally designed for 12 billion euros, in fact, it "ate" by that time already 20 billions, and, apparently, this was not the end of expenses, and the prospects for revenues were clouded.
Specifications Airbus A400M Atlas, for its size nicknamed "Grizzly":
Length - 45,1 m, height - 14,7 m, wing span - 42,4 m, carrying capacity - 37 t, empty aircraft weight - 76,5 t, maximum take-off weight - 141 t, cruising speed - 780 km / h. Equipped with four eight-blade turboprop engines Europrop International TP825-D400, HP 6 11. each. The maximum flight altitude is 000 12 m, the maximum flight range with full load is 200 km, and the unloaded one is 3300 km. Fuel capacity - 8700 50 kg. The minimum runway length is 500 m (ground).
A year later, the experts published the results of their work: "Some details of the fuselage (the list exists, but he did not become the property of the Spanish press - note aut.) Collapsed due to fatigue of materials and incorrectly selected combinations and alloys." According to journalists from the Spanish edition of El Confidencial, "experts know what to do."
And they know about it, starting with the 2011 year, when for the first time on the fuselages of some of their products they began to detect microcracks, but these unpleasant news They never did, and, in general, there were no grounds for “leaks” - not a single “four hundredth” has broken yet due to the rupture of the hull.
By the way, the detected cracks and material fatigue with the Seville catastrophe most likely are hardly connected, a few meters above the ground is not the height at which the difference between the internal and external air pressure is noticeable. And even more so - critical. The cracks were remembered in passing, or even (more likely) in order to divert the attention of current and future customers from other problems that may put an end to the program right now.
Through military unions leaked information that the cause of the disaster a year ago was a failure in the electrical system of three (!) Of the four engines of the aircraft. A month ago, British aviators unexpectedly discovered that the engines with which they are equipped with Grizzly (TP400, produced by the Italian company Avio Aero) may have an unpleasant habit of stopping right in the middle of a flight. The English were lucky - only one of the four engines stopped. Three would work so synchronously - the result would be above.
After four years of operation of the first production models in various countries of the world, there were amicable complaints about the motors: their power is not enough to pull well a fully loaded ship. And there are no other engine options: Pratt & Whitney, which produces PW2040 engines for the American Atlas classmate, the C-17 Globemaster III from McDonnell Douglas / Boeing, for all its friendship with Airbus through NATO, is not inclined to sell engines to competitors.
Lack of high-torque and unreliable electronics is not an exhaustive list of shortcomings of the Italian engine. "Incorrectly selected alloys" are present, as it turns out, in its details too. In the spring of this year, several cases of excessive overheating of the motors were recorded, and metal chips were detected in the gearboxes of some of them (as many as 14 cases). The concern Airbus announced that "this fault can not be considered serious," but any sensible person knows that when a chip is formed in sufficient quantities, it is quite possible to jam the gearbox. And this will happen, of course, in flight. Not according to the law of meanness, but due to the fact that neither during the warm-up of the engines, nor on take-off, the gearbox just will not have time to “trim” the required amount of sawdust.
And one more global minus of the Grizzly: it lacks the possibility of refueling in the air. That is, thoughts about creating such a service, of course, exist, but when they will be implemented and whether they will be realized at all is a big question. The program has already exceeded the budget by two thirds, while funding has declined because of the withdrawal from the Italian project, and due to delays in the first demonstration flights by more than a year (instead of 2008, they took place in 2009), the volume of orders also decreased. Initially, the need for A400M was determined in 230 airplanes (the boldest forecasts reached 400 machines), today the demand for 180 is guaranteed.
Such a set of problems threatens the project as a whole. Not yet closing: the American counterpart, mentioned above, is twice as expensive, so the market is still on the Airbus side. But there is no doubt that customers have a desire to twist their heads to the sides in search of something more reliable. Such that from not tired materials and alloys. And with electronics, if not trouble-free, then at least having a guaranteed safety net "just in case".
The current situation simply obliges Russia to revive the assembly of the An-70, a joint Russian-Ukrainian project, which has already stopped twice (the second time - in 2014, for obvious reasons). In 2015, there were already statements that Russia could start assembling it without Ukrainian partners at the plant in Kazan. By the way, An-70, which began to be created in 1994 year, in its present form is ahead of the A400M project by about ten years, which is recognized by Western experts. The Europeans, however, prefer their own for two reasons: firstly, not to help the competitor (and even being under sanctions) to develop, and secondly, not to make his armies dependent on him.
According to the observers of the defenseindustrydaily.com portal, “it is А400, if it brings to mind what needs to be brought to mind, it will be able to compete in the market of military transport workers with the Russian An-70, IL 76 and An-124”.
Technical characteristics of the AN-70:
The length is 40,73 m, the height is 16,38 m, the wingspan is 44,06 m, the mass of the empty plane is 73 t, the maximum load is 47 t, the maximum take-off weight is 135 t, cruising speed is 700 – 750 km / h, the maximum is 780 km / h Maximum flight altitude - 12 000 m. Required runway - from 600 m (ground). 4 x D-27 engines, hp 14 004 engines each. Maximum flight range (depending on load) - 1200 – 8000 km. Unit cost - 70 million dollars.
Experience shows that capitalists have moral principles sooner or later lose to financial incentive. The sanctions imposed on Russia do not prevent the Americans from buying RD180 rocket engines from Moscow. What prevents Europe from starting to buy military transport planes with characteristics almost identical to those of A400M (and at times superior to them) at a price two times lower than aircraft assembled at a factory near Seville? Only one thing - the absence of this proposal today.
The star project of Airbus is the heavy military transport aircraft Airbus A400M Atlas (aka Grizzly): costs that exceed the calculated one and a half times, tired structures that have not yet begun to fly, and the real possibility of Russian classmates to dislodge an opponent from the market.
Magazine "New defense order. Strategies" No.3 (40), 2016
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