{"id":24256576,"date":"2026-09-23T15:03:30","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T13:03:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/why-nothing-can-replace-the-antonov-an-124-ruslan\/"},"modified":"2026-09-23T15:04:06","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T13:04:06","slug":"why-nothing-can-replace-the-antonov-an-124-ruslan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/es\/why-nothing-can-replace-the-antonov-an-124-ruslan\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Nothing Can Replace the Antonov An-124"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>.et_pb_title_container h1.entry-title { padding-top: 40px !important; }<\/style>\r\n\r\n<p>There is a category of object that can only travel by An-124. A satellite. A locomotive. A complete power station turbine. A Boeing 787 wing section. The rotor assembly for a wind farm. A concrete pump urgently required at a melting nuclear reactor.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Fifty-seven of these aircraft were built. The line closed. Nothing has replaced it, and this week the European Defence Agency effectively admitted that nothing is going to, at least not soon.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f4f6f8;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:18px 22px;margin:26px 0\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 10px;font-weight:700;font-size:17px;color:#0d1117\">Quick Facts<\/p><table style=\"width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;font-size:15px;line-height:1.6\"><tr><td style=\"padding:4px 12px 4px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Type<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:4px 0;color:#222\">Antonov An-124 Ruslan (NATO reporting name Condor)<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:4px 12px 4px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Design started<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:4px 0;color:#222\">1971, as Izdeliye 400; lead designer Viktor Tolmachev<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:4px 12px 4px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>First flight<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:4px 0;color:#222\">24 December 1982; Western debut at the 1985 Paris Air Show<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:4px 12px 4px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Built<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:4px 0;color:#222\">57 aircraft, on two lines \u2014 Ulyanovsk in Russia and Kyiv in Ukraine<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:4px 12px 4px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Crew<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:4px 0;color:#222\">Eight, including a navigator, two flight engineers, a radio operator and two loadmasters<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:4px 12px 4px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Payload<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:4px 0;color:#222\">120 tonnes standard; 150 tonnes in the -100M-150<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:4px 12px 4px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Hold<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:4px 0;color:#222\">36 x 6.4 x 4.4 metres \u2014 about 20 per cent larger than a C-5 Galaxy\u2019s<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:4px 12px 4px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Maximum take-off weight<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:4px 0;color:#222\">402 tonnes<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:4px 12px 4px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Special features<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:4px 0;color:#222\">Kneeling landing gear, nose and tail doors, titanium cargo floor, 30-tonne onboard crane<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:4px 12px 4px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Airports visited by 2013<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:4px 0;color:#222\">768, in more than 100 countries<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Built because the Americans had better ones<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>The An-124 exists because of a CIA assessment, or at least because of the reality the CIA described.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;The USSR does not match the US in ability to provide long-range heavy lift support.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Central Intelligence Agency<\/strong> &mdash; Declassified 1975 assessment of Soviet airlift, quoted in histories of the An-124 programme<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Soviet Military Transport Aviation in the early 1970s had about fifty An-22 turboprops as its heaviest lift, and they were being used tactically. Design work on a much larger aircraft began at the Antonov bureau in 1971 under Viktor Tolmachev, known internally as Izdeliye 400 and in the West as the An-40. Two assembly lines were built \u2014 Ulyanovsk in Russia, Kyiv in Ukraine \u2014 fed by components from over a hundred factories.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The first airframe went together in 1979 and flew on Christmas Eve 1982. The West got its first proper look at the 1985 Paris Air Show, where it was substantially larger than the C-5 Galaxy everyone had assumed was the ceiling.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">What makes it irreplaceable<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>The obvious answer is size, and the hold is genuinely bigger than a C-5\u2019s \u2014 36 by 6.4 by 4.4 metres, about twenty per cent more volume. But size alone does not explain it.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>It has doors at both ends, so a vehicle can drive in one end and out the other. The landing gear kneels, dropping the nose so the ramp angle is shallow enough to roll heavy plant aboard. There is an overhead crane in the hold rated at 30 tonnes and a winch system that can drag 120 tonnes in. The cargo floor is solid titanium \u2014 a material choice that is normally ruled out on cost, and which exists here because the alternative could not take the point loads.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/an-124-nose-door-loading-ramp-trailer-relief-cargo.jpg\" alt=\"A trailer being loaded through the nose door and ramp of an Antonov An-124\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">The nose door and the kneeling gear are the reason. Anything that rolls can be driven straight in, which is not true of most large freighters. Photo: US Air Force<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hVxGqG9iN2M\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">And what makes it impossible<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>The same aircraft is an economic problem, and the numbers are brutal.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>It carries a crew of eight. A pilot, a copilot, a navigator, a chief flight engineer, an electrical flight engineer, a radio operator and two loadmasters. A modern freighter of comparable size is flown by two people. Every sector therefore carries six salaries that no Western operator would price in.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The main cargo deck is only partially pressurised \u2014 24.6 kPa \u2014 which is why it is almost never used to carry people. The four D-18T engines are 1980s high-bypass turbofans with 1980s fuel burn. The two auxiliary power units sit inside the main gear fairings and produce enough heat and blast that some airports require pavement protection before it starts them.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/antonov-an-124-moffett-federal-airfield-ramp.jpg\" alt=\"An Antonov An-124 on the ramp at Moffett Federal Airfield\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">By 2013 the type had visited 768 airports in more than a hundred countries. Very few of them were designed with it in mind. Photo: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>None of that matters when the alternative is not flying the cargo at all. It matters enormously when you are deciding whether to spend twenty billion euros designing a new one.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The restarts that never restarted<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>Production has been resumed on paper at least twice. In 2008 Russia and Ukraine agreed to build the aircraft jointly again, and at one point Russia looked likely to order twenty new airframes. That was shelved in August 2014 for reasons everyone can guess. In January 2019 Antonov announced it would restart production without Russian involvement.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>No new An-124 has been delivered.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Sg4zmRofWt8\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Meanwhile the fleet aged. Antonov Airlines flies five out of Leipzig\/Halle with an average age just under thirty-seven years. One aircraft was destroyed on the ground at Hostomel in February 2022; five more Ukrainian machines sat out the invasion at Leipzig.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #d32f2f;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;For outsize and particularly high-volume cargo, European states are almost entirely dependent on an ageing fleet.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>European Defence Agency<\/strong> &mdash; On European outsize airlift, September 2026 (translated)<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">What a replacement would have to be<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>Any European successor has to clear a strange bar. It must be big enough to take loads an A400M cannot, which means a genuinely new aircraft. It must have both a nose door and a kneeling capability, or it loses the drive-through advantage that makes the An-124 useful rather than merely large. And it must be affordable enough to justify a production run that nobody can currently size, because the outsize charter market is measured in hundreds of flights a year, not thousands.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/sFbIry9UYG8\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>The An-225, the six-engined derivative built to carry the Buran shuttle, was the only aircraft that ever exceeded it. It was destroyed at Hostomel in 2022.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Which leaves Europe with the two options the EDA named last week: rebuild the Antonovs, or start drawing. Both take longer than the SALIS contract has left.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p><em>Sources: European Defence Agency; Antonov; declassified CIA assessments of Soviet airlift; Dennis Fricker, Flight International; Jane\u2019s; NATO SALIS programme documentation; aeroTELEGRAPH.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<style>.mfq{margin:34px 0 8px}.mfq h2{font:26px\/1.3 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117;padding-top:22px;margin:0 0 6px}.mfq .qa details{border-top:1px solid #5C91FF;margin:0;padding:0}.mfq .qa details:last-of-type{border-bottom:1px solid #e2e7ee}.mfq .qa summary{cursor:pointer;list-style:none;display:flex;justify-content:space-between;align-items:center;gap:16px;padding:22px 26px;font:18px\/1.7 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117}.mfq .qa summary::-webkit-details-marker{display:none}.mfq .qa summary::after{content:\"+\";font:24px Helvetica,sans-serif;color:#3568e0;flex:0 0 auto}.mfq .qa details[open] summary::after{content:\"\\2013\"}.mfq .qa details:hover summary{color:#3568e0}.mfq .qa .a{font:16px\/1.7 \"Gilroy regular\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#454e5e;padding:0 26px 24px}.mfq .qa .a a{color:#3568e0}@media(max-width:680px){.mfq .qa summary{padding:18px 14px;font-size:17px}.mfq .qa .a{padding:0 14px 20px}}<\/style>\r\n\r\n\r\n<section class=\"mfq\"><h2>Frequently Asked Questions<\/h2><div class=\"qa\"><details open><summary>Why can nothing replace the An-124?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Because no comparable aircraft is in production. The An-124 stopped being built after 57 airframes, the C-5 Galaxy line closed decades ago and the C-17 closed in 2015. Anything genuinely equivalent would have to be designed and certified from scratch, which is a decade-scale programme.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>How much can an An-124 carry?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">120 tonnes in standard configuration, and 150 tonnes in the uprated An-124-100M-150 with series 4 engines and a 420-tonne maximum take-off weight. The hold measures 36 by 6.4 by 4.4 metres, roughly 20 per cent larger in volume than the main cargo compartment of a C-5 Galaxy.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Why does the An-124 kneel?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">To lower the nose so that vehicles and outsize items can be driven or winched straight in through the front door on a shallow ramp. The 24-wheel oleo-strut landing gear can be adjusted to drop the front of the aircraft, which no Western strategic airlifter does in the same way.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>How many An-124s were built?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Fifty-seven, on two final assembly lines: Aviastar in Ulyanovsk, Russia, and the Kyiv Aviation Plant in Ukraine, with components drawn from more than a hundred factories across the Eastern bloc. Around 26 were in commercial service in recent years.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Why does the An-124 need a crew of eight?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Because it was designed in the 1970s. The flight deck carries a pilot, copilot, navigator, chief flight engineer, electrical flight engineer and radio operator, plus two loadmasters. A modern freighter of similar size would be flown by two, which is a large part of why the economics are difficult.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Will An-124 production restart?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">It has been announced more than once and not happened. Russia and Ukraine agreed to resume joint production in 2008; the plan was shelved in 2014 amid political tensions. Antonov said in 2019 it intended to restart without Russian involvement. Nothing new has been built.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What does the An-124 actually carry?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Everything awkward. Satellites and launch vehicles for United Launch Alliance and SpaceX, locomotives and metro railcars, the Obelisk of Axum back to Ethiopia, concrete pumps to Fukushima, an 87,000-pound die tool to restart Ford F-150 production after a factory fire, and military equipment out of Afghanistan.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Can the A400M do the same job?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">No, and European governments have said so in writing. The A400M is an excellent tactical airlifter but is limited in size and payload for outsize loads. It mitigates the gap; it does not close it.<\/div><\/details><\/div><\/section>\r\n\r\n\r\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@type\":\"FAQPage\",\"mainEntity\":[{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Why can nothing replace the An-124?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Because no comparable aircraft is in production. 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It mitigates the gap; it does not close it.\"}}]}<\/script><div style=\"background:#f0f4ff;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:16px 20px;margin:32px 0 8px\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:600;color:#333\">Related Posts<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/eda-esoca-study-an-124-modernisation-european-c-17-replacement-2026\/\">Europe\u2019s Airlift Gap: EDA Weighs An-124 Refit or a New C-17<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/an-225-mriya-largest-aircraft-ever-built\/\">The An-225 Mriya: The Largest Aircraft Ever Built<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/antonov-an-22-antei-largest-turboprop\/\">The Biggest Turboprop Ever to Fly<\/a><\/p><\/div>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fifty-seven were built. The line closed. Every proposed successor has died, and the reasons are in the nose door, the kneeling gear and the crew of eight.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":24256153,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[665,664],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24256576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aviation-world","category-military-aviation"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Why Nothing Can Replace the Antonov An-124 | MiGFlug<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The An-124 carries what nothing else can: 120 tonnes, a nose door, kneeling gear and a titanium floor. 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