The Soviet war in Afghanistan was, above all, a logistics war, and the Il-76 carried much of it. Over the twelve years from 1979, Soviet Il-76s flew some 14,700 sorties into the country, moving about 786,200 servicemen and 315,800 tonnes of freight, according to figures summarised by GlobalSecurity. The routes from Tashkent and other Central Asian bases into Kabul, Bagram, Shindand and Kandahar crossed some of the most dangerous terrain any airlifter has worked over.

Arrival was the hazardous part. Once the mujahideen received shoulder-launched missiles, transport crews adopted steep spiralling descents over the airfield, staying high until the last moment and dropping flares to decoy heat-seeking weapons. Departures were flown the same way in reverse. The tactic, later copied by Western crews flying into Baghdad and Kabul, kept losses down but did not eliminate them, and the Il-76 proved vulnerable when caught low. It nonetheless remained the backbone of the Soviet supply chain to the end, and in February 1989 it was among the types that flew the last troops and their equipment home.

The break-up of the USSR in 1991 scattered the Candid fleet. Aircraft ended up in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and other successor states, and many were quickly put to work by new cargo airlines. Through the 1990s and 2000s the Il-76 became the aircraft of choice for outsize charter work across Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia, carrying everything from oil-field equipment to relief supplies for the United Nations and aid agencies.

The same ubiquity gave the type a darker reputation. Investigators and journalists have repeatedly linked chartered Il-76s to arms shipments into conflict zones, and ageing aircraft operated by small firms with little oversight suffered a string of accidents. At the same time the Russian emergencies ministry, EMERCOM, turned the Il-76 into a large firefighting water bomber with internal tanks, and Russian, Indian and Chinese air forces kept large military fleets in service. Few transports have served such a range of masters at once.

• Il-76: initial military transport, 1974.
• Il-76M: improved military version with higher weights.
• Il-76MD: heavier military model of the early 1980s with uprated D-30KP-2 engines and greater fuel; payload around 47 to 48 tonnes. The definitive Cold War version.
• Il-76T / TD: civil freighters without the tail turret.
• Il-76MF / TF: fuselage stretched by 6.6 m with PS-90A-76 engines.
• Il-76MD-90A (Il-476): modernised military version built at Ulyanovsk with PS-90A-76 engines and a glass cockpit; first flight 2012.
• Il-78 “Midas”: three-point probe-and-drogue tanker, in service from 1987; around 50 built at Tashkent.
• A-50 “Mainstay”: Beriev airborne early warning aircraft with a rotating radome; first flew around 1980 and adopted in 1984. Modernised as the A-50M and A-50U. India’s A-50EI carries an Israeli radar on the same airframe.
• Il-76MDK: modified for zero-gravity parabolic flights in cosmonaut training.
• Firefighting, research and special-mission conversions.

For much of the post-Soviet era the Il-76 was the cheapest way to move outsize cargo by air. Second-hand airframes were plentiful and inexpensive, crews were available, and the aircraft could use runways that bigger Western freighters could not. That price advantage was offset by its 1960s-technology engines: four low-bypass D-30KP turbofans are thirsty and noisy, and noise rules eventually barred unmodified aircraft from many European airports.

We give a hedged range of around US$10,000 to 15,000 per flight hour, combining fuel burn of several tonnes per hour with crew and maintenance; real figures depend heavily on fuel prices, the operator and the condition of the airframe. The PS-90A-76 engines of the Il-76MD-90A are quieter and more efficient, but Russia’s new-build programme has delivered slowly: GlobalSecurity reports that a 2012 order for 39 aircraft was renegotiated in 2020 to just 14 by 2028.