Monday, November 29, 2010

Guess What?

6 comments:

Steven said...

... you're not going to tell us what it is aren't ya?

Anonymous said...

Two guesses:

1: It's a testbed aircraft for air-to-surface missiles. The U.S has tested missiles using C-130's before.

2: The Chinese are taking a page out of the Marine Corps' book and arming the IL-76 like the Marines armed their C-130 "Harvest Hawk" with hellfires.

Joseph said...

Might also be used for testing high speed plane and space plane models.

Joseph said...

Someone on another forum said that the thing looks like an oil tanker and that pylon should be for a wing-mounted refueling pod.

Coatepeque said...

Yup, a Chinese IL-78 Midas

duskylim said...

The only problem with using the IL-76 airframe is that up to now Russia is unable to fulfill the old contracts at the agreed on price.

As this is also the airframe of the KJ-2000 AWACS there is going to be a lot of demand for them.

The PLAAF will have to choose between more AWACS or airborne tankers.

The real answer to this is of course making your own - perhaps modified versions of the C919 airframe.