India may go for 6 to 8 more C-17s : Boeing Defence Chief

[manofwar]

There were 26 Il- 76 in service......................so we need atleast that many Globemaster III's if we want to replace them. A Hercules or the MRTA is no substitution for the Il- 76

 

[Alphacharlie]

After the US, India will be the only nation with such heavy lift capacity, it's pretty awesome that the US and India are working together, the world needs more of this.

Monsieur - An Enemy`s Enemy is my Best Friends....But I need to be Careful some friends might offer a hand and hold your neck some day.

No wonder we are "Cautious with Yanks" with CISOMA and rejection of second Trenton Class ATD/ F16. F18 + our Independent foreign policy has given Uncle Sam a Clear signal.

There were 26 Il- 76 in service......................so we need atleast that many Globemaster III's if we want to replace them. A Hercules or the MRTA is no substitution for the Il- 76

Sir dont wake wishes...I want India to have a permanent seat in UNSC, Want Aksi Chin Back!!

IL 76 is a Beauty yes it needs maintenance and not as robust as C17. But the objective of designing both ships was different.

Moreover, IL76 has airframe life of 10,000 hours so for next 15 years they can fly comfotably.

 

[sancho]

what is globemaster actually used for???

Carrying cargo, troops or even bigger vehicles up to an MBT to great distances.

it can carry smaller aircrafts too???

Some of this can be done with smaller aircrafts too, like the troop transport, but the range and speed will be limited and you hardly can transport any useful vehicle with an C130/MRTA class aircraft. The only other aircrafts that offer similar transport and long range advantages are either the ones that I meantioned in post #20, the AN 70 which fits in the same class as them, or the super heavy class C5 and AN 124.

The only advantage that the C17 offers that non of the other can is, lifting an MBT and transporting it to unpaved / short airfields and that might give a hint on which requirements were important. However, since even a C17 can only carry 1 x MBT at a time, the operational advantage is very limited, because you would need to occupy the whole fleet, a lot of time and resources to transport a useful number of MBTs like this.

guy6s..why we can't go for AC-130???we already have C-130..right???I'd love to see one of these in IAF...

Not open for exports afaik, that's why Airbus is thinking about to offer such versions based on the C295 or A400M.

There were 26 Il- 76 in service......................so we need atleast that many Globemaster III's if we want to replace them. A Hercules or the MRTA is no substitution for the Il- 76

IAF has 17 x of them, of which 2 will be used as test or research aircrafts and when you keep in mind that these older IL 76 has just 45t payload, you see that even the currently ordered 10 x are enough to offer the same transport capacity. However, I agree that we need more numbers for higher flexebility in the transport role, just like in the tanker role.