China has built An-70

I think because of the price of oil, China has chosen Ukrane combined to built An-70 Cargo for military transportation.
www.war-sky.com...

I like those nightmare props. Kind of remind me of the old Unducted fan tests.

I am guessing the An-70 is a variation of the C-130? It nearly a dead ringer.

No ties at all will the C-130.
It's a brand new plane that Antonov has been promoting and slowly testing for a few years, and doesn't seem to have the budget to completely develop it, while Russian forces purchases are not guaranteed. At one point Germany hesitated between this one and the A400M.

Yes... they just look pretty much like eachother... No ties at all... but the plane looks nice... I'am just a bit surprised that China didn't decide to make their own plane...

Skippy, FIN, I know my reaction here is entirely predictable but you have got to be kidding me

The An 70 and C-130 are like chalk and cheese.

mxboy, the reason it reminds of propfans is because thats what it is, the worlds first propfan powered transport to fly (other than engine test bed conversions)

Yup, Waynos is 100% correct.


Apparently the propfan can give up to 50% fuel savings compared to a turbofan!

From Global Security:

In June 2000 it was reported that Russia and Ukraine would build the new-generation Antonov 70 transport aircraft, not with Germany, as had been planned, but with China. Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev said that negotiations with Berlin had resulted in the Germans saying they would not support the joint Ukrainian-Russian An-70 project, Interfax reported. ``We won't try to win over the Germans, but will complete the project with China," Sergeyev said. A Chinese military delegation visited Ukraine and expressed an interest in the AN-70 transport aircraft.

At the Zhuhai airshow in November 2000, Antonow tried to market the An-70 in China. This would likely involve co-production with AVIC II. The Antonov Design Bureau offered cooperation to the Shansiy aircraft building corporation to build a new airplane using Antonov An-70 as a basic model. The Chinese side left the offer unanswered, although the proposition was negotiated during Li Peng's visit to Ukraine in the middle of 2000.

In 2003, a publication by Hu Xiaofeng [the general manager of Shaanfei - Shaanxi Aircraft Corporation] proposed using the An-70, a Ukrainian heavy transportation aircraft model still in its testing stage, as China’s model for its large transportation aircraft. Shaanfei’s Y-8 middle-size transportation aircraft, another Antonov knock-off, had been the only domestically made transportation aircraft used by the PLAAF.

That the Chinese expressed an interest in the An-70 in the early 2000s shows that because the Kremlin beginning in the late 1980s improved relations with Beijing, with Mikhail Gorbachev recognizing Deng Xiaoping as a different type of Chinese leader than Mao Zedong in terms of foreign policy outlook, the Ukraine wasn't going to lecture China about its poor human rights record and instead preferred to maintain cordial relations between Antonov and the Chinese aerospace industry.