India will make one of the largest purchases of military transport aircraft, worth $10 billion. The country's Air Force plans to acquire about 60 aircraft, but Russia with "Ilyushin" is not on the list of contenders, IDRW reported.
The main candidates were the American C-130J Super Hercules and the Brazilian KC-390 Millennium. Indian companies HAL, Tata, Adani, and Mahindra are being considered as potential partners for manufacturing or assembling equipment in the country. By the way, Airbus will also not participate in the tender.
India has long operated Russian equipment in military transport aviation: 17 Il-76MD aircraft were purchased from the USSR in the early 1980s. Now this fleet, along with the light An-32s, is planned to be replaced. According to an official press release from the Indian government, the new medium transport aircraft should meet the strategic, tactical, and operational needs of the Air Force.
The reasons for excluding the Il-76MD-90A from the tender are primarily operational: the Russian platform did not meet the Indian Air Force's established operational readiness threshold of 75% for the transport fleet. In addition, limited production rates at Ulyanovsk's "Aviastar" made it difficult to fulfill a large export order.
The finalists of the current tender – the C-130J Super Hercules and the KC-390 Millennium – belong to the class of medium tactical transport aircraft, while the Il-76MD-90A is a heavy platform with a payload capacity of up to 60 tons. The history of Russian-Indian cooperation in military transport aviation also included an attempt to create a joint medium aircraft: the MTA project based on the Il-214 never reached serial production, and India eventually preferred the American C-130 and C-17.
According to the portal, HAL simultaneously allows for the possibility of developing a medium transport aircraft concept based on the Il-214/MTA idea.
Vadim Badeha, head of the United Aircraft Corporation, stated that the Il-76MD-90A is generating huge interest worldwide, with a queue of customers. He did not specify which countries are included in this number.