The company working at the world's largest plane wants to sell it to the Pentagon and says it will be able to carry four F-35 Americans
The American company that builds the world's largest plane, originally designed for transporting huge wind turbines, now wants its device to carry Chinook helicopters and fighter jets, Business Insider reports.
Its manufacturer, the Radia company in the US State Colorado, the plane called “Windrunner” is meant to offer 12 times the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III loading space, the main heavy transport aircraft used by the American armed forces.
The company stated in a press release published at the end of last week that it proposes the product as a “ultra-sea aircraft” for the transport of weapons and vehicles platforms. Initially, Windrunner was presented as a solution for transporting wind turbine with lengths up to 100.6 meters.
With a wingspan of 79.6 meters and a length of 108.5 meters, Windrunner would carry loads up to 104.9 meters long, 10 meters wide and almost 9.1 meters high.
The world's largest plane was destroyed in the Ukraine War
This would make the radiation larger than Antonov AN-225 “Mriya”, the only Gigantic Cargo plane of the Soviet Union, equipped with six engines. The AN-225 owned the largest aircraft record in the world, but was destroyed during the Ukraine war in April 2022.
The radiation estimates the maximum weight of the Windrunner load at about 72.5 tonnes, smaller than the 77.5 tonnes of the C-17, although the latter was smaller in size.
However, the company stressed that he was trying to solve the problem of the volume of loading for the army.
“Modern military capabilities often end up running out of space before they run out of capacity,” radia wrote.
Windrunner says the plane at which he works will be able to carry four F-35 aircraft
The Windrunner size would allow the transport of up to four fighter jets, such as F-16 Fighting Falcon or F-35C Lightning II.
Alternatively, the plane could transport six CH-47 Chinook helicopters without the need for disassembly, each with a length of 29.9 meters. Currently, these helicopters, with a height of 5.5 meters, must have disassembled rotors to be transported by air, otherwise it would be too high to fit in C-5 Super Galaxy and C-17 aircraft.
At the maximum load, Windrunner is designed to have a range of 1,930 km, slightly below the 2,175 km of F-35C. By comparison, C-17 has an action range of approximately 4,440 km at maximum load.
Radia also wants Windrunner to be able to take off and land on unpaved tracks of at least 1,830 meters, while today's military transport aircraft need, usually, about 2,440 meters to take off with maximum load.
Radia still raises funds for the huge project
However, the company has presented so far only images generated on the computer by plane and it is not clear if it has built any prototype. The Radia communication team did not respond to the comments request sent by Business Insider outside the program hours.
However, in May, Radia announced a research partnership with the Pentagon Transport Command, a sign that the defense department studies the plane more carefully to determine if it could be feasible for the army.
The founder and general manager of Radia, Mark Lundstrom, told the BREAKINGDEFENSE website that the company wants Windrunner to start the “initial operations” by 2030 and that, to facilitate certification, he intends to build it using existing and ready plane components.
The company's defense segment, Kenneth Bibb, is a US Air Force-forces, who led the Air Mobility Command between 2020 and 2022-the air transport responsible for evacuating American troops from Afghanistan in 2021.
The startup has so far collected $ 130 million, according to the Private Pitchbook market analysis.
