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Sukhoi KR-860 / SKD-717

KR-860 was a Suhkoi design that would have been one of the largest aircraft in the world had it been built, with weights about 650 tons (Antonov An-225 weight is 600 tons), payload about 300 tons (An-225 payload is 250 tons) and 860 to 1000 passengers. The development of the KR-860 project (KR stands for Kryl'ya Rossii = Wings of Russia, with 860 passengers) had started in the early 1990s under the nomenclature SKD-717 ["SKD" expansion is un-reported, presumably with 717 passengers]. Mikahil Simonov mentioned this project as a very important and perspective for the future of the Design Bureau. However this thought wasn't shared by everybody. Many NATO thouth the project is unperceptive because of high cost and reliability of the engines. They said that Sukhoi should co-operate more deeply with western companies to turn the KR-860 into production.

In June 1990, the Airbus board gave the green light to move forward with UHCA: Ultra High Capacity Aircraft project, and presented it at the Farnborough Airshow that year. The rest of the commercial aircraft manufacturers understood that Airbus was serious, and it was at a crossroads: go out to compete in the same segment, or wait and see where the industry was going.

The analysis of domestic and world experience shows: the efficiency of an air vehicle increases in parallel with an increase in its take-off mass. Hence, the main builders began to design the rivals of the A380. Initially, Boeing worked on designs which it discarded shortly thereafter, because it considered that the Asian market - which was aimed at conquering all manufacturers - was not going to grow at a pace that could wake up immediate interest in the plane.

In the Soviet Union and subsequent Russia, three models were proposed for a superjumbo of 500 passengers or more. Basedd on the successful (by the standards of Communism) Il-96 was proposed with the same double cabin configuration as the A380.Due to financing problems, it did not pass from the design table and some models. Subsequently, the Ilyushin design bureau tried to revive it under the name Il-196, with a different engine configuration, but it did not prosper.

It was quite natural that the truly unique scientific and technical reserve accumulated by Sukhoi Design Bureau over the course of decades was decided to be used when creating promising transport aircraft designed to win their place on the world market. At the same time, an unconventional view of the aerodynamic layout and structural solutions of such machines, typical of the creators of fighter aircraft, was supposed to “pour fresh blood” into civil aircraft construction and provide a real technical breakthrough in this area.

The Sukhoi project was first presented in France. In August 1999, general constructor said that if it will be turn into international project then we will see the KR-860 in the skies within 2-3 years. The KR-860 would trump anything being entertained by the contemporary Airbus A3XX and Boeing 747X projects. The outer-wing section would fold to allow the KR-860 to access the same airports as the 747.

The airplane weighed about 650 tons (An-225 is 600 tons) with a total capacity of 860-1000 passengers of different classes. The cost of the program was estimated at about 93 billion euro. Each passenger airliner was worth about 186 million euro. According to Airbus Industry, there is a big market for such aircraft all over the world (over 1500 airliners).

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of the new “heavy truck” for civil freight traffic within the country. Calculations show that the cost of transportation of goods on board the KR-860 should come close to the cost of transportation by rail. Compared with Ruslan and other heavy carriers, the new machine should take 1.5-2 times more cargo containers on board (one of the loading options is thirty 40-foot railway-class containers). It should be borne in mind that the cost of contents of containers traveling at a "low speed" by rail or slowly sailing by the sea is "frozen" for the duration of the journey. To this time, Russia itself needed about 300 of those aircraft as a heavy cargo transporters. KR-860 is capable of carrying over 300 tons of cargo. One such aircraft would cost 130-140 million euro.

Originally designed for passenger transport, a KR-860T version (T stands for Tanker) was later proposed for use as an air carrier for liquefied natural gas (LNG) for distant regions. Taking advantage of the presence of LNG in aircraft, the proposed design was to use LNG to power the turbines, rather than conventional jet fuel , as on Tupolev Tu-206.

When creating the “Wings of Russia”, wide (and necessary) wide domestic cooperation is possible. In 1997, negotiations were already underway between the Sukhoi, Tupolev and Yakovlev Design Bureau on joint work to create such an aircraft. In the future, these contacts will certainly continue. In particular, the experience of ANTK them. Tupolev will be indispensable in the development of a variant of the machine using liquefied gas as fuel. Production of the KR-860 can be organized at the Kazan Aviation Plant, which has extensive experience in building heavy, the most modern aircraft of its time - Tu-22, Il-62, Tu-204, Tu-160. Perhaps participation in the program and other aircraft manufacturing enterprises of the country. According to the OKB, if a decision is made to begin full-scale work under the program, the first production aircraft KR-860 can be built in 6 - 6.5 years.

It also can be used at Europe - Asia airlines. A cargo version, the KR-860T, was planned. With an expected market of about 300 aircraft, the bet was to seduce Western operators by offering General Electric or PW engines, and up to 1000 passengers in a high density configuration. At the 1999 Paris Motor Show, Sukhoi presented a 1/24 scale model, which generated more doubts than certainties, especially for details such as the design of the drop-shaped cockpit and the double front train, for example. A short time later it was abandoned and was archived forever.