First the 707, then the DC-9, and now the C-17.
<<<<<<<<<<<<Back in 2005 two Flight colleagues -- Brendan Sobie and Andrew Doyle -- broke the story that China's Xian Aircraft Corp was developing a four-jet freighter sized between a C-130 and a C-17, and based upon some IL-76MD technology. Its max payload was expected to be around 50t and max TO weight >200t. The prototypes and the initial batch may be powered by Russian D-30KP-2/WS-18 turbofans, later by the modified WS-10.
Well, four years later, the always fantastic China Military Aviation site has posted the first images of the Y-20. Does anything about this model strike you as, you know, familiar? It's perhaps worth noting that a California jury in July convicted Dongfan Chung, a former Boeing employee, of selling secrets about the C-17, among other things, to ... guess who?
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