Following the recent news that the AN-225, the world’s largest aircraft, has been destroyed by Russia in their attack on Ukraine;

William Davies, Associate Defense Analyst at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers his view:

“The destruction of the AN-225 aircraft by Russian forces is the latest blow to Ukraine’s defense industry and aerospace infrastructure which received significant investment in 2021, with the aim of providing Ukrainian forces with high-tech locally sourced equipment.

“The AN-225 was built with an extremely large storage capacity of 950 cubic meters to carry the Soviet Union Buran space orbiter. The plane’s nearest rival, the Boeing 747F, carries more than a third less cargo with a storage capacity of 650 cubic meters.

“When the plane was later converted to carry commercial and military cargo its size and speed made it a viable alternative to shipping and rail transportation as it could  transport five main battle tanks at a time and specialized as a carrier of energy production systems, electric generators and fuel for nuclear power stations.

“As the AN-225 had relatively few applications and only took around 10 flights a year, no alternative aircraft was ever produced to replace it and in the absence of an equivalent alternative it will be missed as global carrier of cargo.”