The code name in NATO records is explicit: Condor. It is difficult to make it go unnoticed, wherever you place its 73 meters of wingspan and 69 meters of length. A giant of the air, or rather "the" giant, given that the atlas of the skies leaves no room for doubt: the Antonov 124-100 is the largest cargo plane in the world. In its "hold belly" it is capable of ingesting anything, planes, helicopters, trains, tanks and every "evil" that the global war industry orders it to fly from one part of the world to another. After all, it doesn't need a high-altitude distributor to move from one ocean to another.
Flight record
In 1987 he set his world record: 20,151 km on a single tank, 25 hours and 30 minutes in flight with a take-off weight of 455,000 kilograms. It is the engineering son of the ancient Soviet Union, its production, however, for logistical reasons, remained in the Ukrainian enclave after the dissolution of Stalin's land and before the Russian invasion. It was designed in the 1970s to speed up wars and invasions, to fly all kinds of instruments of death without wasting time. It was born as the flying arm of the great Soviet military power, so powerful, however, that it tempted the air fleets of the entire world.
Russian for NATO
It is no coincidence that this pachyderm of the skies is now at the service of none other than NATO: "strategic transport" state the contracts with the western appendages of what was the Russian-Ukrainian flagship. The same planes that NATO and the Americans have rented from «Salis Gmbh» since the 2000s for the landing of heavy vehicles for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Civil aircraft, in theory, dedicated, however, to the most devastating loads, those of death. The first big difference compared to a traditional cargo is in the radar tracks: it is forbidden to know take-off and landing, the departure airport is denied, and the arrival airport is worse. No one, today more than ever, needs to know when and where. Coded messages are reserved only for essential structures, control towers at maximum, security services alerted discreetly.
