With the ability to transport an Army brigade of 3,000 troops and 7 and a half thousand tons of equipment within ninety-six hours, this colossal aircraft design would have put America’s army right on the world front door.And it couldn’t be built fast enough, with the pentagon ramping up design to deliver a fleet of aircraft by the end of 2020.
source/image(PrtSc): Found And Explained
Its 500-foot wingspan would make it the largest military transport in the world, regulating the Antonov 225 to look like a regional jet, but the accountants at Boeing thought why stop there? They came up with grand plans to change commercial and cargo aviation as well. video by: Found And Explained
But it never happened, and the year 2020 came and went without the ULTRA plane gracing our skies. Design work on the Pelican Super Transport plane began at Boeing Phantom Works in 2000. The brief from the United States military was fairly straightforward: design a plane large enough to transport thousands of troops, military equipment and other needed provisions during wartime or at the height of battle as fast as possible.
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By the way, the Pelican was conceptually very simple: it was a massive, conventional wing-body-tail cantilevered monoplane, whose payload would be carried in standard sea-going containers inside the enormous, unpressurised fuselage. via/read more: Found And Explained
These specs included:
- 1. a 500-foot or 152 metre wingspan
- 2. a wing area of over one acre, which is 43,560 square feet or 4,047 square metres
- 3. A maximum take-off weight or MTOW of 6 million pounds or 2.7 million kilograms, or 2,700 metric tons. That is equal in weight to 7-and-a-half fully-loaded Boeing 747s!
- 4. a payload of 1,270 tons of cargo
- 6. The ability to move the equivalent of 17 M-1 Abrams tanks
