The largest helicopter ever to reach serial production, designed by the Mil bureau to move 20 tonnes of armoured vehicles and missile equipment into places fixed-wing transports cannot reach. It has been in production since 1980, serves with around a dozen air arms and civil operators, and still holds the world record for the greatest mass lifted by a helicopter. Developed by Rostvertol (Mil Moscow Helicopter Plant).
The largest helicopter ever to reach serial production, designed by the Mil bureau to move 20 tonnes of armoured vehicles and missile equipment into places fixed-wing transports cannot reach. Developed by Rostvertol (Mil Moscow Helicopter Plant).
See Specifications for full detail.
The Mil Mi-26, NATO reporting name Halo, is a Soviet and Russian heavy transport helicopter built by Rostvertol and designed by the Mil Moscow Helicopter Plant under the product code Izdeliye 90. It first flew on 14 December 1977, entered service in 1983, and is the largest helicopter ever to reach serial production - only the twin-rotor Mil V-12, of which two prototypes were built, was bigger. [1]
It carries 20 tonnes internally or on the sling, or 90 troops, on the power of two 11,400 shp turboshafts driving a single eight-blade rotor 105 ft across. Over 300 have been built since 1980, and the type remains in production and in service with around a dozen air arms and civil operators. [1] [2]
Work on the Izdeliye 90 began in the early 1970s after the heavier Mil V-12 - a twin-rotor design that remains the largest helicopter ever flown - failed to reach production. The new aircraft was to replace both the V-12 and the Mi-6, then the world's largest and fastest production helicopter, and the specification set one requirement that shaped everything else: empty weight had to come in under half of maximum takeoff weight. Marat Tishchenko, who had been Mikhail Mil's protege at OKB-329, led the design. [1]
The mission was specific rather than general-purpose. The Soviet Army needed to move equipment such as 13-tonne amphibious armoured personnel carriers and mobile ballistic missile systems onward to remote locations after an An-22 or Il-76 had flown them to a usable airfield. The first aircraft flew on 14 December 1977, the first production machine rolled out on 4 October 1980, development was completed in 1983, and by 1985 the type was in both military and commercial Soviet service. Its payload of up to 20 tonnes is double the Mi-6's, for only a slightly higher empty weight. [1]
The Mi-26 was the first factory-built helicopter with a single eight-blade main lift rotor, a solution to putting 22,800 shp through one rotor disc without making the blades impractically large. The tail rotor is on a scale of its own: five blades of roughly the same diameter and thrust as the complete four-blade main rotor of an MD Helicopters MD 500. Two ZMKB Progress D-136 turboshafts drive the system through a load-sharing arrangement that allows continued flight after the loss of one engine, depending on mission weight. [1] [2]
The gearbox is the aircraft's real engineering achievement, and it exists because nobody else could build it. Mil's usual gearbox supplier could not meet the requirement, so the design bureau developed the VR-26 transmission in-house using a non-planetary split-torque layout with quill shafts for torque equalisation. The result absorbs 14,700 kW for a weight of 3,639 kg in a stamped aluminium housing - a power-to-weight figure that the American CH-53K's later split-torque gearbox, handling a third of the power, is measured against. [1]
On 3 February 1982 an Mi-26 lifted 56,768.8 kg to an altitude of 2,000 m, taking the Federation Aeronautique Internationale record for the greatest mass carried by a helicopter to that height. More than four decades later the record still stands. [1]
The commercial record is a catalogue of loads nothing else could take. In October 1999 an Mi-26 lifted a 23-tonne block of frozen soil containing the 23,000-year-old Jarkov mammoth out of the Siberian tundra to a laboratory at Khatanga, and the aircraft had to be returned to the factory afterwards to be checked for airframe and rotor warping. In early 2002 a civil Mi-26 was leased for $300,000 to recover a damaged U.S. Army MH-47E Chinook from a mountain in Afghanistan: stripped of fuel, rotors and non-essential equipment the Chinook still weighed about 12 tonnes, well beyond the 9.1-tonne payload a CH-53E could manage at that 2,600 m altitude. A second Chinook was recovered the same way six months later. In December 2012 a Russian Mi-26 lifted a Royal Norwegian Air Force Sea King off Mount Divgagaisa after it broke its landing gear in a forced landing, and in May 2008 at least one Chinese civil Mi-26 carried earth-moving tractors into the Tangjiashan quake lakes after the Sichuan earthquake, ground only reachable on foot or by air. [1]
Thirty Mi-26s were committed to the Chernobyl containment effort in 1986, flying radiation measurement sorties and making precision drops of insulating material onto the ruined No. 4 reactor. The work drove a purpose-built variant, the Mi-26S, developed at speed during the operation. [1]
The Mi-26S added a tank of decontaminating liquid with an underbelly spraying rig, and - because the aircraft had to work in immediate proximity to the reactor - a cabin filter system and protective screens to shield the crew while construction materials were delivered into the most heavily contaminated areas. Disaster response has remained a core role: Russia's Ministry of Emergency Situations is one of the type's primary users, and the firefighting Mi-26TP carries a 15,000-litre internal retardant tank. [1]
On 19 August 2002 a Russian Air Force Mi-26 of the 487th Separate Helicopter Regiment was hit by a 9K38 Igla missile fired by Chechen separatists as it approached Khankala airbase near Grozny. It crash-landed in a minefield and 127 of the 147 people on board were killed, some of them by anti-personnel mines as they tried to evacuate the wreck. The aircraft was carrying 142 passengers against a design figure of 80 troops, and reporting at the time indicated that flights into Khankala routinely ran at 100 to 110 people plus cargo. Putin declared a national day of mourning, the head of army aviation was suspended and later resigned, and a lieutenant-colonel was charged with negligence and breach of flight regulations. It remains the deadliest accident in the history of helicopter aviation. [3] [4]
In July 2009 a Moldovan-registered Mi-26 operated by Pecotox Air on a NATO-contracted humanitarian flight was shot down in Helmand province, Afghanistan, killing its six Ukrainian crew. On 14 December 2010 an Indian Air Force Mi-26 fell from about 15 m seconds after taking off from Jammu Airport, injuring all nine passengers; the investigation found that a truck had been improperly secured inside and unbalanced the aircraft. India later retired its remaining three Mi-26s - two needed very expensive overhauls, which the type requires often because it operates close to the strength limits of its materials - and bought CH-47F Chinooks instead. Russian Mi-26s were used during the 2022 Kharkiv counteroffensive to move reinforcements and armoured vehicles to the front near Izium and Kupiansk. [1]
Production continues at Rostvertol. A 2010 contract covered refurbishment of the roughly 20 Russian Air Force aircraft to something close to Mi-26T standard plus 22 new-build machines; 17 new helicopters had been delivered by 2014, with further deliveries to the Russian Aerospace Forces in 2016, 2017 and 2019. The current military standard is the Mi-26T2V, first flown in August 2018 and in delivery since at least 2023, which adds automatic route flying, the Vitebsk defensive aids suite, anti-blast seats and night-vision-compatible displays. [1]
Replacing the aircraft has proved harder than improving it. A joint Russian-Chinese 33-tonne heavy-lift helicopter was announced in 2010, Rostec signed an agreement on a 40-tonne next-generation design in early 2019, and development of a PD-12V turboshaft - derived from the PD-14 turbofan - began in 2016. That engine work is not optional: the D-136 was built by ZMKB Progress and Motor Sich in Zaporizhzhia, so the type's powerplant has been on the wrong side of a closed border since 2014 and a domestic Russian replacement is the condition of continued production. Reporting in 2021 put total production above 360 airframes with the line expected to run into the late 2020s, and recent export customers have been Venezuela, Algeria and Jordan. None of the replacement projects has produced an aircraft, so the Mi-26 remains what it has been since 1983: the only helicopter in production anywhere that can lift 20 tonnes. Iran's Red Crescent Society announced in September 2024 an understanding to evaluate two aircraft with a possible follow-on order of twenty. [1] [5]
Search Flightradar24 for type code MI26. The reliable sightings are civil aircraft: UTair Mi-26Ts working oilfield and construction contracts across western Siberia, and China Flying Dragon aircraft on firefighting and heavy-lift work in northern China. Military Mi-26s in Russia, Algeria and Jordan rarely transmit a position that the site resolves.
| Performance | |
| Max Speed | 159 kn (183 mph / 295 km/h) |
|---|---|
| Cruise SpeedCruise Speed — The economical speed an aircraft sustains for the bulk of a flight - lower than maximum speed, chosen for the best balance of time and fuel burn. Glossary → | 158 mph |
| RangeRange — How far an aircraft can fly without refuelling. Quoted figures vary with payload, speed and reserves - see also ferry range and combat radius. Glossary → | 310 mi carrying 17,000 lb of cargo; 1,193 mi ferry range with auxiliary tanks |
| Service CeilingService Ceiling — The highest altitude at which an aircraft can still climb at a useful rate (typically 100 ft/min). Above it, the air is too thin to keep climbing meaningfully. Glossary → | 15,100 ft |
| Hover Ceiling (IGE/OGE) | OGE: 5,000 ft at maximum gross weight |
| Airframe & Weight | |
| Main Rotor Diameter | 105 ft 0 in |
| Tail Rotor Diameter | 24 ft 11 in |
| Length | 109 ft 11 in fuselage; 131 ft 4 in rotors turning |
| Height | 26 ft 9 in |
| WeightMTOW — Maximum Take-Off Weight - the heaviest an aircraft is certified to be at the start of its take-off run, including fuel, crew, payload and the aircraft itself. Glossary → | empty: 62,170 lb; MTOW: 123,459 lb |
| Rotor Blades | 8 main, 5 tail |
| Power & Payload | |
| Engines | 2 x ZMKB Progress (Lotarev) D-136 turboshafts, 11,400 shp (8,500 kW) each, with a load-sharing system that allows flight on one engine depending on mission weight |
| Crew | 5 (2 pilots, navigator, flight engineer, flight technician) |
| CapacityPayload — Everything an aircraft is carrying that isn't the aircraft or its fuel: passengers, cargo, or weapons. Payload and fuel usually trade off against each other. Glossary → | 90 troops, or 60 stretcher cases, or 44,000 lb of cargo in a hold 39 ft 4 in long, 10 ft 10 in wide and up to 10 ft 6 in high |
| External Load | 44,000 lb external sling load - the same figure as its internal payload |
| Program & Service | |
| Manufacturer | Rostvertol (Mil Moscow Helicopter Plant) |
| Origin | Russia |
| First Flight | December 14th 1977 |
| Service Entry | 1983 |
| Number Built | 300 |
| Unit Cost | Not publicly disclosed - Rostvertol has never published a list price, and Mi-26 export deals are bundled with other helicopter types, spares and overhaul work rather than broken out per aircraft |
| Combat Losses | Two documented shoot-downs. A Russian Air Force Mi-26 was brought down by a 9K38 Igla missile at Khankala, Chechnya on 19 August 2002, killing 127 of the 147 people aboard. A Moldovan-registered civil Mi-26 flying a NATO-contracted humanitarian mission was shot down in Helmand province, Afghanistan in July 2009, killing its six Ukrainian crew. |
8 notable events involving the Mi-26 Halo, 1982 to 2012. 133 deaths are recorded across the 3 of these with a figure listed. Curated rather than exhaustive.
An Mi-26 lifted 56,768.8 kg (125,000 lb) to an altitude of 2,000 m, setting the FAI record for the greatest mass carried by a helicopter to that height. The record was still standing more than forty years later.
Beginning the day after the reactor explosion, thirty Mi-26s were used for radiation measurement and precision drops of insulating material onto the ruined No. 4 reactor. The work produced the purpose-built Mi-26S, with a decontamination spray rig and cabin filters and screens to shield the crew.
An Mi-26 carried a 23-tonne block of frozen soil containing a preserved woolly mammoth from the Siberian tundra to an ice cave at Khatanga. The load was heavy enough that the helicopter was returned to the factory afterwards to be checked for airframe and rotor warping.
A Russian Air Force Mi-26 carrying 142 passengers and five crew, against a design figure of 80 troops, was hit by a 9K38 Igla missile on approach to Khankala airbase near Grozny and crash-landed in a minefield. 127 of the 147 people aboard were killed, some by anti-personnel mines while evacuating the wreck.
After the magnitude 8.0 Sichuan earthquake, at least one Chinese civil Mi-26 carried heavy earth-moving tractors into the Tangjiashan quake lakes, terrain that could otherwise only be reached on foot, to relieve landslide dams before they failed.
An Mi-26 belonging to Pecotox Air, flying a humanitarian mission under NATO contract, was shot down in Helmand province, Afghanistan. All six Ukrainian crew members were killed.
An Indian Air Force Mi-26 fell from about 15 m seconds after taking off from Jammu Airport while carrying railway construction machinery. All nine passengers were injured. The investigation found a truck inside had been improperly fastened, unbalancing the helicopter.
A Royal Norwegian Air Force Westland Sea King made an emergency landing on Mount Divgagaisa on 11 December 2012 and broke its landing gear. After its rotor blades and fuel were removed, a Russian Mi-26 airlifted it to Banak Air Station.
| Mi-26 / Mi-26T | The two baseline versions. The Mi-26 is the military cargo and troop transport that entered service in 1983, NATO reporting name Halo-A. The Mi-26T, in production from 1985, is the civil freight version and became the most widely exported model, forming the basis of the flying-crane, firefighting and medical conversions below. Between them they account for the great majority of the 300-plus airframes built. |
| Mi-26S | A disaster-response conversion developed at speed during the Chernobyl containment effort in 1986. It carried a tank of decontaminating liquid and an underbelly spraying rig, and was fitted with a cabin filter system and protective screens so crews could work in close proximity to the ruined reactor while delivering construction materials into the most heavily contaminated areas. |
| Mi-26TS / TM / TP / MS / P | The civil mission conversions of the Mi-26T. The TS (marketed as TC) is a cargo transport; the TM is a flying crane with an under-nose gondola for a dedicated crane operator; the TP is a firefighter with a 15,000-litre internal retardant tank; the MS is a medical version taking up to 60 stretcher cases or fitted out as an intensive-care unit or field hospital; and the P is a 63-seat passenger version, with the PK a flying-crane derivative of it. |
| Mi-26T2 | An improved civil Mi-26T fitted with the BREO-26 airborne electronics suite, which allows day, night and poor-weather operation and cuts the flight crew requirement. Serial production began on 22 May 2015 with Algeria as launch export customer, and Jordan took delivery of its first aircraft in January 2018. |
| Mi-26T2V | The current military modernisation for the Russian armed forces, first flown in August 2018 and in delivery since at least 2023. It adds the NPK90-2V avionics suite, which can fly a route automatically, the Vitebsk airborne defence complex against infrared-guided missiles, anti-blast crew seats, new navigation and satellite communications, and multifunction cockpit displays compatible with night-vision goggles. |
| Mi-26A / Mi-26M | Two upgrade attempts that never reached production. The Mi-26A of 1985 introduced a new flight and navigation system and flew, but was not ordered. The Mi-26M proposed re-engining the aircraft with ZMKB Progress D-127 turboshafts for better hot-and-high performance and payload, and likewise went no further than proposal stage. |
| Mi-27 | A proposed airborne command post version, of which two prototypes were built in 1988. It carried foldable antennas for use both in flight and on the ground. The programme did not proceed, and the designation was later reused for an unrelated Mil attack helicopter proposal. |
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