Europe's four-engine military transport aircraft, combining strategic payload-range performance with tactical access to short or unprepared runways and optional tanker, aeromedical and special-mission roles.
The Embraer C-390 Millennium is the fastest-selling Western tactical airlifter — a Brazilian twin-jet eating the C-130 replacement market with ~57 firm orders across ten customers from Portugal to South Korea to the UAE, and an Indian tender worth up to 80 more in play.
China's first indigenous strategic airlifter — a four-engine heavy transport known as the Kunpeng that bridges the PLA's force-projection gap, and the basis for a fast-growing aerial tanker fleet that extends Chinese airpower far beyond the first island chain.
Russia's heavy four-engine strategic airlifter, in service since 1974 and now modernised as the Il-76MD-90A with PS-90A engines, serving as the backbone of operational lift and the platform for the A-50 AWACS and Il-78 tanker.
The Boeing C-17 Globemaster III is a long-range heavy airlifter that combines intercontinental reach with the ability to operate from short, austere airfields, serving as the backbone of U.S. and allied strategic airlift since 1995.