The Aerotrain and the smaller ekranoplans have been covered here before, but the Lun-class MD-160 deserves its own entry — it was the only operational combat ekranoplan ever built, and its 2020 fate says everything about how the West still doesn't know what to do with ground-effect technology.

Designed by Rostislav Alexeyev's Central Hydrofoil Design Bureau in Nizhny Novgorod, the MD-160 (NATO reporting name: Utka, "Duck") entered Soviet Navy service in 1987. It was 73 meters long, weighed 380 tonnes fully loaded, and cruised at 550 km/h (340 mph) roughly 4 meters above the water surface. Eight Kuznetsov NK-87 turbofans mounted on canard-like pylons blew exhaust under the stub wings to generate the "power-augmented ram" effect that got it out of the water; once airborne in ground effect, four of the eight engines could be shut down for cruise.

Its payload was six P-270 Moskit (SS-N-22 Sunburn) supersonic anti-ship missiles in dorsal launch tubes — the same missiles that were designed to sink American carriers. A Lun could sprint from Baku to the Persian Gulf entrance in under three hours, launch six Mach-3 sea-skimmers, and be back before a carrier group's E-2 Hawkeyes had processed the initial radar return. It flew below most surface-search radar horizons, was invisible to submarines (no wake, no acoustic signature), and moved faster than any ship afloat.

Why it died: The USSR collapsed in 1991. The second hull, being converted to a search-and-rescue variant called Spasatel, was 90% complete at the Volga shipyard when funding evaporated. The operational MD-160 sat at Kaspiysk naval base for 30 years. In 2020 it was towed 100 km down the Caspian coast to Derbent to become a museum piece — the tow itself made international news because nobody had seen it move in decades. It now sits on a beach, corroding.

Why it deserves a second look in 2026:

• Composite structures: The Lun was aluminum-magnesium alloy — heavy, corrosion-prone in salt spray. Modern carbon-fiber composites (the same used on the 787 fuselage) would cut empty weight ~30% and eliminate the corrosion problem that grounded it.
• Fly-by-wire: The Lun required two pilots and a flight engineer working constantly to manage ground-effect stability. Modern FBW with radar altimeters accurate to centimeters — the same tech in autonomous aerial refueling — makes ground-effect flight trivial.
• Turbofan efficiency: The NK-87s burned kerosene at 1970s specific fuel consumption. Modern high-bypass turbofans (PW1000G, LEAP-1) cut fuel burn 40%+ at cruise.
• The mission finally makes sense: China's DF-21D and DF-26 anti-ship ballistic missiles have made large surface combatants a targeting problem. Distributed maritime operations need fast, low-signature transports for moving Marines, missiles, and cargo across contested littorals — Taiwan Strait, South China Sea, GIUK gap. A modernized Lun carries 100 tons of cargo at 300+ knots below radar horizon. Nothing in the U.S. inventory does that.

Boeing's Pelican ULTRA concept (2002) proposed exactly this and died in PowerPoint. DARPA's Liberty Lifter program (2022–present) is finally admitting the Soviets were right, targeting a 100-ton WIG-craft for 2028 first flight. The Lun proved the physics in 1987. We just needed 40 years to admit it.