shrug it's honestly going to be a bit hard to compare. But for a rough guess, the AN-225 can lift like 300,000kg, and the AN-124 (from which its derived from) can lift like 230,000kg. The AN-225 has 6 of the same engines that the AN-124 has, so naively assuming roughly the same fuel use, the lift ratio is ~ 1.34 to 1 and the fuel use ratio is ~ 1.5 to 1. And the AN-124 is sufficiently cheap to operate to be in use commercially.

So by those rough guesses, the AN-225 should be ok.

That said, the moment you have a too heavy, or too big load for an AN-124, then the extra fuel cost of the AN-225 has almost infinite value.

The drawbacks to scale always have to do with complexity, and ground infrastructure. The AN-225 can't operate from as wide a variety of fields that the AN-124 can (though this shouldn't be a huge concern from commercial use).

Structurally, the modifications from the AN-124 to AN-225 aren't super complex. They basically added plugs before and after the wings to extend the fuselage, and added a wing extension. While these aren't trivial changes to an aircraft, they're basically the simplest type of structural change you can make. Oh, I guess there's a tail modification, but that's not that risky either.

I mean I guess the point is that you probaly would not want a whole-scale replacement of AN-124 class lifters with AN-225, but keeping a few around enables entire types of lifts (and therefore operations) that simply aren't possible. The key would be to estimate what the appropriate amount of AN-225 are.

For an example, the famous Beluga Airbus enables a form of manufacturing distribution (for good or for bad) that simply isn't possible without it existing. You would never want a giant fleet of Beluga, but having it is invaluable.

"Fuel" and "economic" do not have to be used explicitly in the article, or is reading and comprehension a lost art?

Take the following paragraph, for example:

> For China, the An-225 would open whole new frontiers in commercial and military air transportation. A fleet of civilian An-225s could quickly ship heavy and bulky cargoes of massive scale, ranging from construction equipment to consumer goods. For humanitarian purposes, the An-225 could support disaster relief operations, able to fly in not just large amounts of aid, but also by bringing infrastructure like power generation and water treatment that are normally too big for airlift.

That spells out in plain language why possession of the An-225 and its technologies make economic sense for China. And the paragraph after that state the military reasons why China would need the An-225.

Practically every single paragraph in that article, including image captions, either infer or directly address the economic reasons for why China would want the An-225 and its technologies.