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Last updated: Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Russian Tu-160

Tupolev Tu-160 Blackjack Bomber

Photograph by Paul Nann

After collapse of the Soviet Union the production of Tupolev Tu-160 at Kazan was terminated after 24(25) aircraft build instead of planned 100. The worst blow to Russian air force long-range strategic bomber arm (Dal'naya Aviatsia) was made by Ukrain which retained 19 operational Blackjacks and 21 Tu-95MS Bears based in Ukraine at the time of USSR collapce. Thus RusAF remained only with four Tu-160. An additional airframe was finished at Kazan, leaving DA with five bombers. The Russian government was trying to strike a deal with Ukraine for a number of years. In 1995 a deal was annonced: Ukraine will pay with Blackjacks and Bears for russian oil bill. Remaining Tu-160 and more than 30 (?) Tu-95MS will be returned to Russia:

However, Russia plans to purchase 10 Tu-160s and 15 Tu-95MS were scrapped on June 19, 1997 when Russian air force commander-in-chief, Petr Deynekin ruled out buying strategic bombers from Ukraine. Deynekin said "... the strategic bombers are in such an extremely poor condition that they could hardly be used".

Additional report said that RusAF own Blackjacks are in rather poor condition. Strategic Air Force was "on the brink of crisis", with its combat readiness at only 50% while 70% of Russia's Tu-160 Blackjacks needed major repairs. What exactly 70% out of five aircraft represent, the report failed to mention.

From: (KavanaghNY)

How does the Russian 'Blackjack' bomber compare to the B-1? How many 'Blackjacks' were built?.....does anyone one no of any web pages, ftp sites or books where I can find more info on the 'Blackjack'? and one more thing; Tu-???.

From: ssampson@icon.net (Steve Sampson)

The Blackjack does not have even half the bomb load capability of the B-1. Check Janes out. It is real shocking how limited the payload is. But I must say, that the presence of the plane made Iceland Defense Forces (IDF) obsolete. The plane could be within nuclear missle range (even without cutting across Norway) faster than the E-3 and F-15's could scramble and intercept it. Now that's power projection! Thankfully we still only saw Bear, Bison and May aircraft in the MADIZ. The May (probably akin to the P-3) was real good at laying down chaff corridors. We thought it was a big weather system before finally figuring it out :-)

From: amraam@netcom.com (Robin J. Lee)

Incidentally, the Blackjack is notorious for being unreliable and generally defective. The two that they scraped up as display craft for Secretary Carlucci's visit to the Soviet Union in 1988 both suffered engine failures and wound up flying on three engines instead of four. Loud reports of every equipment failure imaginable were heard, including ejection seat problems. It seems that the Blackjack remains a premature aircraft; that could explain the retention of cruise-missile-armed Tu-95MSs in the strategic aviation inventory until they get all the bugs ironed out.

An interesting aside is that the newly appointed Soviet Air Force commander (a strategic aviation pilot himself with over 4,000 hours in Backfires and Blackjacks) tried to keelhaul Tupolev officials for delivering a defective product that hadn't been fully tested before being dumped into service. This was during the heady days of late-stage glasnost; there was a big scandal, flight safety issues came to the fore, etc. Not sure if it went any further, though -- the Tu-160s are still in the inventory.