Russia possesses exactly 11 warplanes capable of flying all the way around the world, darting through U.S. air defenses and launching bombs and missiles from close range.
And just to make sure, we spent hours tracking down each one of the speedy, globe-spanning jets online, to make sure they really can all still fly.
They can. That’s good news for Russia, and bad news for any rivals hoping Moscow’s most potent long-range warplanes had simply rusted away.
The condition of the Russian air force’s supersonic Tu-160 Blackjack bombers is, after all, a matter of strategic importance—and tends to fluctuate, according to news reports.
All told, there are 16 intact Tu-160 airframes concentrated at two air bases: the front-line bomber facility at Engels in southwestern Russia and the flight test center at Zhukovsky near Moscow. As recently as two years ago, Russian media reported that just four of the 16 swing-wing warplanes were combat-ready—and the rest in disrepair and unable to take off.
The Blackjacks’ then 25-percent readiness rate made America’s finicky B-2 stealth bombers, with their 40-percent readiness, seem positively workmanlike in comparison.
The Russian warplanes’ poor condition was partially a result of their complex, non-uniform design. Essentially hand-built one by one during the 1980s and early 1990s, the Tu-160s—300 tons fully loaded, 190 feet from wingtip to wingtip—are all slightly different, making standardized and efficient maintenance pretty much impossible.
But it was the collapse of the Soviet Union and long gaps in funding that were most damaging for the Blackjacks. The factories that produced spare parts and engines for the giant bombers eventually lost most of their skilled workers. In 2011, Moscow asked Kuznetsov Design Bureau to rebuild 26 of the Tu-160 fleet's NK-32 engines in two years, but the struggling company managed to complete only four—enough for one bomber.
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