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You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. Entering service in 1987, the Tu-160 was the last strategic bomber designed for the Soviet Union. As of 2016, the Russian Air Force’s Long Range Aviation branch has at least 16 aircraft in service. The first competition for a supersonic strategic heavy bomber was launched in the Soviet Union in 1967. Work on the new Soviet bomber continued despite an end to the B-1A and in the same year, the design was accepted by the government committee.
The prototype was photographed by an airline passenger at a Zhukovsky Airfield in November 1981, about a month before the aircraft’s first flight on 18 December 1981. The modernised aircraft were accepted into Russian service after testing in late 2005. The upgrade also integrated the ability to launch two new conventional versions of the long-range Kh-55 nuclear cruise missile—the Kh-101 and Kh-555. 10 aircraft receiving new engines and capability upgrades after 2016. On 29 April 2015, defence minister Sergei Shoigu said Russia was resuming production of the Tu-160. Kazan Aviation Plant, signifying a restoration of certain production technologies such as electro-beam welding or titanium work reportedly lost after the termination of serial production in 1992. The maiden flight of the newly assembled Tu-160M2 reportedly occurred at the end of 2017 followed by the flight testing that started in January 2018.
In January 2018, Vladimir Putin, while visiting the Kazan Aviation Plant, floated an idea of creating a civilian passenger supersonic transport version of Tu-160. The Tu-160 is a variable-geometry wing aircraft. The Tu-160 is powered by four Kuznetsov NK-32 afterburning turbofan engines, the most powerful ever fitted to a combat aircraft. A demilitarized, commercial version of the Tu-160, named Tu-160SK, was displayed at Asian Aerospace in Singapore in 1994 with a model of a small space vehicle named Burlak attached underneath the fuselage. The Tu-160 is also larger and faster than the B-1B and has a slightly greater combat range, though the B-1B has a larger combined payload.
