Posted on 05/06/2009 5:07:37 AM PDT by pobeda1945
The history of Russia’s renowned Tu-95 strategic bombers began at the end of the 1940s, when Soviet aerospace engineer Andrei Tupolev and his team were asked to design a bomber that could be capable of flying from the USSR to the United States and back. Tupolev’s Design Bureau (known in Russia as OKB-156) put forward a suggestion to equip the new aircraft with jet-prop engines that were much more efficient and economizing in comparison with jet engines.
Tupolev’s Design Bureau started the construction of the new strategic intercontinental bomber aircraft in the beginning of the 1950s. The first test flight of the plane was performed on November 12, 1952. The serial production of Tu-95 started in 1955 – over 500 aircraft were made. The bomber was put into service in September 1957.
Unique jet-prop engines and arrowhead wings provided the highest flight efficiency for the plane. The new plane was dubbed ‘Bear’ in the West. The bomber was outfitted with X-20 nuclear warhead missiles that were capable of hitting targets at a distance of up to 600 kilometers. One plane could carry only one missile. The aircraft produced in 1958-1962 were used until the end of the 1980s.
In addition to the USSR, Tu-95 planes were deployed in Cuba, Guinea, Angola, Somali and Vietnam. The deployment geography of the new bombers allowed the strategic command of the USSR to control practically all parts of the world. All the bombers had been withdrawn from foreign bases by the beginning of the 1990s.
Tu-95K, a modified version of the bomber, became the first missile carrier in the family of Tu-95. The next version – Tu-95KM – was outfitted with X-20M cruise missiles. Afterwards, there was Tu-95M made with enhanced NK-12M engines.
All Tu-95 bombers were subsequently modernized to the level of Tu-95M.
The next generation of Tu-95 bombers, Tu-95MS, set 60 speed and flight altitude records in 1989. The serial production of the planes was suspended after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the economic crisis in Russia.
Nowadays, Russia has 28 Tu-95MS-6 and 35 Tu-95MS-16 aircraft. Ukraine has 23 of such bombers, although all of them are now defunct.
The reliability and operational simplicity of Tu-95 did not let the plane be forgotten after the introduction of the supersonic Tu-160 missile carrier.
Western fighters were - and are - often sent to intercept Tu-95s as they performed their missions along the periphery of NATO airspace, often in very close formation.
Russian Tu-95s reportedly took part in a naval exercise off the coasts of France and Spain in January 2008, alongside Tu-22M3 Backfire strategic bombers and airborne early warning aircraft.
In October 2008, during a Russian military exercise code-named Stability-2008, Tu-95MS aircraft fired live air launched cruise missiles (ALCM) for the first time since 1984. The long range of the Raduga Kh-55 ALCM means the Tu-95MS Bears have been transformed once again into a formidable strategic weapons system.
Keep believing that illusion.
AND THEY’RE QUIET, TOO! NO, I SAID QUIET!
WHAT!!!??
It’s like everthing else the commies made—it’s a piece of crap but it’s formidable because they made so many of them.
The Russkis, betting on quantity vs quality, always seem to have the alarming capability to slip something, sometime through the most sophisticated defenses.
YES, THEY ARE. THE COUNTER ROTATING PROPELLARS ON EACH ENGINE ACTUALLY CANCEL THE NOISE FROM EACH OTHER SO IT’S ALMOST SILENT. IT’S JUST LIKE A SAILPLANE; YOU ONLY HEAR THE WIND.
Read an article back in the late 80s about Russian bombers stationed at Cam Ranh Bay Vietnam. The Vietnamese didn't like the Russian troops as they never paid for anything. Most locals said they wanted Americans back.
"Commonly known by its NATO designation - the 'Bear' - the aircraft has four Kuznetsov NK-12 engines, each driving contra-rotating propellers. It remains the fastest mass-produced propeller-driven aircraft and the only turboprop-powered strategic bomber to go into operational use."
Those counter-rotating props- it must have been a tough engineering challenge to prevent the blades from smashing against each other as they fly past one-another, and get sucked towards each other by the Venturi effect.
I never take anything the Russkies do lightly. They seem to have a way of making the most seemingly useless materials into a strategic asset.
And while we’re running down the non-computerized components of the Bear, let’s remember which airplane will survive an EMP.
The Hornet is the new kid on the block...
While not strictly speaking Navair related, I think most of us have experienced these antiques.
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That’s actually a Canadian CF-18 flying with the Bear, which by Hornet standards is old.
Seeing that EA-6 makes me remember how old I am. I was at Air Forces Systems Command Headquarters when those ECM pods were developed and they were the hottest thing going back then.
Yep. Recognized it by the fake canopy on the belly. They ain't foolin' nobody.
I was at Air Forces Systems Command Headquarters when those ECM pods were developed and they were the hottest thing going back then.
I flew these when we had an internal inertial dampening INS. It flipped every time we took a cat shot. Airborne realignment was SOP.
Now, we have GPS. Before too long they will train aviators to talk to "TomTom".
We were testing voice activated controls, too. We had one test bed KC-135 that the radio and autopilot could be controlled by voice. You just said, “Radio, Set 3-1-1-point-zero. Squelch” and the radio went to 311.
I remember seeing them flying over our ship escorted by Phantoms...
We have that in the Prowler also. I simply tell the pilot, turn to 090 mag, and he does it!
Ain't technology amazing?
Trained monkeys.
Now this is an antique...one very dear to my heart, the F-100D Super Sabre.
Hehehe. That was a joke, right?
My brother-in-law use to fly those.
Has to be one of the oldest plane we still use... I mean other than the C-130s.... and the B-52.... and the KC-136... and...
It's ugly if you get flown over without fighter escorts.
Sporting his Big Bulge radar.
A-6 has been retired, but the electronic warfare version is still active with about 100 left. The A-6 was one of the best low level carrier based bombers ever, and had range that the navy really misses these days, given what they have to work with today.
Russia has some bloody fast ASMs, Mach 2-3 at sea level, or extremely high and then Mach 5 dive (AS-16 Kickback?), with 200 kiloton thermonuclear warheads. Carrier killers, or whatever else they want to vaporize. Even a 50 year old Tu-95 can carry them. Compare it to a B-2, that has to overfly the target it is to nuke, albeit it with stealth, and drop a gravity bomb, and the TU-95 isn’t exactly a light weight.
Yes, the picture is an EA-6 and that is what he use to fly.
The millitary has been saving lots of dough on standardizing things but they have done so at the expense of aircraft that do a really great job for a specific role. ‘Milti-role’ has a place but we have kind of gone overboard with it.
I never dismissed the TU-95. However, we have nuclear cruise missles as well. Not launched from B-2s, but we do have them and have had them for a long time.
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