Tupolev Tu-160

Tu-160
Tupolev Tu-160 in flight over Russia, August 2005
Role	Supersonic strategic heavy bomber Type of aircraft
National origin	Soviet Union / Russia
Design group	Tupolev
Built by	Kazan Aircraft Production Association
First flight	18 December 1981
Introduction	April 1987
Status	In service
Primary users	Russian Aerospace Forces Soviet Air Forces (historical) Ukrainian Air Force (historical)
Produced	1984–1992, 2002, 2008, 2017, 2021–present
Number built	41 (9 test and 32 serial)[citation needed]

The Tupolev Tu-160 (Russian: Туполев Ту-160 Белый лебедь, romanized: Bely Lebed, lit. 'White Swan';^[1] NATO reporting name: Blackjack) is a supersonic, variable-sweep wing nuclear-capable heavy strategic bomber and airborne missile platform designed by the Tupolev Design Bureau in the Soviet Union in the 1970s. It is the largest and heaviest Mach 2+ supersonic military aircraft ever built and second to the experimental XB-70 Valkyrie in overall length and top speed. As of 2024, it is the largest and heaviest combat aircraft, the fastest bomber in use and the largest and heaviest variable-sweep wing airplane ever flown. The Tu-160 is operated by the Long Range Aviation of the Russian Aerospace Forces.^[2]

Entering service in 1987, the Tu-160 was the last strategic bomber designed for the Soviet Air Forces and was built to serve as a conventional and nuclear-capable strike aircraft. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the newly independent Ukraine inherited a fleet of 19 Tu-160s, over half of all the Tu-160s in existence at that time. They had been deployed there since the late 1980s with local Soviet Air Force units and were soon afterwards handed over to the newly formed Ukrainian Air Force. Following protracted negotiations, 11 Ukrainian Tu-160s were purchased by the Russian Federation while the remainder were scrapped in the late 1990s under the Nunn–Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction agreement. Following these actions, the sole operator of the type is the Russian Aerospace Forces' Long Range Aviation branch, which has 16 Tu-160s in service as of 2016.^[3] The type had its combat debut in November 2015 during the Russian military intervention in the Syrian Civil War, conducting numerous airstrikes using Kh-101 air-launched cruise missiles. Various overseas deployments have been conducted, including to distant nations such as Venezuela and South Africa.

Since the early 2000s, the active fleet has been subject to several upgrades, largely focusing on various electronics systems. The Tu-160M modernization program of existing models began with the first updated aircraft delivered in December 2014. Plans announced in 2015 called for the delivery of 50 new-build Tu-160Ms as well as the upgrading of 16 existing aircraft.^{[4][full citation needed]} In January 2022, a newly-built Tu-160M performed a test flight,^[5] the first of the resumed serial production, with two planned for delivery in 2022^[6] from 10 on order.^[7][4]