Tu-160 "White Swan"

It is clearly for a supersonic bomber, but is it for Blackjack or is it for the Tu-22M3M?

Except that the new systems are supposed to unify the design and systems including radar between the Three Tupolevs so it could be both the Backfire and Blackjack and Bear...

We are seeing the aircraft now... it could have started testing 15 years ago for all we know...

Unless they have developed a new more efficient supersonic shape I don't think they would change the shape of the nose to suit the radar... it is more likely it will be designed for aerodynamic and RCS features...

Bit more detail

A highly modified commercial aircraft, called the Tu-214LMK, completed its first test flight after an upgrade in order to perform flight test of new avionics and sensors for Russian next-generation strategic bomber. Russian news media have reported that heavily modified Tu-214LMK (registration number 64507) aircraft completed its first test flight at the Gorbunov Kazan Aviation Plant on 29 December.

According to the official PJSC Tupolev comment, “the purpose of the upgrade of the Tu-214LMK testbed is to create a flying laboratory for testing in-flight onboard equipment complexes of the Tu-160 and in the future – the PAK DA bombers”.

The Tu-214LMK flying testbed has been retrofitted in order to perform flight-test the highly advanced integrated avionics developed for the upgraded and next-generation strategic bombers.

Tu-214LMK’s modifications include installation of a Tu-160M2 radar (PAK DA radar in future) housed in the forward fuselage section of the nose of the plane. The Tu-214LMK testbed will reduce risk as well as future flight test hours by enabling extensive in-flight testing, evaluation and troubleshooting before much of the avionics were installed on the new bombers.

The upgraded Tupolev Tu-160M2 strategic bombers will start arriving for Russia’s long-range aviation soon.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has ordered the first 10 Tu-160M2 strategic bombers from United Aircraft Corporation (UAC), in a deal worth RUB160 billion (USD2.7 billion dollars), the ministry said on 25 January 2018. The signing ceremony took place during a visit by President Vladimir Putin to the Gorbunov Kazan Aviation Plant, also attended by the head of UAC, Yuri Slyusar, and Deputy Defence Minister Yuri Borisov.

In the process of its upgrade, the bomber will get a principally new avionics suite and the onboard integrated data control system. The Tu-160M2 will also feature satellite navigation systems, the short-range radio-technical navigation systems, the air signal systems, the defensive aids suite, the electronic warfare complex and other promising systems.

https://defence-blog.com/news/russia-launches-flying-testbed-for-strategic-bomber-upgrades.html

The yellow part seems to be made of composite while the white part should be made of stronger material. So they could be testing how it affects the radar.

Isos wrote:The yellow part seems to be made of composite while the white part should be made of stronger material. So they could be testing how it affects the radar.

Also small yellow dome under rear fuselage.

Actually I would suspect the yellow material is composite aircraft structure, while the white material is probably radar transparent dielectric material that does not interfere with radar waves.

My interpretation of that would be that they are talking about two upgrades... the aircraft they already have in service will start to be serially upgraded and begin to enter service by 2022, but there were the two unfinished models that have not been operational and have been completed and one will be tested this year and get handed over in 2021.

New from scratch production of the Tu-160M2 probably wont start until these upgrades are complete and tested... I suspect new aircraft will start production alongside the upgrade of existing models after 2022.

Hole wrote:"As reported, at the Kazan Aviation Plant (a branch of Tupolev, part of the KLA ), after 10 years of interruption, the production of Tu-160 strategic bomber-bomber bombers, which are the air component of the nuclear triad, is being restored."

The Tu-160 is so mighty that one reference to its profession is not enough. It´s not a bomber, it´s a bomber bomber bomber!!!  

It is a bomber that carries bombers (kh-101) that carries bombs (warheads) so no mistake in the name

I dunno why he said: create, build and going to series?since it is upgrade only?! and why he said about 160M only not M2? ok lest wait till puzzles will be solved.

Again, just my interpretation... the new builds are pretty much prototypes to make sure everything works and if there are no problems, remember these new builds are built on the same basic shape and structure as the in service aircraft so using them to fit everything in and make sure it works means once tested and passed the method of upgrade can be serially applied to the in service flying model, then you could start serial upgrade of the older aircraft while preparing for production of new build Tu-160M2s which can have more serious upgrades and changes in shape and design applied.

I am interested in seeing how much they can increase dry thrust... if they could get it to approaching the full AB thrust of the current engines then the potential for super cruising would be enormous.

In comparison the F-14A and the F-14D... the latter had new much more powerful engines (and much better engines) and could take off from a carrier without using AB.

It is difficult to explain...

Lets pretend it is a car but that the only way to drive faster than 100km/h right now is to use a turbocharger that doubles the fuel burn by just throwing fuel into the engine to generate more power.

New engines are more powerful than older engines but often have the same or better fuel efficiency.

Before if you had the car accelerator pedal hard to the floor you did 100km/h but to go faster you had to engage the turbo, which often more than doubled the fuel consumption so it greatly shortened your driving distance because it burned fuel so rapidly even though you were going 150km/hour you were burning three or four times more fuel so it was just cheaper and easier to go without turbo at 100km/h.

The issue is that if you have a long way to cover and you have others trying to catch you, going faster is actually useful.

Supercruising aircraft are basically supersonic aircraft shaped aircraft... so we are talking formula one cars and not campervans here.

But they have a much more powerful engine... say a V8 which will use more fuel than the current car but only because it generates more power. The fuel burn per horse power per hour might be exactly the same, but the normal car has 80hp without the turbo and maybe 160hp with the turbo, while the V8 might be a 150hp engine without using a turbo and may or may not even have a turbo.

When the normal car wants to move faster than 100km/h it needs to greatly increase its fuel consumption by using its turbocharger.

The V8 burns more fuel than the 80hp engine in the other car but at top speed with the turbo charger on it burns much less.

This suggests a V8 for long range high speed driving is the more efficient. You get there faster and use less fuel than if you had the other car.

The other car makes more sense if it is around the town where it wont go faster than 100km/h anyway so it does not use its turbocharger anyway.

The point is that optimising the PAK DA for supercruising means it wont be a huge high drag aircraft with enormous internal space for large heavy weapons like the father of all bombs, and other large bulky aircraft carried weapons internally including super long range missiles and hypersonic weapons... which is likely the reason they went for subsonic, because the wing can be thicker and higher drag but also high lift for carrying large internal payloads of weapons and fuel.

Subsonic or supersonic is not really important, though the ability to supercruise would have been rather useful.... I suspect the Blackjack will be the super cruising aircraft... it will have four very much improved jet engines with all weapons internal and the low drag of the swing wing design with the wings swept back would be ideal for very high speed super cruising performance.

Flying at supersonic speeds in dry thrust will greatly improve performance for the Blackjack... effectively it will be covering the same distance at twice the speed but not with twice the fuel consumption...

A quick calculation filled with some guesses...

Lets assume cruise speed is mach 0.85 and that is achieved at 70% dry thrust rating.

The dry thrust of the original NK-32 is about 18 tons I think, so 70% of 18 tons is 12,600kgs thrust. If we guess the fuel economy to be 0.72 kg per kghour, that means it burns 9 tons of fuel per hour at that thrust setting.

With an upgraded engine the dry thrust might be 22 tons thrust, but it does not get the penalty of using AB so instead of 2.5kg per kg.hour of fuel burned it has a similar fuel burn (might even be less but lets assume the same).

That means 100% of 22 is 22,000 kgs thrust, which means fuel economy at 0.72kg/kg.h that it burns 15,840kgs of fuel per hour (compared with the original aircraft in a high AB setting that would be burning 55 tons of fuel per hour in AB)

So the supercrusing aircraft does burn almost double the fuel of the non super cruising aircraft... but the supercruising aircraft is travelling twice as fast... so in effect they cover the same amount of ground but the supercruising aircraft does it in half the time.

To achieve the same flight speed performance the non supercruising aircraft would burn its fuel far to rapidly and have nothing like the flight range of the supercruising aircraft.