Tu-22M3: News

External pods add capability and flexibility and are easier to retrofit to aircraft.

They can use the latest and most expensive cameras and equipment... you don't need to fit it to every aircraft in the air group even, you could fit it to one aircraft to get target coordinates and those coordinates can be transmitted to other aircraft including ones in the same flight, which could programme the coordinates to onboard GLONASS guided weapons and released blind lofted from a different direction.

When new pods become available you can adopt those and cascade the older models to other aircraft within the flight or move them on to other aircraft... a plane like an Su-25 of an older model could benefit from a targeting pod mounted on its body centre to allow it to target all sorts of things with laser and TV guided weapons... they could also be used by Yak-130 trainers on their centreline pod to target air and ground targets passively.

On an aircraft like a Tu-22M3M with four crew you could have pilot and copilot but with the new automated self defence suite and navigation system the two rear crew could use their own separate targeting pod each to engage ground or air targets...

They not only convert existing aircraft types into effective bombers, but also effective real time recon aircraft as they can scan for targets and pass that info up to HQ for later operations or even damage assessment.

The Soviets generally specialised aircraft for roles and therefore didn't generally use pods, though some anti radiation missiles did require targeting pods and the AS-18 Kazoo used a datalink for transmitting the TV image of the target via the missile to the launch aircraft via a pod, but these days such things could be built in to their datalink systems...

My understanding is that it is NewStart that is in effect which does not include any verification and is pretty weak in terms of restrictions... and when it expires in 2021 I don't think the US will want any agreement that does not include hypersonic weapons included... which I don't think the Russians will agree to...

I agree. Most of the previous START restrictions were not ratified by the US anyway, and New START waters everything down completely... in fact it is so weak it is in effect for one day... as long as you comply on that day you are not breaking the rules... you could have 100,000 nukes in operational status right up to the day before... move them all except 1,550 warheads into storage for that day and then bring them all back out and on duty the following day and completely comply with New START... but most importantly there are no verification and or checking components so you basically are taking them at their word.... HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE...

There is a consideration to be made: PAK-DA, like its american counterpart B-21 will be a way smaller plane than the B-2: two engines and an empty weight just marginally superior to the Tu-22M3M one.

We really don't know that it will though will we... I mean its engine is supposed to be a high bypass engine based on the core of the NK-31, so its thrust could be rather high for a subsonic aircraft and we really have no idea if it will be a twin jet or a four jet engined aircraft.

Certainly two sets of twin jets spaced apart would leave plenty of internal volume for fuel and internal weapons bays big enough to carry very large conventional bombs and missiles.

I mean the father of all bombs will probably be about a 12m long weapon to be compatible with the Blackjacks weapon bays, so I would expect similar sized bays on the PAK DA... but it might have a centre line 12m long weapon bay and two sets of engines either side of that (one or two engines each) and then another set of weapon bays outside those also 12m long... in effect three Blackjack like weapon bays for weapons or fuel.

The intention of the aircraft is to both replace the Bear for long range subsonic strategic cruise missile attack, and also theatre range bombing roles to replace the Backfire with less internal fuel and more conventional bombs and missiles... so it will need lots of internal volume for either role.

Being subsonic means the wing can have a rather thick profile cross section enabling large internal weapon carriage and large volumes of internal fuel for longer ranged missions... the Backfire could carry up to 24 tons over theatre range missions of bombs, while the best Bear could carry up to 16 cruise missiles with 6 internal and 10 external on weapon pylons... of course being a stealth aircraft it would need internal carriage, but with three Blackjack like weapon bays that would be three times 6, which is 18 weapons... which is better than a Bear... but without the drag of external weapons.

Stealth would increase cost and complexity but so do also being supersonic capable, so one would compensate other.

Agreed, Supersonic planes burn a lot of fuel which makes them expensive to operate... they could even take advantage of the large internal volume and design access to most systems from internal panels rather than external panels that increase maintenance and support costs.
(Ie with an external panel you need to remove the RAM material and then unscrew the panel and find and correct the fault and then replace the panel and then tape up the panel joins and then paint over with RAM and then allow time to cure before the plane can be flown again... it explains why the F-35 requires so much down time for maintenance simply because accessing the electronics from external panels takes so much time and effort...)

In the meantime using the refurbished Kazan plant to built Tu-160M and to refurbish and upgrade Tu-22M3 instead than to wait idle until the PAK-DA would finish its own development would be the best thing to doo.

Well I don't think the plant will be idle... it will have Tu-160s to upgrade to M2 standard and of course 50 new Tu-160M2s to actually make... in addition to upgrading at least 30 Tu-22M3s to Tu-22M3M standard... possibly more if they like it.

As they introduce the Tu-160M2s into service they will transfer strategic bombing crews to the new plane... presumably from Tu-95s, so those Bears will become available for other roles... a Tu-22M3M type upgrade could easily be applied to these aircraft which are still relatively new... they were made in the late 1980s and 1990s and are no where near as old as the American B-52s... with modern up to date hardware and software and new weapons they would be rather capable for other purposes... the standard aircraft carries 10 Kh-101/-102 missiles on wing pylons and can carry 6 shorter Kh-555s in an internal weapon bay... extending that weapon bay so it can carry the larger new missiles would make it rather more capable, but even as it is it should be easily able to carry Zircon missiles in its internal bay and on its wing pylons without too much trouble... 16 Zircon missiles would be very potent... as a launch platform the Bear can't get as high as a MiG-31 or fly as fast but its range performance is excellent so those hypersonic missiles could be coming from any direction...

And they are cheap to operate... which is why they bothered to build new ones in the 1990s... without the forge for making enormous titanium structures that was in the Ukraine there was little to no chance of making new Blackjacks, but that has changed now too...

Also because on the other side all their current bombers are out production, so that they would not be able to increment their number in any way, if nor recuperating something from the Boneyard, like they have done with a B-52.

Well they are restarting production of the Blackjack... and I suspect the forged titanium structure for the swing wing box used in the Blackjack was the tricky part and why they hadn't made any more till now... this new forge could be used to make new stronger lighter Backfire box structures for its swing wing design to make even better Backfires if they wanted.

They justified building this new huge forge because they could use it to work with enormous pieces of titanium with no gaps... which is actually pretty ideal from the stand point of stealth... joints and corners are bad M'kay...

Perhaps a new air intake for the Backfire that is as efficient as the angled MiG-25 type ones but are more stealthy could be designed... from what I have read it greatly improved flight performance but also increased RCS from the front by something horrendous like 30%...

Personally, I think larger aircraft need an internal system which should be more capable than a podded one ....you can always add a pod for any specific situation when the internal one is not suited

Built in targeting systems are more generic and general purpose, whereas external pods can be optimised for a particular task and therefore carried for specific missions... perhaps with extra features those extra missions might require.

Much of the older pods added things that aircraft often got during upgrades anyway, like satellite navigation and communcations systems as well as range finders and IRST capability... most Russian aircraft already had IRSTs etc so for specialist aircraft they really didn't have much meaning.

For example the MiG-27K had the Kaira targeting system in its nose... I think from memory it was based on the system fitted to the Su-24, so you are putting on a light short range strike aircraft the EO system of a medium strike aircraft. The Kaira system in a pod carried by an Su-22 type would give your cheap simple strike aircraft capabilities normally only very expensive dedicated strike aircraft had...

Over time however new EO systems will be developed and retrofitted to your expensive aircraft, but podded versions could upgrade cheaper aircraft with the new tech faster and cheaper.

Very specialised pods could be used for specific missions on more expensive aircraft or on cheaper ones... it is quicker and cheaper to create a new weapon or sensor pod than to integrate new sensors for a specific aircraft to replace older equipment.

When the Backfire is delivering nukes to EU countries you can call it dooms day...

But not if it bombs an invading army/marines on its own territory or approaching navy in or near its own Arctic EEZ.

why would they use Tu-22m3m's with the obvious anti-flash white scheme for that purpose?

Actually I would argue if there is an invading army from land or sea that Dooms day is an appropriate description still as well... a naval landing force of marines would probably fear the Backfire the most with its Kh-32 missiles being a huge threat to troop transport ships...

You can't just let things go, it's like your life depends on you getting the last post in. You simply can't accept people will disagree with you, so you'll keep beating topics to death dragging a topic on and on like you always do, and no surprise doing it in this thread....again!

Takes two to tango... I am probably just as guilty...

Some Su-30s also have white underside, so what?

Actually I used to think the standard Su-27 colour scheme with blue on top and white underneath was around the wrong way, because when seen from above it would appear blue against the ground while from below it would appear white against possibly a blue sky, but you can't argue with results... recent videos posted showing a Flanker scaring away a gray painted F-15 showed the Flanker was much better camouflaged as it moved away from the aircraft with the camera in it, while the F-15 was easily visible at extended range...

Nice, so the first is working through factory tests and a second is on the way and they will get it into air force testing next year hopefully... that is good news... this upgrade should end up using missiles like Zircon and Kinzhal and of course the new Grom 1 and 2 type missiles they are working on as well as an enormous range of different bombs and air to ground munitions.

Wonder if they might try using it in Syria... it would be especially suited to the role if it has inflight refuelling restored...

Would allow it to deliver a much heavier payload....

What an awesome video... very good quality view of the afterburner lighting up and running... plus all the checks that need to be made before takeoff were also very interesting...

The takeoff was fairly steep so I suspect they left the AB on to maintain a decent rate of climb and to continue to accelerate to a reasonable speed after takeoff.

Thanks for posting.

Note that this is clearly not the latest Backfire as it still has four cockpit positions and its engines are blue in AB.

The newest upgrade is the Tu-22M3M which is supposed to be upgraded by among other things fitting it with the same NK-32 engine of the Blackjack.

The engines the Tu-22M3 uses are basically similar in terms of size and weight and thrust, but are different engines, so modifying it to take Blackjack engines makes a lot of economic sense... especially as the Blackjack engines are going back in to production and will likely be upgraded with newer engine technologies and new materials and designs.

The way to identify if this has happened will be a two seat Tu-22M with AB that are white...

Will the M3 have only 2 pilots? I have not heard definitively the M3 will have the TU-160 engines, it make sense, but I keep reading contradictory news in that regard. With the upgraded engines it will be quite the beast with probably 10-20% more range

Hard to be 100% sure but AFAIK the self defence electronics is fully automated so it doesn't need a human operator, and it is the same for the bombing system... fully automated so I would expect it operates more like an Su-34 with a pilot and a weapon operator/navigator arrangement... but with very long range flights they would operate more as two pilots.

They planned to unify the engines but I think Vlad mentioned the first example had the standard engines.

There was talk that they made the internal weapon bay longer to allow bigger longer weapons to be carried internally and that the rear crew positions are removed, which suggests a bit of alteration so modifying the engine bays to accommodate a different engine which is essentially similar but different if you know what I mean... similar size and weight but different and likely pipes and connections in different places and structural attachments to the support parts of the aircraft in different places too... similar thrust and fuel burn... the Blackjack engine is slightly newer and I assume is a better design, but most importantly it will be going back in to production and will get improvements over time... it makes no sense to keep two different aircraft using very very similar but different engines in service when they both could use the same engine.

If they end up making 50-60 Blackjacks and have say another 12-16 upgraded they continue to use then that means up to 76 aircraft needing 304 engines in total as a bare minimum with perhaps another 20-40 engines spare in case needed. Add 30 upgraded Tu-22M3M and that is another 60 engines with perhaps another 10 spare... which means instead of two different engines in different amounts you can get one engine in larger numbers which means upgrades offer more fleet benefits because upgrading one engine is cheaper than upgrading two, yet more aircraft benefit from the upgrade...

Hopefully they can sort things out and get the NK-32 into the upgraded Backfires and perhaps upgrade more than 30 if possible... personally I rather like the aircraft and with inflight refuelling it will continue to be rather useful over Syria and other places for some time to come...