The Russian strategic plane producer Tupolev has reportedly seen a brand new chief govt, Yuri Ambrosimov, appointed to interchange Aleksandr Bobryshev, a yr after prior administration rotations on the agency in late 2024. The agency is at present the one one on this planet producing strategic bombers for frontline service, specifically the Tu-160M which begun manufacturing in 2021.The plane are constructed on the Kazan Plane Plant, the place Tu-214 passenger planes are additionally produced, and the place Tu-22M3 bombers have been beforehand constructed and have lately been modernised.The change within the Tupolev’s management happens at a time when a number of studies have indicated that there have been vital authorized and monetary disputes between the agency and the Russian Ministry of Defence over unfulfilled contracts.
The Defence Ministry at present plans to obtain 50 Tu-160M bombers, whereas modernising 17 Soviet-built plane to the identical customary. Funding within the strategic bomber fleet is taken into account significantly vital because of the excessive ranges of tensions between Russia and the Western Bloc, with the plane’s wholly unrivalled mixture of vary, velocity, and weapons carrying capability permitting them to quickly launch assaults on targets internationally, together with at any level on United States mainland. Plenty of hypersonic weapons sorts are at present below growth for the plane, reportedly together with a ballistic missile and an air-launched variant of the Zircon hypersonic cruise missile. Every bomber can carry 12 Kh-101/102 cruise missiles internally, in comparison with simply eight carried externally by the older Tu-95MSM bombers.
In Could 2025 the Moscow Arbitration Courtroom ordered Tupolev to pay 3 billion rubles to the Defence Ministry attributable to delays in fulfilling contracts, whereas in June 2025, the Ministry filed an extra lawsuit for 0.9 billion rubles attributable to additional unmet obligations. Uncompleted upkeep or improve work on strategic plane has reportedly been a number one trigger for disputes, though the comparatively small value of the fines paid signifies that the difficulty stays small, regardless of widespread studies from Western sources alleging that there have been crippling inefficiencies. To position the three billion rouble ($40 million) determine in perspective, a single Tu-160M bomber is estimated to value roughly 15–16 billion roubles to provide.
The significance of increasing the Tu-160 fleet additional grew following Ukraine’s unprecedentedly profitable assaults on Russian bomber bases below Operation Spider’s Internet on June 1, which resulted within the losses of a number of Tu-95MS and Tu-22M3 strategic bombers, each of that are sorts not in manufacturing. The excessive worth of the Tu-160 has led Ukrainian forces working with Western assist to launch a number of tried strikes on the fleet’s major working facility, Engels-2 Airbase, certainly one of which precipitated a serious fireplace on June 6, 2025. The plane have been in mid-June employed to strike targets in Ukraine for the primary time as a part of the continued warfare effort, probably attributable to shortages of fight prepared Tu-95s within the aftermath of the Ukrainian assaults. Though the Tu-160 has lengthy been thought of a world main bomber design, the anticipated service entry of the Chinese language H-20 and American B-21 stealth bombers within the early 2030s is anticipated to go away the Russian fleet far behind by way of its offensive potential.
