The Russian Aerospace Forces have deployed Tu-22M3 lengthy vary bombers to simulate strikes on enemy targets as a part of the continuing Russian-Belarusian Zapad 2025 army drills, with the assaults launched “with the intention of disrupting the management system and destroying crucial services.” The Russian Defence Ministry reported relating to the operations: “The crews of Russian Aerospace Forces’ Tu-22M3 long-range bombers carried out an air strike with sensible bombing, destroying targets at one of many coaching grounds throughout the Zapad 2025 joint strategic drill.” The ministry added that fight expertise gained within the Ukrainian theatre was taken into consideration throughout the simulated assaults. The workouts have taken place at a time when the U.S. Air Pressure has deployed its personal strategic bombers, specifically nuclear succesful B-52H plane, for workouts in Europe.
The Tu-22M3 was produced from 1989-1997, at roughly the identical time because the American B-2 stealth bomber, and is lighter and shorter ranged than the intercontinental vary Tu-160 and Tu-95MS within the fleet. The plane have performed important roles each in counterinsurgency operations in Syria, and extra not too long ago within the Russian-Ukrainian Warfare, with Ukrainian Air Pressure Command spokesman Yury Ignat having singled out the capabilities of their Kh-22 cruise missile, which he revealed had confirmed practically unattainable to intercept. Ignat in December 2023 said that because the escalation of hostilities between Russia and Ukraine in February 2022, Russian Tu-22s had fired roughly 300 Kh-22 and Kh-32 missiles at targets throughout Ukraine, and that Ukrainian air defences had not been in a position to intercept a single one. He had beforehand said in January: “I emphasise that it’s unattainable to shoot down Kh-22 missiles with the means we’ve in our arsenal,” highlighting the missile’s sheer velocity as the explanation.
The Russian Aerospace Forces within the late 2010s expanded its Tu-22M3 fleet by bringing a small variety of bombers out of storage, with these plane being modernised to the Tu-22M3M normal. Ukrainian strikes on Russian bomber bases on June 1, which destroyed a number of Tu-95MS bombers, in addition to delays to the event of the PAK DA subsequent era bomber, have raised the chance that the Tu-22M3 can be relied on extra closely in future, and that extra of the plane can be introduced out of storage. Whereas the intercontinental vary PAK DA is being developed as a successor to each the Tu-95MS and the Tu-160, the medium vary Tu-22M3 has no direct successor, elevating the chance that it might proceed to serve longer than Russia’s different two bomber lessons. The plane are anticipated to proceed to be modernised, together with with the mixing of an air launched variant of the Zircon hypersonic cruise missile which is at the moment underneath growth.
