Russia is about to build an 'unbelievable' version of the Tu-160

In November 2017, Russia's Tupolev Aviation Corporation posted an extremely interesting piece of information, which was that many wealthy foreign customers were asking them to build civilian variants of the Tu-160 or Tu-22M3 supersonic bombers to use as private jets.

The above idea sounds like a joke but is completely serious, the tycoons who are used to showing off have conveyed their wishes through the overseas representative offices of Rosoboronexport Corporation.

However, Mr. Valery Solozobov - Vice President in charge of research and product development of Tupolev said that at that time they could not convert a Tu-160 into a private aircraft because it was a strategic weapon of Russia.

Mr. Solozobov added that even if a civil variant of the Tu-160 could be built, the estimated price could be up to 1.74 billion USD/unit, along with extremely high costs for fuel as well as technical support, making it difficult for this aircraft to succeed in the international market.

But surprisingly, the idea of ​​building a civil version of the Tu-160, which seemed very far-fetched, was expressed by the leaders when they visited the Kazan Aviation Complex on January 25 this year.

With the above developments, Russia's United Aviation Industrial Complex has confirmed that the development of a supersonic passenger aircraft based on the Tu-160 airframe has been included in the list of potential projects and can be implemented as planned.

And recently, on September 6, this ambitious Russian program took a new step forward when Tupolev Corporation announced that the preliminary design of this special aircraft was basically completed.

Although it uses many components of the Tu-160 bomber, this does not mean that this civil transport aircraft still uses a swing-wing configuration and has a maximum take-off weight of up to 275 tons.

Mr. Valery Solozobov preliminarily announced that the new aircraft will have a capacity of 30 passengers, a maximum take-off weight of only 70 tons, a maximum speed of Mach 1.4 - 1.8 and a range of 1,900 km when operating at an altitude of 11,000 m.

So the above parameters are much smaller than the Tu-160, and it is almost certain that this civil aircraft will not use a swing-wing configuration. In addition, the aerodynamic shape also requires changes to limit the sonic boom when breaking the sound barrier.

It is expected that Tupolev will soon start building a test prototype to evaluate and determine the feasibility of the program, which will be a supersonic passenger aircraft with an "acceptable" price to create a competitive advantage in the international civil aviation market.