One Of Russia’s Swing-Wing Tu-22M Bombers Just Crashed

A Russian air force Tupolev Tu-22M bomber crashed in Usolsky District, in eastern Russia 2,700 miles from Ukraine. It’s probably the fifth of the 139-foot, four-person bombers the Russians have lost in the 37 months since they widened their war on Ukraine.

That’s nearly 10 percent of the pre-war fleet of around 60 swing-wing Tu-22Ms, updated versions of Cold War bombers that carry anti-ship and land-attack cruise missiles and which, from the Ukrainian perspective, are terror weapons. These days, they primarily target Ukrainian cities. Their victims are usually civilians.

Fighterbomber, the unofficial Telegram channel of the Russian air force, confirmed the crash on Wednesday. “Crew is being searched for,” the channel reported.

The Tu-22M force has had a hard war. Before Wednesday’s crash, the Russian air force had lost four of the bombers—another that crashed, one that was shot down and two that were destroyed or at least badly damaged by Ukrainian drones.

Ukraine’s long-range drone strike force has focused much of its attention on Russian bomber bases. A triple-tap series of raids between January and March targeting Engels air base in southern Russia, 400 miles from Ukraine, destroyed a huge stock of bomber-launched cruise missiles costing nearly $1 billion.

Hard to intercept

The Tu-22Ms almost always conduct standoff raids, launching their cruise missiles from as far away as 600 miles. This keeps the Tu-22Ms out of range of Ukraine’s surface-to-air missiles—usually. But that doesn’t mean the bomber raids are totally safe for their crews. Last April, a Ukrainian SAM battery—likely an aged but potent S-200—hit a Tu-22M flying over southern Russia after launching its Kh-22 cruise missile.

Merely carrying a 1960s-vintage Kh-22 can be dangerous. “Nothing says fun like flying around with an ancient missile containing ~4 tons of hypergolic fuel,” aviation expert Bill Sweetman quipped.

But for all the risk and all the losses the Tu-22M community has endured while terrorizing Ukrainian civilians, there’s no reason to believe it will stand down—not even temporarily. The Russian air force has been losing bombers at a rate of just one or two a year. It has more than enough Tu-22Ms and larger Tupolev Tu-95s and Tu-160s to bombard Ukraine for the foreseeable future.