MOSCOW. Dec 25 (Interfax-AVN) - Service lives of planes in the inventory of the Russian long-range aviation will last until 2015, commander of the 37th strategic air force army Major General Igor Khvorov said on Wednesday.
"If we compare our planes with U.S. veterans of the Vietnam war, the B-52 bombers, whose service life is still being extended, ours are yet young men in comparison with those experienced elders," Khvorov told Interfax-Military News Agency.
"Successful use of our current aircraft is guaranteed until 2015, and by that time a program of future long-range aircraft will be worked out," he said.
According to him, ideology of the future long-range aircraft is under development.
"We worked out requirements for the new aircraft. We held a large conference with representatives of aircraft production companies. Each of them proposed their own variants of realizing our ideas. We put on paper the ideas and capabilities of the companies and forwarded them to R&D institutes for evaluation from the point of view of production technology and cost. We will soon have all data necessary for determining the company with whom we will work. There is a choice," the commander said.
Khvorov said modernization of current aircraft is an important goal of the near future.
"New signing and navigation equipment is being designed. Avionics is changing, which makes it possible to use a totally different class of missiles and bombs. For instance, the TU-160 Blackjack has not dropped bombs, but now it will. We will teach it and practice it at exercises in 2003," Khvorov said.
With the creation of precision-guided conventional weapons, long-range aviation has become a factor accomplishing the non- nuclear containment mission.
"We are capable of accomplishing the combat mission without direct engagement with the enemy's air defense means. At the same time, our weapons cannot be detected by its assets. The missile can fly on an extremely low altitude over hard-to-reach areas doubling the terrain. In fact, there is no remedy for the weapons on board our missile carriers," the commander concluded.
Russian long-range aviation is equipped with TU-160 Blackjack and TU-95MS Bear strategic missile carriers, TU-22M3 Backfire long-range bombers and IL-78 Midas tanker planes.