One of the Tu-160 strategic bombers, No. 04 Ivan Yarygin, returned to service after an overhaul at the Kazan Aviation Plant. The bomber was counted as deployed during overhaul, so this move does not affect the total number of operational Tu-160 bombers - Russia has 16 bombers of this type based in Engels.
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In your "Strategic Aviation" section you are quoting 13 Tu-160. Does that mean that 3 of the above 16 are considered as non-operational ?
13 is the number reported in the last (July 2009) START MOU. As I understand, other three bombers are formally declared as test bombers.
How many "non-flying" airframes are there in existence?
Is there no chance these could be made operational?
Beautiful airplane, my opinion.
By my earlier account there are "three more test aircraft that are based in Zhukovskiy - a "flying" test aircraft, Boris Veremey, and two "non-flying" ones." In addition to these, one test aircraft has reportedly been moved to the Kazan Aviation Plant. So, there are four test planes. There are also some airframes that were used for static tests and things like that.
Wasn't there an additional aircraft kept by Ukraine for display only (mentioned on Wiki) besides the ones returned to Russia? Or is this the craft that was moved to the Kazan Plant?
If so, is it still on display?
Many thanks, Pavel.
Ukraine had 19 Tu-160 bombers in 1994 (more numbers are in this old post). As I understand, it returned 8 to Russia and liquidated the rest. It does have one Tu-160 bomber "on static display". START MOU lists in in Poltava.
And Tu-95MS "19 red" "Krasnoyarsk" to Engels:
http://www.tvzvezda.ru/news/forces/content/tu-95_ms_predstavlen_na_3008.html