Don't I feel stupid. I saw Hercules C130 mentioned in the article and, while it seemed mighty strange that the Russians could get one and use it, I went with that. The C130 mention was for the MOAB, not the Russian bomb. Duh...
But, my point remains. The Tupolev Tu-160 can handle over 40 tons of payload.
Ummm... I wasn't feeling stupid, merely confused by your post. Thank you for your clarification :-)
So then if it's true that both aircraft could easily carry 8 or eleven tons of payload, I suppose the question remains as to why they bothered themselves to engineer a "secret explosive" that produces such a great yield when they could have gotten that yield with a bomb that they could also have carried in existing aircraft.. There's obviously a whole lot missing from the currently available 'news' reports that would help a lot toward answering such questions.