Seriously? How new is the TU-16 Badger design???
First flew in the fifties.
Age-wise, comparable to the B-52.
Gotta get back??
The first Badger flew in 1952 in the USSR.
On the other hand, the first B-52 ALSO flew in 1952...
Not new at all. Difference with this one, a bit, is that its a new airframe so they will be in the picture for sometime more.
And some more range.
The value of these is as anti-shipping strike I would think.
China already has substantial numbers of aircraft with this mission, again this isn’t new, whats interesting is the current fleet with that task is getting old so they are refreshing them, so the strategic thinking is not changing.
That would be a classic weapon of the “jeune ecole” school of naval warfare (along with submarines), as opposed to the “Mahan” school, where the point is not to secure control of the seas but to annoy whoever needs to control them. Pretty useful for interdicting commercial shipping to and from Chinas potential enemies on the Pacific Rim.
Badgers?! We don't need no stinking badgers!
55 to 60 years old. But then, that is the age of our B-52s.
“How old is the Tu-16 design?”
Roughly as old as the C-130, which is still in production too.