Soviet Backfire’s are back, rested, revamped, and ready.
There was an article just last week that Putin had personally reviewed the first of the upgraded TU-22M’s.
They have been spending big money to upgrade capabilities in the last ten years, and those efforts are just now beginning to role off the lines.
See #4.
It’s Okay... Obama has magic unicorns and pixie dust.....
Russia may have the backfire, but we now have the backdoor.
It sneaks up on a plane and attacks it’s behind...
Like a lot of stuff on “War is Boring,” this article is more hype than fact.
First, as the writer correctly observes, the Backfire is a regional weapon without in-flight refueling. And in comparison to the USAF, Russia’s tanker fleet is very modest. So, the TU-22M could cause problems in the Baltic, Norwegian Sea, the eastern Med, the western Pacific and northern Persia Gulf, it would be hard-pressed to launch/sustain attacks against naval and land targets at greater distances.
One more thing: the “new” ASM weapon for the Backfire has a range of roughly 175 nm. But the writer fails to note the combat radius for F/A-18s flying off the deck of the carrier the Backfire is trying to kill. BTW, that distance is 390 NM (and even longer if you include an in-flight refueling, and HI-HI-HI (high-altitude ingress, intercept and egress) profile that would be flown against a TU-22M. In other words, the Hornet and its AIM-120 can kill the Backfire long before it gets in range to launch the new ASM against the carrier.
Additionally, the new generation of SM-2 missiles are much better at intercepting ASMs than older variants. The TU-22M with the new ASM is a threat to be respected, but it’s not a world beater.
I wonder it they will re-install the inflight refueling capability.