On the subject of cold war-era aircraft

[Browser]

Following on from the Vulcan bomber thread and with the Russians testing our air defences yet again by trailing their coats along the international/UK airspace boundary, the aircraft they used for this exercise this time was the H variant of the venerable Tupolev TU95 'Bear' reconnaisance aircraft. Now, I know that this was once a front-line nuclear-capable bomber, one of which dropped the 50+ megaton Tsar Bomba over Novaya Zemlya in 1961 and in a Russian military exercise in 2008 thery were used to launch cruise missiles, but is Vlad the Impaler boxing very clever by still using them today? everyone knows that they are too big and slow to evade jet fighter aircraft, and have been for some time, and the RAF are if not complacent or comfortable then relatively 'used' to their recon flights over the North Sea, but I wonder if these very qualities make them seem less of a threat than, say, sending pairs of Tu 22M Backfire or Tu 160 Blackjack bombers to do the same thing, both of which would put the willies up me far more?
All the above said, I'd love to see one buzzing over me, always thought it was a handsome brute of an aircraft :-)

 

[chunkolini]

Nice photo, I love all these cold war dinosaurs.

 

[KemppiFrog]

This was discussed elswhere and one of the posters was ex RAF who had been involved in earlier intercepts. The Bear is expected to be in use for a few years yet (like the B52) and only needs to get close enough to launch cruise missiles. In a case back then, one got up to the humber estuary under the radar. Only detected when he chickened out and climbed on his way home. That caused a bit of a flap....and a review of the radar coverage. There were also cases of multiple intercepts that overloaded the abilty of the ground crew to turn round the fighters. All right the first couple of times, then the bits that need changing take longer between flights. Eventually they ran out of servicable a/craft to send up. Ruskies must have enjoyed that exercise.