On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin put on a pilot’s uniform and sat in the pilot’s seat of a contemporary Tu-160M strategic bomber fighter plane to personally inspect the level of modernization.
The head of state arrived on the runway at the Kazan Aviation Plant dressed as a pilot and took the pilot’s seat, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Kazan, a city in southwest Russia.
“The journey will take about forty minutes. The flight path is classified as a state secret, according to Peskov.
Tu-160m is a supersonic, variable-sweep wing heavy strategic bomber, called in Russia “White Swan,” in NATO — “Blackjack,” it is designed to hit targets in remote areas with nuclear and conventional weapons.
Tu-160m strategic bomber is the largest supersonic aircraft in the history of military aviation and the heaviest combat aircraft in the world.
Putin has already flown several military planes, including fighter jets. Moreover, he has already flown the previous model of the Tu-160 bomber in August 2005.