MOSCOW, November 16. /TASS/. Russia’s upgraded Tupolev Tu-160M2 strategic bomber will perform its first test flight in February 2018, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin reported to President Vladimir Putin during a working meeting on Thursday. "We plan that the aircraft will be built already in 2019. Serial deliveries should begin in 2023 while we plan to carry out the first flight of the Tu-160M2, which has been rolled out of the workshop today, in February next year," the vice-premier said. "Everything is fine, just perfect. I congratulate the aircraft builders and I think we will deliver good news to the Defense Ministry [it was the Russian Defense Ministry that insisted on resuming the production of the upgraded Tu-160 aircraft, which had proven its worth as a supersonic bomber]," the Russian president said.

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As the vice-premier said, it was Russian President Putin who made a decision to strengthen the Russian nuclear triad, including its airborne component, by way of resuming the production of the Tu-160 strategic bomber on a new technical and technological basis. "I am reporting to you that today, these days when the Kazan Aircraft Enterprise is celebrating its 90th anniversary, the Tu-160M2 aircraft has been rolled out of the enterprise’s workshop," Rogozin said. A source in the Russian defense industry told TASS on November 9 that the Tu-160M2 strategic bomber prototype originating from Soviet aircraft breakthroughs will take to the skies for the first time from the airfield of the Kazan Aviation Enterprise in February 2018. "The plane with the factory number 804 based on Soviet aircraft breakthroughs will be rolled out of the final assembly workshop of the Kazan Aviation Enterprise and delivered to the flight testing station in November this year. The plane is expected to perform its debut flight from the enterprise’s aerodrome in February next year," the source said. This "will be the first combat aircraft capable of performing the same assignments, which operational 16 Tu-160 planes do," he said. "The 804th plane will be subsequently upgraded to the Tu-160M2 variant," the source said. It was reported in 2015 that Russia had made a decision to resume the production of Tu-160 bombers in their upgraded Tu-160M2 modification and reschedule the development of the new-generation bomber PAK DA (Perspective Airborne Complex of Long-Range Aviation) for a later term.

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