Caption

ARK has the longest military runway in Asia for a reason. A regular sortie in A Tu-142 lasts about 10 hours. It's MTOW is twice that of a P-8I. High temperatures year round don't help either. On a good day, A Tu-142 at MTOW cleared the airport by a few meters. This day though was different. It was the final fly-past rehearsal before the decommissioning ceremony, so it had barely any fuel. The aircraft rotated right in front of us after using just half the runway.