Abstract
The Soviet/Russian heavy bomber force traditionally was a relatively unimportant component of its armed forces. In contrast to its US or even British counterparts, it did not play an important role during World War II, and was a junior member of the nuclear triad during the Cold War. Despite a period of rapid modernization during the 1980s, the collapse of the Soviet Union left it facing gradual obsolescence and even irrelevance. Seeking to fill a niche relevant to Russia's immediate security concerns, in the late 1990s the heavy bomber force began to supplant its traditional intercontinental nuclear strike mission with a new emphasis on precision conventional strike. However, the September 2003 crash of a Tu-160 bomber showed that the heavy bomber force still faces considerable challenges and its future is far from assured.
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