Tupolev Tu-95 Tu-95RTs

Developed in the early 1960s on the heavy bomber's airframe but designed from the outset as a maritime patrol aircraft, the Tu-95RTs made its first flight test in September 1962 and entered series production in 1963. It began flying with Naval Aviation in 1964, joined the operational inventory by the spring of 1966, and was first identified by Western intelligence in 1967. It is recognised by its enlarged chin radome and by the bulky I-band Big Bulge search radar fitted where the weapons bay had been: it provided mid-course guidance and target acquisition for missiles launched from ships, submarines and aircraft, among them the submarine-launched P-6 Progress (Shaddock). It never carried air-to-surface weapons — no bomb bay, no external carrier beams and none of the equipment needed to control such weapons — and added three-dimensional radomes under the fuselage and along its sides. As of mid-1991 the Soviet Union declared 37 aircraft, all based at naval airfields; the START II Twelfth Agreed Statement exempted them from counting as former heavy bombers. By 1994 about fifteen were believed to remain in service. Its silhouette shadowed by carrier fighters is one of the visual icons of the Cold War.