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It seems that somewhere, somehow, someone found an extra batch of 1970s-era Tupolev Tu-141/143 drones, the crude, bulky but still potentially effective drones that the Ukrainians last used a year ago, four decades after of when they were first written off from Soviet service.
Social media users have drawn attention to recent photos that clearly show the wreckage of a Tu-143 in the Bryansk region of Russia, north of Ukraine. The drone appears to have been involved in Ukraine’s deep-strike campaign targeting Russian infrastructure, including oil facilities in regions close to Ukraine.
As successors to the first-generation reconnaissance drones used by the US Air Force in the Vietnam War, the jet-powered Tu-141 and the similar Tu-143 are actually not very sophisticated.
But they’re simple, fast and big enough to carry a warhead weighing hundreds of kilograms – at seven tonnes and 14 meters long. As a result, they have much more destructive power than, say, a Ukrainian clone of the 200-kilogram Russian Shahed.
And most importantly, Tu-141/143 works. So it should come as no surprise that the Ukrainians are sending these drones on one-off missions to blow up Russian oil refineries.
By the way, the military themselves drones appeared during the First World War. The first models were radio controlled targets for shooting practice. 20th century In the 1950s, the US Air Force and Californian target manufacturer Ryan Aeronautical developed the Model 147, a nine-meter-long jet-powered drone with an extremely sophisticated inertial navigation system at the time and a nose full of expensive cameras.
The Model 147s flew thousands of sorties over Vietnam photographing targets that were later to be dropped by manned bombers. As the war ended, armed versions of the drone were being developed, and the Model 147 program was abruptly terminated.
Soon, the Soviet Air Force developed similar drones. The Tu-141/143 took to the air for the first time in 1974. The Tupolev factory in Kharkiv, eastern Ukraine, produced 142 examples of the 14-meter-long ramp-launched Tu-141. This model served until 1989.
When in 2014 Russia first invaded Ukraine, several Tu-141s and Tu-143s were stored in Ukraine. Ukrainian technicians began to pull obsolete drones from warehouses and restore them. Russian-backed separatists in 2014 shot down at least two Tu-143s over eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine’s air force has a handful of Sukhoi Su-24 manned bombers capable of launching 300km-range Storm Shadow and SCALP-EG cruise missiles – but the missiles are in short supply and the bombers are too valuable to risk hundreds on dangerous raids kilometers on the territory of Russia.
And the Tu-141/143 is an obvious replacement. It is fast – 950 kilometers per hour – and because it is similar to the Model 147, it can fly at a height of up to 6 km from the tops of trees, and after removing the cameras and adding explosives, the Tu-141/143 becomes not a reconnaissance drone, but a cruise missile .
Already in 2022 In March, it was revealed that the Ukrainian Air Force had modified some of its Tu-141/143s for single flights. It is reported that on March 10 of the same year The Tu-141 that veered off course and crashed in Croatia contained a bomb.
That summer, the Ukrainians sent at least two Tu-143s on raids in or near Kursk in western Russia, 80 kilometers from Ukraine. Russian air defenses shot down both drones. But in 2022 December 5 the drones finally broke through – and hit two Russian bomber bases 500km away in Russian territory.
Two months later, Ukraine deployed what at the time appeared to be its last flying Tu-141/143. A total of 14 Tu-141s and Tu-143s crashed or were shot down during the first year of Russia’s full-scale war with Ukraine.
However, it seems that in 2023 the Tu-141 that crashed in February was not actually the last airworthy example, as the recent raid proves. Now, as a year ago, it is difficult to determine how many Tu-141s and Tu-143s are left in Ukraine. And if there are still such, one can expect more deep blows directed against the Russian industry in the border areas, summarizes “Forbes”.
