Ukrainian Tu-143.
Wikimedia Commons
Ukraine digs deeper into inventory of Cold War debris to find weapons —Any Weapons capable of attacking military and industrial targets deep in Russia.
It seems that somewhere, somehow, someone has discovered an additional batch of 1970s vintage Tupolev Tu-141/143 drones. It’s a crude, huge, but still potentially effective vehicle that the Ukrainians last deployed a year ago, 40 years after it was first retired from the Soviet military. .
Social media users highlighted recent photos that appear to show the wreckage of a Tu-143 in Russia’s Bryansk region, just north of Ukraine. The drone appears to have been part of Ukraine’s ongoing offensive campaign targeting Russian infrastructure, including oil facilities, in areas near Ukraine.
A less sophisticated evolution of the first-generation reconnaissance drones deployed by the U.S. Air Force in the Vietnam War, the jet-powered Tu-141 and similar Tu-143 are less sophisticated.
But they are simple, fast, and at seven tons and 47 feet long, large enough to carry warheads weighing hundreds of pounds. That makes it far more destructive than, say, a Ukrainian clone of the 440-pound Russian Shahed drone.
Tu-141/143 works. So it’s no surprise that the Ukrainians are sending drones on a one-way mission to blow up Russian oil refineries.
Drones have been around since World War I. The first model was a radio-controlled target for artillery practice. In the 1950s, the U.S. Air Force and California target manufacturer Ryan Aeronautical developed the Model 147, a 30-foot-long jet-powered drone with a highly sophisticated inertial navigation system and full nose for its time. Of an expensive camera.
The Model 147 flew thousands of missions over Vietnam, photographing targets for manned bombers to later attack. When the war ended and the Model 147 program came to an abrupt end, an armed version was in development.
The Soviet Air Force soon developed similar drones. The Tu-141/143 first flew in 1974. Tupolev built 142 copies of the 47-foot-long lamp-launched Tu-141 at a factory in Kharkiv, eastern Ukraine. The type used until 1989.
Some Tu-141s and Tu-143s were in storage in Ukraine when Russian forces first invaded the country in 2014. Ukrainian engineers began pulling aging drones out of storage and servicing them. Russian-backed separatists shot down at least two Tu-143s over eastern Ukraine in 2014.
The Ukrainian Air Force operates a small number of manned Sukhoi Su-24 bombers that fire Storm Shadow and Scalp EG cruise missiles with a range of 190 miles, but the missiles are in short supply and the bombers can fly dangerously over hundreds of miles. It’s too valuable to risk a raid. within Russian territory.
Tu-141/143 is an obvious replacement. At high speeds of 600 miles per hour, something like the Model 147 can fly up to 20,000 feet, or as high as the tops of trees. Inertial navigation systems can navigate to within a few miles of a planned course over distances of over 1,000 miles. Recover by turning off the engine and opening the parachute.
If you remove the camera and add explosives, the Tu-141/143 becomes a cruise missile rather than a reconnaissance drone. It became clear as early as March 2022 that the Ukrainian Air Force was modifying some Tu-141/143s for one-way missions. A Tu-141 that went off course and crashed in Croatia on March 10th of the same year. It was reportedly loaded with bombs..
That summer, the Ukrainian military sent at least two Tu-143s to air raids in or near Kursk in western Russia, 80 miles from Ukraine.Russian air defense shot down both drones. On December 5, 2022, the drones finally passed through and struck two Russian bomber bases 300 miles apart inside Russia.
Two months later, Ukraine fielded what was then believed to be the last flying Tu-141/143. In the first year of Russia’s war against Ukraine, a total of 14 Tu-141s and Tu-143s were crashed or shot down.
The Tu-141 that crashed in February 2023 was actually It wasn’t like that As recent raids have proven, it is the last example capable of flight. Knowing how many Tu-141s and Tu-143s Ukraine has left is as difficult today as it was a year ago. If any remain, more large-scale strikes targeting Russian industry in border areas are expected.
