Carlucci Gets Close-Up Look at Top-Secret Soviet Bomber

The Soviet military unveiled its top-secret Blackjack strategic bomber and put on an impressive display of tank defense and attack operations Tuesday for visiting U.S. Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci.

“They let me sit in the cockpit, but I couldn’t tell one instrument from another,” Carlucci told reporters after his 10-minute tour of the Blackjack at the Kubinka air base, 40 miles outside Moscow. “It is obviously a very impressive aircraft.”

Also on display at Kubinka, a base normally strictly barred to foreigners, were a MIG-29 fighter, an IL-72 refueling plane and the world’s largest helicopter, the MI-26.

Carlucci inspected the MIG-29 first, then turned to the nearby bomber. As he did so, two Blackjacks emerged from patchy clouds and roared overhead.

Blackjack Compared to American B-1B

After inspecting the Blackjack’s underbelly, Carlucci climbed orange stairs through the open bomb-bay doors into the cockpit. He told reporters later he could not reveal technical details of the aircraft but compared it to the American B-1B bomber in its ability to fly at low altitudes and carry large payloads.

“This is a display of some of the most up-to-date air force equipment they have,” said an American officer with Carlucci, who is on a four-day visit to the Soviet Union under a new program of military exchanges between the superpowers.

Marshal Sergei F. Akhromeyev, the Soviet military chief of staff, inspected a B-1B bomber last month at Ellsworth Air Force Base outside Rapid City, S.D., during a tour of U.S. bases.

From Kubinka, Carlucci traveled 12 miles to the headquarters of the Taman Motorized Rifle Division to watch war games.

With his host, Defense Minister Dmitri T. Yazov, standing beside him, Carlucci watched helicopter gunships unleash rockets and artillery and tanks pulverize targets during an exercise involving the repulsing of an attack followed by a counterattack.