Soviets Show Off Top-Secret Blackjack

The deadliest weapon in the arsenal of the Soviet air force--the needle-nosed strategic bomber that NATO calls the Blackjack--was revealed to the Soviet people and the rest of the world on Sunday for the first time.

The plane made a dazzling public debut at a three-hour air show, the country’s first in more than 20 years. Its appearance apparently was aimed to show Soviet and foreign doubters that the Soviet air force still has the right stuff following a chain of recent aviation mishaps.

Although Western air attaches who attended the show said they saw little that was new, the “Aviation-Sports Holiday” was clearly in line with the policy of glasnost , or openness, pursued by the Kremlin under President Mikhail S. Gorbachev. The policy has brought an easing of the once-obsessive secrecy about military affairs.

Assembled on the grass at Tushino airfield in northwest Moscow, more than 150,000 people saw the supersonic Blackjack bomber streak overhead, along with other aeronautics novelties such as the Ilyushin 96-300 jetliner and the cigar-shaped Tupolev 204, called the Soviet version of the Boeing 757 by Westerners.

NATO Code Name

Blackjack is the code name given the bomber by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The Soviets call it the Tupolev TU-160.

The plane the Pentagon says is the world’s largest and heaviest bomber flashed out of the north over Tushino at a height of only 800 to 1,000 feet, its four thundering jet engines leaving a yellow smudge of exhaust in the sky.

Flying at about 380 miles per hour, the plane, whose nose resembles that of the Concorde supersonic airliner, shot past the airfield in seconds, then peeled off toward the south and the high-rise towers of a Moscow residential district. Despite its military function, the plane was painted a dazzling white.

According to the Pentagon’s 1988 study “Soviet Military Power,” the bomber has a maximum speed of Mach 2--twice the speed of sound, or more than 1,300 m.p.h.--and an unrefueled combat range of about 4,500 miles. It reportedly can carry payloads of bombs or cruise missiles.

Then-U.S. Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci was invited to inspect a Blackjack bomber at Kubinka air base near Moscow in August, 1988, and saw it fly, but Sunday’s flight was the first before the general public.

100 Blackjacks to Be Built

According to Jane’s “All the World’s Aircraft 1988-89,” the Soviets are expected to build at least 100 Blackjacks at a new complex in Kazan. Eleven had been completed by 1988, Jane’s said.

The Tushino air show, the Soviets’ first since 1967, was officially held to celebrate Aviation Day, marked every Aug. 20.

Western air attaches suggested that one purpose of the show may have been to give the Soviet people a more favorable image of their air force to counter recent mishaps and problems.

In July, a pilotless MIG-23 flew halfway across Europe and crashed in Belgium, killing an 18-year-old man, after its Soviet pilot ejected over Poland.

The previous month, a MIG-29 fighter crashed at the prestigious Paris Air Show. A joint Soviet-French commission established that a bird had been sucked into the engine, causing the crash. Earlier this year, a Soviet pilot defected to Turkey in a MIG-29.