Exactly 19 years ago, on January 27, 2006, the last Tu-22M3 heavy bomber in service with the Armed Forces of Ukraine was disposed of in Poltava.
A recent reminder of this event surfaced on Ukrainian social networks, sparking a debate on whether these bombers could have been preserved to aid Ukraine in its ongoing war with russia. Some, however, argued that there was no use crying over spilled milk, as the saying goes.
Read more: russia's Strategic Aviation Crisis: Failing Attempts to "Reproduce" the Tu-160 and Tu-22M3 at the Kazan Aviation Plant
First, let’s clarify the numbers. While it’s commonly stated that Ukraine had 60 Tu-22M3 bombers, the reality was slightly different. Ukraine had 43 Tu-22M3 aircraft and 17 of the earlier Tu-22M2 models.
Worth noting, the Tu-22M2 stood out for its significant design flaws and issues with its power plant, which led to its fast decommissioning in russia and Ukraine, the only two nations to operate the Tu-22M2. A little over a decade since the last M2 left the factory assembly lines, the process of removing these bombers from service in both countries began in the 1990s.
Ukraine started scrapping its Tu-22M2 and Tu-22M3 bombers in 2002. Notably, The Military Balance directory from IISS, in 2004–2005, claimed the Ukrainian Armed Forces still had 32 Tu-22M3 bombers, despite reports that many of these were decommissioned as early as 2003.
This discrepancy highlights a paradox from the 1990s-–2000s: the West sought to reduce military threats from former Soviet countries but lacked accurate data during that time. This eventually turned out to be detrimental to Ukraine’s defense capabilities in the long run.

Now, back to the main question of whether the Tu-22M3 bombers could have been preserved for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, we find that several factors make it unlikely.
The key problem is, Tu-22M3 bombers were produced by a single manufacturer: an aircraft factory in Kazan, russia. By the way, nowadays this factory occasionally makes headlines when attacked by Ukrainian long-range drones.
Given this, it’s clear that russia would never have agreed to service bombers that could be used by Ukraine to deter, well, russian conquest ambitions, first and foremost.
Even for their own forces, the russians have struggled to maintain their fleet of Tu-22M3 bombers. After inheriting 170 of these aircraft following the Soviet Union's collapse, russia saw their number decrease nearly threefold, with only around 60 still in service by February 2022.

There are also mentions of plans to convert the Ukrainian Tu-22M3 bombers into conventional carriers for non-nuclear bombs, whether dumb or guided. However, these plans couldn’t be carried out due to the disposal of the bombers.
It’s essential to emphasize the tactical limitation of the Tu-22M3 as a bomb carrier: it can only be used effectively when the enemy’s air defenses are completely suppressed. The russians themselves were unable to achieve this during the 2008 war with Georgia, when a Tu-22M3 was shot down for the first time in history.
The same vulnerability is evident in the current war in Ukraine. In April 2024, a russian Tu-22M3 carrying Kh-22 missiles disregarded the threat and thus encountered missiles launched by Ukraine’s modified S-200 system, with unambiguous consequences reflected in spectacular videos published then.

When considering the lost potential of Ukraine’s defense capabilities in the 2000s, it’s better to focus on simpler yet more practical aspects. For instance, the same Military Balance from 2004–2005 also reported that Ukraine’s Armed Forces possessed 90 launchers of the Tochka-U short-range ballistic missiles, 72 launchers of Elbrus SRBMs, and 50 launchers of Luna-M missiles — nowhere to be found today besides a vague number of Tochka-U systems somehow still operating as of August 2024.
In the 2000s, Ukraine’s tank fleet included nearly 3,800 units, with 2,200 being T-64s. Ukrainian aviation then had 200 MiG-29 fighters, 60 Su-27 fighters, 71 Su-24M bombers, and 63 Su-25 attack aircraft — much of which had significantly diminished by early 2022.

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