According to TASS, Russia's first "all-new manufactured" Tu-160M is ready to make its public debut and run tests before the end of this year, but there are no plans for its maiden flight within this year.

The news came as no surprise. Typically, it takes a few months for a new aircraft to complete its maiden flight from a test run. Clearly, there isn't enough time left in 2021 to get the Tu-160M ready for its maiden flight. According to previously published information, the all-new production aircraft is scheduled for delivery in 2023.

For Russia, the tu-160M is of special significance: before it, all the tu-160s in the Russian Air Force, the construction of the airframe platform was started and most of the work was done during the Soviet era. Even most of the Tu-160m in Russia today are retrofitted from older platforms.

For a long time after the collapse of the Soviet unio, Russia lost its tu-160 production capacity. Although the main plant of the aircraft is located in Kazan, Russia, the development and production of a large number of key subsystems and components are located in Ukraine and other countries and regions that are no longer part of Russia.