Northern Fleet aviation to get new sub hunters

The technical requirements for Russia’s new anti-submarine aircraft are already prepared, a source in the defense ministry said to Izvestia this week.

It is a converted version of either the Tuplov-204 or its variant 214 that is supposed to form the basis of the Navy’s next anti-submarine planes.

The Tu-204 is a twin-engine medium-range jet plane originally designed by Tupolev to carry 210 passengers. Introduced in 1989, the late-Soviet designed plane was to take over after Aeroflot’t more well-known Tu-134 and Tu-134 passenger aircraft. The first plane for commercial traffic was certified in 1994.

As a passenger plane, the Tu-204 never became popular and production to commercial customers is today halted. In Russia, the last few of airliner Red Wing’s Tu-204 were retired in October 2018. All the other domestic Russian airliner retired their fleets of Tu-204s between 2005 and 2015.

In Russia, the plane is still flying special operations for the Rossiya airliner, the Roscosmos space agency, the defense ministry and other state agencies. 

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The defense sources tell Izvestia that the modified version will be deployed for surveillance in peace time, flying maritime operations watching out for enemy submarines. In a war-time scenario, the plane will also serve as sub-hunter, carrying torpedoes.

No time-frame for planned start of operations with the new sub-hunter version of the aircraft is stated.

Today, the Russian Northern Fleet’s anti-submarine aviation, flying out from the Kola Peninsula, operates the Illyushin-38 and Tu-142 aircraft as well as the Ka-27 helicopter.

Both the Il-38 and the Tu-142 are designed in the 1960s.