Tu-95 Bear

The Tupolev Tu-95, known to NATO by the reporting name Bear, is a Soviet and later Russian strategic bomber and missile-launch platform powered by four Kuznetsov NK-12 turboprop engines driving contra-rotating propellers, making it the only turboprop-powered strategic bomber to remain in operational service anywhere in the world. First flown in 1952 and entering Soviet service in 1956, it carried the Soviet Union's Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, during the 1961 test over Novaya Zemlya, and later missile-carrying variants such as the Tu-95MS have been continuously modernized to keep the airframe in front-line use for well over half a century. Russia's Aerospace Forces still operated around 55 Tu-95MS aircraft as of 2020, and the bomber has seen combat use launching cruise missiles over Syria beginning in November 2015 and extensively during the war in Ukraine following Russia's 2022 invasion, a conflict in which Ukrainian drone strikes destroyed seven to eight Tu-95MS aircraft across two airbases in June 2025 with a further aircraft lost in July 2026.