Russia is working on a ¡®Doomsday¡¯ aircraft for its Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that is expected to be state of the art and be a control centre in situations of nuclear-armed conflict.?
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Reported first by Moscow Times, the aircraft is under construction in Voronezh, citing a source in the state military-industrial complex.?
Tass, another state Run news agency, had last year reported that the aircraft would actually be modified versions of the Ilyushin IL-96-400M airliner -- a common commercial plane in Russia.?
The aircraft is a quad jet long-haul wide-body airliner designed by Ilyushin and currently being manufactured by Voronezh Aircraft Production Association. They¡¯ll be making at least two of these gargantuan aircraft and one is already in production.
These aircraft will essentially be replacements of the older IL-80 aircraft which are essentially militarized versions of the IL-86 passenger aircraft.?
While there isn¡¯t much info on what these aircraft will be loaded considering its manufacturing is a highly confidential affair and is regarded as state secrets.?
However, RIA Novosti reports that the aircraft could get a longer range than its predecessor. Moreover, the new aircraft will also be capable of communicating with strategic nuclear forces within roughly 3,700 miles or around 5,955 kilometres.??
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Other cool inclusions in the novel doomsday aircraft would include a reinforced fuselage, an updated comms system and no cabin windows, to limit radiation from entering the aircraft in case of a fallout.
Recently, during maintenance of one of the IL-80s, a thief stole sensitive equipment from the aircraft. There is no information on what was stolen and/or if they¡¯ve caught the culprit.?
Just last week, Russia unveiled a set of new hypersonic weapons systems offering state of the art targeting and speed. The missiles were demonstrated from Admiral Gorshkov frigate and one of them, the Tsirkon travelled seven times the speed of sound more than 350 kilometres to hit the target on the coasts of the Barents Sea.