Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoygu ordered to consider the possibility of resuming production of Tu-160 bombers at Kazan Aviation Plant named after S.P. Gorbunov, Interfax-AVN reports.

“Today we must solve problems related not only to provision of continued airworthiness and upgrade of aircraft operated by the long-range aviation, but we must also resume production of Tu-160 bombers,” the minister said during his visit to the enterprise.

According to Shoygu “Tu-160 bomber is a unique aircraft, which was in advance of its time, and still it has not used all of its capabilities”. “Nobody has developed a better supersonic aircraft in this class yet,” the minister added.

“Of course, - he said, - in order to solve this very important problem we must focus our efforts on reconstruction and retrofitting of the production facilities”.

S.Shoygu also noted that, compared to the previous visit, the Kazan-based plant demonstrates positive results in terms of implementation of a contract for repair and upgrade of aircraft operated by the Russian long-range aviation.

During his visit Shoygu was accompanied by the head of the Republic of Tatarstan Rustam Minikhanov, President of United Aircraft Corporation Yuri Slusar and representatives of Tupolev Company.