Well it’s certainly taken a while but here is my rendition of the mighty “Badger” Cold War bomber complete with kingfisher(esque) “nuclear” missiles and in 1:1 scale. Just for good measure there’s two more cleaver missiles in an internal bomb bay - I know, the Beast flotilla is going to get it this time! The kingfishers are the credit to the yoda-like wizarding prowess of mikoyanster’s weapons pack. All I did was change the shape of one of his modded cleaver missiles. The fact it works is entirely to mikoyansters credit, you guys need to see his weapon packs they really are awesome! I really wanted to do a piloted missile but there’s no way (on iPad at least) of isolating the Badgers controls whilst piloting the missile - I mean, once you’ve crashed a bomb successfully you’ll go back and find the mother ship in all sorts of crazy positions/crashed. But then again the fire and forget nature of the cleavers is quite handy so my thanks to mikoyanster! This Tu 16 was originally going to showcase a piloted missile and ended up being the main piece, hence stock wheels to cut down on the part count (on the plus side they work like they should so they stayed!) This has been a bit of a first for me wading into old soviet military hardware and to be honest I do like the blunt functionality of it all, but next time I think it’s back to good ol’ Blighty for some props again!! I’ll let Alien correct me of any shortcomings in detail, as I’m sure he’s turned some badgers away in his time!

The Tu 16 was designed to replace piston powered bombers for the Soviet Union in the 50s and turned out to be a bit of a workhorse for soviet military purposes, only being retired in the 90s. A number of airframes are still being flown by the Chinese to this day giving the ‘badger’ more than 60 years of service!

Controls are VTOL down for flaps and plus 2 for weapons bay. Trim is required for level flight - Ivan was a little ‘lubricated’ with vodka at the drawing board, but then again the threat of the gulag is a useful stick to the vodkas carrot. It’s highly recommended to open the weapons bay if intending to attack ground targets as internal cleaver missile deploy first (a slight oversight on my part....) Hit 8 to kill the lights and go all tactical against the decadent imperialist aggressors.....

In my finest Connery playing Marko Ramius impression, - “ah yesh, itsh a great day comrades ....” for I truly am trembling “at the shoundsh of our rocketsh!”