MOSCOW, May 18. /TASS/. The heavy upgrade of the Tupolev Tu-160M strategic missile-carrying bomber that will use a new NK-32 engine has been completed, Head of the state tech corporation Rostec Sergey Chemezov said at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday.

"The heavy upgrade of the Tu-160M missile-carrying bomber with the NK-32 engine has been completed. We have actually created a new aircraft," the Rostec chief said.

The upgraded Tu-160M has retained only the external appearance of the bomber, Chemezov said.

"Both the engine and the onboard equipment are new and all of the assemblies have been replaced. We have digitized the entire documentation since the last aircraft was rolled out at the Kazan plant somewhere in the 1980s," he added.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov said during a working visit to the Kazan Aviation Plant in Kazan in March that one new and one upgraded Tu-160 strategic missile-carrying bomber would be rolled out in 2022.

The Tu-160 (NATO reporting name: Blackjack) is a Soviet and subsequently a Russian supersonic variable-sweep wing strategic missile-carrying bomber. Along with the Tu-95MS bombers, these aircraft are the mainstay of the Russian Aerospace Force’s long-range aviation. The Tu-160M is designated to strike enemy targets in remote areas with nuclear and conventional weapons. The Tu-160M is the world’s heaviest supersonic military aircraft to date.

It was reported in 2015 that Russia’s top brass made a decision to resume the production of an upgraded version of the Tu-160 bomber on an instruction from President Vladimir Putin.