[anovikov]

Which makes the supersonic capability even more pointless. If it's going to release missiles from far away there won't be any fighters to evade.

[dude4you]

you are a military genius

[anovikov]

That's the thing: original plan was to make Tu-160 capable of sustained supersonic flight, to actually get bombs (X-15 missiles - Russian clones of SRAM) - to the target faster. That didn't work out.