10 Gargantuan Things Made Solely For Killing People

10. Tupolev Tu-160

The Soviet Union had a mighty need to show it could drop enormous amounts of destructive horror onto any location of its choosing. For long-range targets an intercontinental ballistic missile would do the job, but sometimes, to make extra doubly sure those people die, you need a bomber. The biggest one they ever built was the Tupolev Tu-160 in 1987 ('Blackjack' to NATO forces), designed to launch nuclear missiles in the name of the Motherland, and it was the biggest and heaviest aircraft ever flown.

This airborne nuclear base was 50 metres long, could fly at twice the speed of sound thanks to a swing-wing design and could carry twelve nuclear-armed cruise missiles in its freakishly capacious bomb bay. Rather embarrassingly Russia left a bunch of Tu-160s behind in Ukraine when the Soviet Union broke up, which Ukraine then sold back to them - a decision some say they regret today given how delicious Ukraine looks to the current Russian leadership.