On 3 July 1955, at the Soviet Aviation Day display at Tushino near Moscow, Western military attachés watched a stream of M-4 Bisons pass overhead and concluded the USSR was already fielding long-range jet bombers in quantity. By the most widely repeated account, the impression of numbers was exaggerated: a group of aircraft flew past, circled out of sight, and passed over again, so the same machines were counted more than once. Whether this was a deliberate deception or a misreading by observers is still debated, but the effect was real.

Combined with later intelligence, the display helped drive the American perception of a “bomber gap” — a belief that the Soviet Union was out-producing the United States in strategic bombers. That perception influenced US defence spending and bomber procurement in the mid-1950s. In reality the Bison was built only in modest numbers — on the order of ninety aircraft — and the gap, as later reconnaissance including U-2 flights showed, did not exist in the form feared.

The requirement was blunt: reach the United States, deliver a nuclear weapon, and return — an unrefuelled radius that implied a total range of roughly 11,000–12,000 km. The M-4’s thirsty early engines and aerodynamics fell short, with cited ranges commonly around 8,000–9,500 km. That was enough to threaten parts of the globe but not to carry out the round-trip mission against American targets it had been designed for. The re-engined 3M improved fuel efficiency and, with in-flight refuelling, extended reach considerably — but the type is still generally regarded as having under-delivered on its original intercontinental promise, which is precisely why so many were converted to other roles.

In the late 1970s the Soviet space programme needed a way to move oversized Energia rocket stages and the Buran orbiter from their factories to the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The answer was to rebuild a small number of surplus 3M airframes into the VM-T Atlant, a heavy-lift transport that carried its cargo on top of the fuselage on struts. The conversion added a distinctive twin tail to cope with the turbulence of the external load and extended the rear fuselage. Sources differ on the exact count — commonly given as two operational aircraft (a third airframe was also modified) — and together they are reported to have flown more than 150 delivery flights, carrying loads including the roughly 45-tonne Buran orbiter with its fin removed. It was an improbable second career for a Cold War bomber.

The M-4 and 3M were Soviet state products, built at Moscow’s Plant 23 and never sold on an open market, so no meaningful flyaway unit price or cost-per-flight-hour figure exists in the public record. The type’s real cost story is one of value rather than dollars: a bomber that did not fully meet its strategic mission but was cheap to keep useful once rebuilt as a tanker, extending the service life of a fleet the Soviet air forces had already paid for. Any precise dollar figure attached to the Bison should be treated as guesswork.