As with previous Tupolev designs, it has a dart-like rear-mounted delta wing, forward-mounted canards, and a KR-17A turbojet engine mounted above the tail.

[5] About midnight on 10 March 2022, a Tu-141 crashed in front of a student campus in Zagreb, Croatia, over 550 kilometres (340 mi) from Ukraine.

[11] The Croatian president, Zoran Milanović, said it was clear the drone came from the direction of Ukraine, entering Croatia after flying over Hungary.

[12] On 15 March, an undisclosed source close to the ministry of defence of Croatia was cited in the Croatian news magazine Nacional as saying that the investigation had concluded that the crashed drone belonged to the Armed Forces of Ukraine and carried a bomb that was meant for striking Russia's positions, but the drone had strayed off course and crashed after it ran out of fuel.

[13] On 3 July 2022, the governor of the Kursk region wrote on Telegram that "our air defenses shot down two Ukrainian Strizh drones".

[18][19] On 26 March 2023, Russia stated that it had downed a Tu-141 near Kireyevsk using a Polye-21[20] jamming system, resulting in three casualties and damage to an apartment block.