russian-bomber-patrols

[Tom Ligon]

I somehow doubt they'd use the T-160 for that cruise application. More likely the Tu-95, built into the 90's, still in service and probably will be for decades. The Bear, not the Backfire, but prop. It has more range and more hang time than the Blackjack.

We built two XB-70's IIRC. Spectacular crash ended the program. The B-58, B-70, and B-1 supersonic bombers have all proved pretty useless. The B-1 got trotted out to drop a couple of bombs on Saddam, but it was more gesture than practical. Meanwhile, the venerable B-52's are being operated by the grandkids of the original pilots, and will serve to mid-century or beyond. The Russians have probably figured out what we did ... those things would only be useful once, and it turns out the Russians do love their children, too.

It is impressive to watch a B-1 barrel roll. Got to see one in action at Miramar MCAS once.

[ladajo]

The B-1 was built as a low level high speed penetrator, a super FB-111 if you will.
It is very good at it. Part of the engine swap drama was that the plane (similar in regard to the FB-111) could outperform what the crew could handle.
We run into this more often than not with our hardware in all domains. That is also part of the pressure for the next and current step: No crew.

The B-1s have been used extensively alongside B-2s in combat roles. However, the most bang for the buck (in a lower contested airspace) remains the B-52 BUFFs. In Afghanistan and Iraq they became on call precision guided munitions busses. They would orbit for lengthy periods waiting for an abbreviated 9-line from a FO, or even just got the targeting digitally.
Like a gardian god, one could get on the net when needed, and a 2,000 lb angel would shortly fall from the sky.

[GIThruster]

We built two XB-70's IIRC. Spectacular crash ended the program.

I think it is in Ben Rich's excellent little book, Skunkworks; that he says both the SR-71 bomber and the XB-70 were cancelled not because of the crash, but because the Soviet ability to intercept very high flying aircraft with their missiles cause a paradigm shift toward ICBM's from bombers. It was Eisenhower himself who axed the program saying ICBM's were better and cheaper, and Kennedy attacked eisenhower and the Republicans as soft militarily for canceling that program. It's a shame because both the XB-70 and the Blackbird Bomber were cool designs I would love to have seen fly.

[ladajo]

THis was part of the 1950's Offset strategy. As they puesued the nuclear option to counter the massive soviet ground army, the soviets attempted to counter as well with improved air defense. The end result was still a pursuit of the mass nuclear attack but with ballistic missiles and low arc or cruise systems (can't really stop them) and low level penetration systems ALCM, SLCM, SRSLBM, B-52 upgrades for low level, FB-111, B-1, Tacair penetration mods, etc (hard to see and not much time to hit them when you do.). The next big paradigm shift happened in 1975 with the focus on precision guidance, networked battle management and space focus. If you are paying attention to the news, you will notice that we are now heading into the third cycle (which is only counted from post WWII, as there were offsets prior to that as well), or "offset" which will likely leverage previous offsets as has happened in the past.
This time around, I expect autonomous and networked (when needed) unmanned systems to play a large role. Should be interesting. We are in effect creating a counter to our own last offset, which is what pretty much happened in previous ones, as the "other guys" tried to copy what we had done.