Are bombers obsolete?

[Shroom Man 777]

This is why during the heightened tensions in the Cold War, the SAC did keep large numbers of bomber in the air at all times.

[K. A. Pital]

How many though, at any given point in time? If you leave just a few bombers out of a force of hundreds, that's still essentially a victory in nuclear war - the remaining ones can only inflict so much damage before they run out of warheads.

[Stuart]

For one thing, could you give us a source for the 20% statistic?

Look up the history of air attacks on defended targets, calculate the casualties inflicted on the attacking force a sa percentage of the strength of the attacking force. I'll repeat what I said in the other thread; do your own research on this iif you want to check out the figures. One critical thing here is that there is a profound difference between conventional bombing and nuclear bombing. Ina conventional bombing offensive, a twenty percent loss rate is a catastrophe for the offense; a few such raids and the bombing force is out of business. In a nuclear bombing offensive, a twenty percent loss rate is a catastrophe for the defense; it means that 80 percent of the targets have been destroyed and the bombers can be retargeted on to the remaining 20 percent. Usually, we used to have the bombers carrying some extra weapons for just that reason.

Also, how would you factor submarine launched missiles?

In what way?

Another thing to consider is that while yes, you could hypothetical constantly keep your bombers in the air but maintenance and fuel costs are going to make that unlikely.

Which is a very odd thing to say since we've done it, sometimes for a period of years at a time.

And that means that in case of a surprise attack your bombers will pretty much be on the ground for certain.

That's nonsense. Why do you think the bomber bases are in the middle of the United States? And surrounded by long-range radars. Even with an out-of-the-blue missile attack (the most unlikely form of offensive) we can get the majority of the bombers off before the missiles hit the bases.

They lack the advantage of underground silos thou and airfields can be seen on satellite images.

that's nonsense. Of course we can see missile silos on a satellite shot. If you know where to look, you can even see them on Google Earth. here's one.



Go up to Minot, North Dakota and look around for yourself. You'll find them.

That and you don't even need a nuke to take them out. A conventional terrorist attack on the eave of war will do.

Bullshit. Do you seriously think we haven't thought of that? Trying to get on to a nuclear bomber base is a very good way of catching a bad case of dead. The guards aren't just authorized to use deadly force, they are required to do so. Every so often a "terrorist attack" gets staged without warning. If it gets past the perimeter fence, there is acute nausea for everybody who screwed up.

Keep in mind that it will take some time to get the aircraft and crews ready for operation and even 5 minutes is enough for a nuclear or even conventional terrorist to do a lot of damage to an airfield.

We can have the first planes off in less than five minutes. We can have all of them off in 15. That means the base will be empty by the time it gets incinerated. Do you know what the warning time of an attack is for the central USA? We've already dealt with the terrorist attack idea and you massively overestimate the damage such an attack could do.

In contrast to the bombers that have left by the time the attack arrives, the missiles have to ride out the attack in their silos. That makes them far more vulnerable.

The interstate highway system is designed so that one mile out of every five is completely straight and sufficient to serve as an emergency landing strip for any aircraft such as bombers in the event of a national emergency, so while it wouldn't have the infrastructure that an airport had, they could still get vehicles out there, refuel and provide emergency service for aircraft and then get back back up in the air, so airfields are not necessarily a requirement to their continued operation.

The Interstate System was conceived that way (with shelters and weapons storage built into the interchanges) but it wasn't, finally, built with those facilities. The primary reason why not was that there were so many airfields in the USA capable of taking bombers that there wasn't really much point in building more. In the good old days, we'd have bombers dispersed to bases all over the place complete with the weapons and fuel they needed in special convoys plus Air Force Police to tuck them in at night.

Also, how surprise can a surprise attack be? Can an enemy truly launch an attack without warning?

The worst case we worked on was what we called the "out of the blue" attack. That was that one minute everything was just peachy, peaceful, happy, no signs of tension anywhere when suddenly there was a flood of missiles inbound. No warning, nothing, just a massive missile attack on the radar (and other sensor) screens. Oddly, this is the scenario where bombers turn out best because the instant reaction is to get them off the bases fast. You see, the most likely explanation for an out of the blue attack is that the system screwed up and that no attack is actually under way (don't laugh, it happened more often than you might think. In one case, the 'missiles' were Canada Geese). Now, with bombers, it doesn't matter, we get the birds off as fast as we can and sort out what is happening later. When it turns out that the alert is a glitch or an exercise, we call the bombers back. With missiles, once they are launched, they are on their way. They can't be stopped, aborted or retargeted (I'm sorry to keep repeating that but it really is crucial). So we must be certain that the attack is genuine before teh launch order is given. The only acceptable confirmation was nuclear warheads initiating over the US. So the missiles had to ride out the attack in their silos. That weighted the odds heavily in favor of the bombers (one subtle thing here is malfunctions. If a missile has even a trivial malfunction, it sits there going whirrr-click, whirrr-click. If a bomber has a serious malfunction, the crew on board can still say "screw it, GO!" and the bomber takes off on (say) six engines. Been there, seen it. So out-of-the-blue attacks actually favor bombers quite heavily.

Yes, yes, quite so. But a true surprise-strike would indeed catch bombers off-guard, taking them all out would not constitute a problem unless some are on patrol duty/dispersal fields every day (they are not, to my knowledge).

With respect, no. Even an out-of-the-blue attack means we still get enough warning to get the bombers off. Again, that's why the bomber bases are in the center of the USA and ringed by defenses. You might get some of the bombers - the worst case ever studied was an out of the blue missile attack against SAC in the mid-1950s. That would have got 75 percent of the bombers on the ground. Of course it was intensely theoretical because the Soviet Union didn't have the missiles (at all) and the bombers were B-36s. It dropped steadily from that point onwards. By the 1980s, even out of the blue, we could still get 70 percent of the serviceable bombers off and on their way. Any sort of warning, no matter how slight, and that figure climbed dramatically. Today? Not so sure but the bomber fleet is not what it was. But, we are comparing bombers with missiles and that means use at maximum efficiency which is what SAC achieved. So SAC is the standard of comparison. A sudden surprise attack would be of only limited effect. The response would be devastating.

[Stuart]

How many though, at any given point in time? If you leave just a few bombers out of a force of hundreds, that's still essentially a victory in nuclear war - the remaining ones can only inflict so much damage before they run out of warheads.

In those days, a maximum of a quarter of the force was airborne at any one time. The actual number varied. As our radar screens improved and warning times went up, the percentage went down. The bomber force was scaled so that even allowing for losses we would still reduce the Soviet Union to a radioactive parking lot (flat, black and glows in the dark).

[Shroom Man 777]

Oh right, I forgot, the US military DOES train and exercise for the contingency where its high priority facilities (nuke plants, bomber bases, etc.) are attacked by terrorists - except, in these training exercises the terrorists are played by "Red Cells" composed of US Navy SEALs, rite? So turns out the bomber base defenders are actually prepared to deal with attacks carried out by special forces, and won't be total shits against some terrists or whatever.

When it turns out that the alert is a glitch or an exercise, we call the bombers back. With missiles, once they are launched, they are on their way. They can't be stopped, aborted or retargeted (I'm sorry to keep repeating that but it really is crucial).

It's okay Stu, I like how you emphasize the importance of not causing thousands of megadeaths because of a technical error or a silly mistake.

In a Strangelove scenario, rogue/misfired bombers can be recalled if the nuclear attack turns out to be false. If it was an ICBM, once the guys launch the missile, there's no stopping it. And when it turns out that there was no attack, the ICBM can't be recalled and in a few minutes it'll blow up a whole crapload of innocent people. Whoopsie you made a poopsie!

[Shroom Man 777]

How many though, at any given point in time? If you leave just a few bombers out of a force of hundreds, that's still essentially a victory in nuclear war - the remaining ones can only inflict so much damage before they run out of warheads.

In those days, a maximum of a quarter of the force was airborne at any one time. The actual number varied. As our radar screens improved and warning times went up, the percentage went down. The bomber force was scaled so that even allowing for losses we would still reduce the Soviet Union to a radioactive parking lot (flat, black and glows in the dark).

So if 25% of the bombers are in the air - and in a surprise attack, 50-70% of the bombers on the ground end up taking to the skies... you'd probably end up with, what, half your bomber fleet intact and in the air? This is assuming the enemy's missiles are ALL aimed at your bomber bases or that all your bomber bases are targeted (and the enemy, whoever he is, has enough nukes for the job)?

Did the SAC do anything to complicate the targeting of their bomber bases? Aside from keeping 25% of its bombers in the air, what else did it do? Did it land and service its planes in airfields that WEREN'T the designated bomber bases? Because if bomber bases are targeted (and they are), having SAC bombers land in a random airfield (that's not targeted) would totally screw the missile targeting up.

[Stuart]

So if 25% of the bombers are in the air - and in a surprise attack, 50-70% of the bombers on the ground end up taking to the skies... you'd probably end up with, what, half your bomber fleet intact and in the air? This is assuming the enemy's missiles are ALL aimed at your bomber bases or that all your bomber bases are targeted (and the enemy, whoever he is, has enough nukes for the job)?

At least that. And the force was scaled so we decided what we had to do (create a USSR-sized parking lot) and the force we needed to do it, worked out the potential losses from the worst possible case attack and then added the two together.

Did the SAC do anything to complicate the targeting of their bomber bases? Aside from keeping 25% of its bombers in the air, what else did it do? Did it land and service its planes in airfields that WEREN'T the designated bomber bases? Because if bomber bases are targeted (and they are), having SAC bombers land in a random airfield (that's not targeted) would totally screw the missile targeting up.

Lord yes. We had dispersal fields all over the place. Not just in the USA either, literally all over the place. One can find small towns in the USA that have municipal airfields that are built with runways that are surprisingly long and wide (its width that is the key to look for more than length). Commercial airports are an of-course in this situation. Then, there are such things as decoys that would be taken to an airfield in the back end of nowhere and inflated (there is a depraved story about that) so that casual observers would think that a couple of SAC birds had taken up residence. A lot of the schemes are still viable and so still classified.

Fundamentally though, any airfield can be used as a bomber base. That means there are potentially tens of thousands of them. Hitting them all would be impossible.

[Shroom Man 777]

And the wonderful thing is that you can use these bombers to blow up mudhuts in Vietna'vinam or Bakalakadakistans and Afghaniraqs and so on and so forth, which is something an SSBN or an ICBM totally can't do! A CVN could do that too, but the monies needed to buy a CVN could easily buy you more bombers that could shit out more conventional bombs than a single CVN, and the bombers still can do the global thermonuclear warfare job better than the CVN!

Stuart, how many B-52s does it take to match the bombload/warload of a CVN's entire aircraft compliment?

[Isolder74]

B-52's carry 60,0000 lbs of bombs. So one.

[Shroom Man 777]

I did a shitty caculation of maths. An F/A-18 Superhornet can carry 17,750lbs of external ordnance, bombs, fuel tanks, etc. We'll assume that it carries ALL that weight in warheads. A Nimitz-class can carry 90 aircraft at maximum, let's assume that it's ALL F/A-18s - with no other aircraft on board.

17,750*90 = 1,597,500 total warload of 90 Superbugs on an aircraft carrier, assuming all the planes on the carrier are Superbugs and all the Bugs are maxed out on all bombs.

A B-52H carries 70,000lbs of bombs and shit. Now, dividing 1597500 (total warload of the carrier's birds) / 70000 (warload of a single B-52) = 22.8214286 B-52s.

You need 22 B-52s full of bombs to match a carrier full of 90 Superbugs full of bombs.

A single B-52 is $53.4 million USD in 1998 dollars. 53.4 million (per single B-52) x 22.8 (B-52s needed to match a carrier full of bomb-laden Hornets) = one billion two hundred seventeen million five hundred twenty thousand or 1.217 billion.

The total cost of construction for a single Nimitz-class supercarrier = $4.5 billion

This is NOT factoring the cost of buying 90 F-18s!

And STILL the F-18s cannot penetrate as deep into enemy territory as a single B-52! AND a B-52 can reach any target in the world faster than a sea-sailing Nimitz-class!



god i am turning into shep! nooo! WARK WARK WARK!

[K. A. Pital]

Wait, so the USA kept about 25% of it's bombers airborne every single minute, every day, every night, from 1950 to 1991?

Either I don't know something, or there's a gross misunderstanding. The concept of a "missile attack" presumed a true surprise attack without a preceding period of tensions (i.e. "out of the blue"), denying the enemy any time to disperse bombers or raise them.

Of course, if I don't know something...

With all due respect, Stuart, but I don't believe you can keep a sizeable fraction of your force airborne all the time. The warning time for an out-of-the blue attack would've been about 15 minutes or so, right? The only surviving forces would've been those which rose to the air during this time.

I'm sure the airforce had contingencies and plans to raise a certain percent of planes very quickly (as in 5-10 minutes) in such a case, but it surely did not keep them flying all the time.

[Shroom Man 777]

ROUND the clock, day and night, twelve B-52s armed with hydrogen bombs cruise over the U.S. and Canada, carrying maps, charts and radar photos of Soviet targets. They are part of the Strategic Air Command's 1,500-plane retaliatory strike force, but they have a special distinction: because the twelve are always on station at their high-altitude guard posts, they constitute a brand-new weapon in the U.S. arsenal. They are the airborne answer to the threat of Soviet Russia's growing missile force, the minimum strike-back punch that the U.S. can deliver even if the Soviets should devastate all the 100 SAC bases and their grounded planes. The constantly flying Daily Dozen give the U.S. a defense that, as SAC Chief Thomas Power says, "never has been attempted in the military history of the world before."

With considerable secrecy, SAC's airborne alert has been flying for more than a year, patrolling the skies in unbroken guard while many a defense critic was orating that the U.S. is unprepared for Russian missile attack. First flights were made out of Loring Air Force Base in Maine. Since then, the alert has flown 6,000 sorties, with no alert bomber landed until another has relieved it on station. The duty is now rotated so that each of SACs twelve B-52 wings has one aircraft on patrol at all times.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... z0n8CyJIz0

Unlike other SAC crews that are continuously making training flights and simulated bombing attacks, the airborne alert crew flies a casual course—"high-speed loitering"-that keeps it within striking distance of its targets. On the 24-hour orbit that will range across 11,000 miles or so, the pilot maintains a 400-knot "endurance speed," avoiding sharp turns and other nonessential maneuvers to conserve fuel. SAC's planners calculate that he is within reach of his target for 21 hours—known as "effectiveness time." In the remaining three hours, he is low on fuel and making a scheduled mid-air refueling rendezvous. During the long patrol, crewmen warm their food and eat. thumb through books and magazines, rotate taking catnaps on rubber mattresses and in sleeping bags.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... z0n8DCmJTW

ong Stretch. The fuel and spare parts required for operating the twelve planes around the clock for one year run to $65 million—the fuel for one B-52 alone runs to $7,000 per flight. SAC Chief Power has managed to get an additional budget of only $185 million. If he can get the money, Power would like to boost the alert to include at least 25% of his planes, which would cost $750 million a year above the $8 billion budget for all of SAC's operations.

In Power's plans, the alert will continue through the years (estimated until 1965) that the U.S. is building a reliable missile-warning system. Some airmen think that the airborne alert will be a part of SAC life as long as there are any nuclear bombers in the picture (estimated until 1965). Costly as it is, the airborne alert is an economical way of stretching the effectiveness of the strategic bomber as long and as far as possible. Says Lieut. General Walter ("Cam") Sweeney, commander of the Eighth Air Force: "I think we'll never go back to not having it."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... z0n8DJaFTe

I think he got the boost.

[Stuart]

Wait, so the USA kept about 25% of it's bombers airborne every single minute, every day, every night, from 1950 to 1991? Either I don't know something, or there's a gross misunderstanding.

The airborne alert force was established in 1957 and initially constituted 12 aircraft (B-52s) plus tankers. This was supplemented by one third of the force being kept on ground alert (fully-fuelled, fully armed and with crews in place). The ground alert goal was reached in 1960. The initial target was to have the force off and gone within 15 minutes. From 1960 onwards the ground Alert Force included airborne command post aircraft. In 1961 the number of aircraft on Ground Alert was increased to 50 percent if the force. (A note here, you ain't never lived until you've stood at the end of a runway and watched B-52s going over your head 50 feet up and at 15-second intervals - it's called MITO.) During this time Airborne Alerts went up to 25 percent meaning that 75 percent of SAC bombers were on an immediate alert basis. Airborne Alert was discontinued in 1968 when it was deemed that early warning had increased to the point where the Ground Alert aircraft could clear their bases in time. Ground Alert did not end at that time.

The concept of a "missile attack" presumed a true surprise attack without a preceding period of tensions (i.e. "out of the blue"), denying the enemy any time to disperse bombers or raise them.

I know. The point is, it can't be done. We get enough warning (how much I can't say) to clear the bases of the ready aircraft from a blue sky start. We have Saint Curtis to thank for that; he laid the principle down that SAC was always at war and had to respond as such.

Of course, if I don't know something...

How much warning time we get. And that you won't find out other than "enough"

With all due respect, Stuart, but I don't believe you can keep a sizeable fraction of your force airborne all the time. The warning time for an out-of-the blue attack would've been about 15 minutes or so, right? The only surviving forces would've been those which rose to the air during this time.

We did, for quite a long time. We don't now. The point is that it can be done. We can clear the bases of their bombers in 15 minutes and that gives us a margin of safety. More than that . . . .. .

You might like to watch this.



15 birds off the ground in 9 minutes and 56 seconds. That's 39 seconds between launches but Minot has always been a bit slow.

[CaptainChewbacca]

That's awesome, Stuart. An incredibly humbling sight when you consider just how GOOD humans had to get at planning to kill each-other to make this kind of thing possible. Heck, it looks like there's even time for a bathroom break and a sandwich if people are getting 15 minutes warning

And you say 50% of the US bomber force maintains this level of readiness at all times?

[Sea Skimmer]

I did a shitty caculation of maths. An F/A-18 Superhornet can carry 17,750lbs of external ordnance, bombs, fuel tanks, etc. We'll assume that it carries ALL that weight in warheads. A Nimitz-class can carry 90 aircraft at maximum, let's assume that it's ALL F/A-18s - with no other aircraft on board.

17,750*90 = 1,597,500 total warload of 90 Superbugs on an aircraft carrier, assuming all the planes on the carrier are Superbugs and all the Bugs are maxed out on all bombs.

A B-52H carries 70,000lbs of bombs and shit. Now, dividing 1597500 (total warload of the carrier's birds) / 70000 (warload of a single B-52) = 22.8214286 B-52s.

You need 22 B-52s full of bombs to match a carrier full of 90 Superbugs full of bombs.

Additional fun thing about this is, the B-52s would be flying from a land base which has a huge ammo bunker complex to feed them and either a dock or a railroad spur to feed the bunkers. So it can keep sustaining that kind of effort as long as we want. Arc Light missions over Vietnam averaged about 30 B-52 sorties per day from Gaum and Thailand... for around seven years straight. In contrast a Nimitz has about 2,900 tons of magazine capacity which means those Superbugs can only make about 3.6 sorties per plane before the carrier is out of weapons. Weapons can be resupplied at sea, but that takes serious time during which the carrier cannot conduct flight operations and most replenishment ships able to hauling ammo can't haul enough to fully resupply a Nimitz. Our of our dedicated ammunition ships are gone now.

Course the realistic bomb load of the Superbug is more like 4,000-6,000lb (funny enough that's still about the same average for a B-17 in WW2) so in reality the carrier would not run out of munitions so quickly.

How much warning time we get. And that you won't find out other than "enough"

Given that we are on what, the second or third generation of infrared early warning satellites which cover a fair portion of the earths surface, it seems safe to conclude that warning time will be the missiles entire time of flight, minus twenty seconds or so for someone looking at a computer to realize what he is seeing and hit the attack warning button. So that could be as much as 40 minutes.... That radar set up in north Norway ought to confirm that the Soviets are launching real missiles and not just lighting lots of giant flares to annoy us a few minutes later.

[Stuart]

And you say 50% of the US bomber force maintains this level of readiness at all times?

No, Minot was slow. Barksdale could do a lot better. One plane lifting off, one half way down the runway, one just starting to roll. Now that was a sight to warm the blood. The official MITO standard was one every 30 seconds but all the bases could do better than that if they had to

[JointStrikeFighter]

Negatives for Missiles is that they are completely inflexible. They cannot be retargeted in flight. They cannot be aborted once fired.

except those ones that can be

[phongn]

Negatives for Missiles is that they are completely inflexible. They cannot be retargeted in flight. They cannot be aborted once fired.

except those ones that can be

Surely it's obvious the context is of long-range ballistic missiles which have those constraints on them?

[K. A. Pital]

The standards for takeoff timespan are pretty awesome. A little problem for me to watch it at real-time speeds (youtube is banned in the glorious PRC as I'm sure all know, and proxies are kinda slow). But still impressive.

I wonder what sort of readiness do our Tu-95 and Tu-160 and regiments maintain now. Though it might be so bad I don't want to know

And yes, modern satellite detection does simplify early warning against missile strike a lot. I guess that's why there's an increased emphasis on cruise missiles as opposed to ballistic missiles, and on concealed-launch systems (like the Club-K, for example) which deny the enemy an ability to discern launch complexes (on a certain level, of course).

Surely it's obvious the context is of long-range ballistic missiles which have those constraints on them?

I've read that R-36MUTTKH has an ability of in-flight retargeting.

[Stuart]

except those ones that can be

Which is none. No strategic ballistic missile can be aborted or retargeted once launched. Missiles that have been converted for test purposes or for use as targets can be but operational missiles cannot. None of them.

[K. A. Pital]

Oi, my bad. Indeed, no ICBMs can be retargeted in-flight. Only cruise missiles can, or (not sure if it's so) last-generation tactical BMs (Iskander).

[Stuart]

The standards for takeoff timespan are pretty awesome. A little problem for me to watch it at real-time speeds (youtube is banned in the glorious PRC as I'm sure all know, and proxies are kinda slow). But still impressive.

Could you download it then watch it on realplayer? Or I could put it on a flashdrive and mail it to you if you like.

I wonder what sort of readiness do our Tu-95 and Tu-160 and regiments maintain now. Though it might be so bad I don't want to know.

They simply don't do MITO the way our bombers do. The Tu-95s are get-up-and-loiter birds. The Tu-160s haven't really thought their doctrine out yet.

I've read that R-36MUTTKH has an ability of in-flight retargeting.

It's been suggested but it hasn't. There are good solid reasons for that; one is that the uplink is extremely unreliable and inconsistent, another is that it is also easy to crack open and one doesn't want to see one's missiles all aborting five seconds after launch. There are other reasons as well but those are the two big ones. Basically the summary is that its technically near-impossible (if not all the way there) and even if we could do it, we wouldn't want to. Ballistic missiles are really nearing the end of their life as a viable system.

One thing that might replace them are unmanned, ultra-high speed, ultra-high altitude aircraft. People are getting very interested in those. To quote one of the people involved "speed and altitude are the new stealth". That made my heart warm.

[K. A. Pital]

What about submarine-carried cruise missiles? I'm pretty sure it's a very promising system, especially when you consider the possibilities of converting SSBNs to SSGNs, or building new SSGNs from scratch. Even a limited ability to launch something like RK-55 through torp tubes makes even a single SSN quite deadly and dangerous, due to survivability.

[Stuart]

What about submarine-carried cruise missiles? I'm pretty sure it's a very promising system, especially when you consider the possibilities of converting SSBNs to SSGNs, or building new SSGNs from scratch. Even a limited ability to launch something like RK-55 through torp tubes makes even a single SSN quite deadly and dangerous, due to survivability.

Another good possibility. The Indians appear to be heading in that direction; the Arihant is classed as a strategic submarine. I'm carrying her as an SSBN at the moment but she may be an SSGN. The flight profile may be interesting though; one possibility is a missile that launches like a ballistic missile but has a high-mach cruise missile instead of the second stage.

By the way, the Indian ABM system is now three hits and one miss in four tests. That's pretty good going for a system that's come out of nowhere.

[JointStrikeFighter]

except those ones that can be

Which is none. No strategic ballistic missile can be aborted or retargeted once launched. Missiles that have been converted for test purposes or for use as targets can be but operational missiles cannot. None of them.

re-read your statement before getting all smug stu; you said "missiles" period. Not ballistic missiles. Turns out cruise missiles are strategic weapons relevant to a discussion about the obselescence of bombers?