Could the XB-70 Valkyrie be feasible today?

[Smitty]

Originally posted by Kenneth P. Katz:

A subsonic aircraft loitering off the cost of Iran could put a hypersonic missile on a missile TEL within minutes of the TEL being detected. I ask again, why does the aircraft have to be hypersonic?

 

Hitting thousands of aimpoints over a short period of time is hard when your sorties from CONUS take 30+ hours.

 

Of course, forward basing can reduce this problem.

[Chris Werb]

Originally posted by Kenneth P. Katz:

A subsonic aircraft loitering off the cost of Iran could put a hypersonic missile on a missile TEL within minutes of the TEL being detected. I ask again, why does the aircraft have to be hypersonic?

 

The subsonic aircraft first has to get to its position off the coast of Iran. A hypersonic aircraft will have a much quicker transit time and should generate a much higher higher sortie rate, per aircraft. I'm not in favour of building hypersonic aircraft but I do perceive those things as stand-alone advantages.

[JOE BRENNAN]

Further to point on time horizons, graph from WSJ article, background on Rumsfeld/reservist flap, on what he says he's trying to do. OK before it was too big, now it's almost too small to read, sorry. But the graph is proportion of resources on guerilla-type action, conventional war soon, and emerging conventional powers of the future. Or in more concrete terms of 2004: Iraq, procurement of current technology and maintenance of current high end war force structures, and R&D state of art advancement to be still comfortably qualitatively ahead of say China in 20-30yrs. Late 90's bulk of resources was still on conventional war (btw I don't recall a lot of complaining here of not enough armored Hummvees before Iraq, that was "meals on wheels", I thought ). Now conventional near term is what should go on a diet to fund the other two ends of the graph.

 

This could be applied to many debates and may seem off topic here, but I think it applies here too. A bomb truck program implies emphasis in the middle of the spectrum. Hypersonics, even if unmanned and *someday* launched from bomb trucks require resources to make happen that compete with buying bomb trucks soon. On bombers I'd stick with the old airframes for now, and emphasize advancement of state of art, after meeting pressing needs of Iraq first; actually all across the board too. I think something being a state of art advancement and/or keeping the industries that produce those intact is a strong requirement on its own, compared to increased conventional warfighting ability soon.

 

 

 

Joe

 

[Edited by JOE BRENNAN (09 Dec 2004).]

[Kenneth P. Katz]

True. Of course if the hypersonic bomber costs billions of dollars to purchase each one and hundreds of thousands of dollars per flight hour to operate and maintain (realistic estimates), that can buy a lot of subsonic aircraft which can be on station or in transit.

 

The unavoidable problem with exotic (stealthy and/or fast) bombers is that they are incredibly expensive, and in the end one can get almost comparable capability with stealthy and/or fast missiles fired from subsonic airplanes.

 

Originally posted by Chris Werb:

The subsonic aircraft first has to get to its position off the coast of Iran. A hypersonic aircraft will have a much quicker transit time and should generate a much higher higher sortie rate, per aircraft. I'm not in favour of building hypersonic aircraft but I do perceive those things as stand-alone advantages.

[gewing]

I want a stealthy aircraft that can deploy MOAB and MOP, preferably 2 at a time!!!

 

 

Originally posted by Kenneth P. Katz:

Why do you need a stealthy bomber when a non-LO airplane can carry stealthy missiles at a fraction of the cost?

 

Why do you need a supersonic bomber when an subsonic airplane can carry hypersonic missiles as a fraction of the cost?

[Smitty]

Originally posted by gewing:

I want a stealthy aircraft that can deploy MOAB and MOP, preferably 2 at a time!!!

 

 

 

Umm, why? How many targets need one of these things? (Answer: Not many. ) Why design an aircraft around ordinance that you might use a couple of times during its life?

[Jeff]

Originally posted by Smitty:

Umm, why?  How many targets need one of these things?  (Answer: Not many. )  Why design an aircraft around ordinance that you might use a couple of times during its life?

 

 

My guess is he's hoping for a bigger target list.

[Kenneth P. Katz]

I want Heidi Klum and Latitia Casta, preferably both at the same time. That's a good example of how exotic requirements can drive a system to be astronomically costly and impractical.

 

Originally posted by gewing:

I want a stealthy aircraft that can deploy MOAB and MOP, preferably 2 at a time!!!

[Scott Cunningham]

Chriiiiist, look at the Stryker.

 

All the design criteria were based on 1) having wheels, and 2) air deployability. All other factors were secondary.

 

It achieved criteria #1. It will never make criteria #2.

 

Once the shooting starts all those bogus considerations go out the window and all that matters is combat capability.

[gewing]

Because

A: two of them would imo enable destruction of even things that might withstand one.

 

B: Less Sorties if you DO have multiple superhard targets.

 

C: Think how many Smaller weapons it could carry.

 

 

Originally posted by Smitty:

Umm, why?  How many targets need one of these things?  (Answer: Not many. )  Why design an aircraft around ordinance that you might use a couple of times during its life?

 

[Scott Cunningham]

A B-70 could be built, but it would still be uneconomical. It is a one trick pony, capable of high altitude, high speed strategic bombing. That's it. Unless you want to blow the hell out of a city with an H-bomb it is essentially useless to the military. It would also be hugely expensive.

 

As it is, stealth has offered far more military benefit than speed. Planes need a certain amount of speed, but anything above Mach-1 doesn't tend to be used much in combat.

 

(just getting back to the initial discussion)