Are strategic bombers still a useful role in the modern era?

Are strategic bombers still a useful role in the modern era? It seems like they can only be used against massively outgunned opponents now.

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  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Stealth bombers yeah, everything else, cruise missile carriers until the air defenses go down, then bomb trucks.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      That's exactly how smaller ground-attack aircraft are viable as well, so the answer should be an unqualified yes. If you need lots of bombs, or a launch platform for space payloads, there's no substitute for beeg airplane.

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    To be honest, with the advances in Western missile tech, I wouldn't be surprised to see strategic bombers used as missile trucks. How many JATMs could you stick on a carousel inside a B-1B?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      How many GBU-39s could fit on carousels inside a B-1B?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      We don't need custom built strategic bombers for that any more. Not when we have the cruise missile cargo plane concept. Just dump the missiles out the back. Massive payloads.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Rapid Dragon is fricking hilarious since there are dozens of C-130s in the air around the world at a given moment, including allied governments closer to the fight. Now our enemies have to worry that they're cruise missile piñatas.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          is the Rapid Dragon aircraft equivalent of being a Q-ship?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            If Q ships were SSG(N)s yeah.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        some engineer fell into the late night youtube rabbithole and ended up at dahir insaat lmao

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    It's always interesting to me how precision weapons flipped the bomber meta on its head. Small strike aircraft are now the strategic bombers, since you don't need a massive volume of bombs to make sure a critical target is taken out, while the big bombers now make more sense for tactical bomb truck roles, in a way they can even act as CAS since they can loiter overhead and dispense bombs as needed by ground forces.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Once airborne laser weaponry can reliably take out incoming SAMs, big unstealthy laser planes or even zeppelins will be the new loitering meta.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Until we put a laser on the SAMs to shoot down the SEAD laser planes.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          That's where stealth comes back in. You can't hit what you can't see.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >Until we put a laser on the SAMs to shoot down the SEAD laser planes.
          Power trade may make that unfavorable though or at least situational enough that aircraft are still useful. The high altitude strategic bomber laser defense only needs to care about disrupting incoming missiles, which are tiny low mass targets with explosive heads and sensitive electronics, inherently hard to armor due to being stuck with the rocket equation. Bomber can shoot them down or just disrupt them from anywhere outside their effective fragmentation pattern range, so just has to keep them 1/8-1/4mile away or something. And at 40-50k+ feet altitude it will never have clouds or lower atmosphere to worry about, makes things a lot easier for lasers.

          Ground lasers of course can have far more power and infrastructure at their disposal, but at the same time they need that. Shooting down an aircraft with a DEW from surface level take a lot more juice, and atmospheric conditions could frick it up.

          So there's some level of inherent balance between there two that makes it seem more likely that rather then total paradigm shift they'll each end up with distinct roles just like now as part of the endless rock/paper/scissors and chess games.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      their role has just changed without you noticing, in Ukraine russian strategic bombers sling dozens of cruise missiles from over the border. In the south china see chinese strat bombers would do the same, and also the US will do the same in a near peer war

      yes this was true in GWOT with B1 providing lots of CAS sorties which makes boomers and refooormers heads explode. but its not true in a peer battlefield or in a strategic nuclear war either

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      People also underestimate how fricking big "small" strike aircraft are, an F35 can carry more payload than a B17

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I miss the Vulcan so much, bros

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Are strategic bombers still a useful role in the modern era?
    yes I will need at least one to drop bunker busters with on the "elite" after they conveniently gather in their bunkers. Santa has a list and hes very, very angry.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >yes I will need at least one to drop bunker busters with on the "elite" after they conveniently gather in their bunkers. Santa has a list and hes very, very angry.

      That's basically what B-2s would be used for in a counterforce First Strike. They would simultaneously go after Russian leadership and command and control centers in a surprise attack to decapitate the Strategic Rocket Forces before they could be given orders to launch.

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Mikoyanan

    That Vulcan probably crewed by BIG MUSCULAR Horny FUTA with unrealistic penis size and shape.

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Go to air museum
    >Have lunch and consult guidebook
    >Why haven't I seen the Vulcan yet?
    >Realise I'm sitting at a picnic table underneath it

    Those things are absolutely huge.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      They're really wild machines. In person it's like seeing a fricking godzilla monster fly overhead.

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    stealth bombers can drop much heavier bunker busters than anything else.

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    They are sam fodder.

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The Avro Vulcan was the sexiest plane ever made.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Nose is too big.

  11. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Good artist. His futa and guro is top-tier.

  12. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Stealthed . . . kinda - but unless you're the US best of luck affording them without completely abandoning something much more useful in your defence spending. Not stealthed, possibly as missile trucks, but probably not enough to warrant the cost of the specialised platform when most multirole aircraft these days can carry ALCM and pretty much all other ground attack munitions perfectly well, if in smaller numbers per aircraft.

    The real question now is how long will it take to start seeing air launched variants of the PRSM, and future hypersonic platforms like the OpFires, and what sort of aircraft would be required for that role.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Hypersonic missiles have a plasma sheath of compressed air, which means there's not much point launching them much above Mach 3 or they get roasted by the carrier plane's plasma sheath on the way out of the weapons bay. We'll probably see them dropped from B-52s and B-1Bs as well as stealth planes.

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