I always thought they should just adapt the cargo variants and open cruise missiles through the nose door. I mean, probably not ideal aerodynamically but what’s scarier than a huge plane vomiting missiles at you?
To be clear, the Next Generation Bomber program was cancelled not long after that was written, I believe for coat reasons. The Long Range Strike-Bomber (LRS-B) was started in its place, and the winner of that contract should be announced soon.
Which means a whole new version of the Lockheed-Martin Cost Overrun Drinking game. 
No no no… We don’t know yet if it’s the Northrop drinking game or the Boeing/Lockheed drinking game. There are nuances to each!
That’s about 15 questions. 
IOW, it’s not really amenable to another round of tit for tat cut and paste answers. Curb your enthusiasm a bit, will ya?
In all these discussions it’s real important to understand we use the DoD against individuals, drug dealers, extortion gangs, local warlords, small 3rd world countries, and continental-scale heavily industrialized superpowers. Different weapons are appropriate for different targets & different conflicts. Just because something is new doesn’t mean it’s at the upper edge of our capabilities. Often the newest stuff is the wimpiest because wimpy little half-wars are what we’ve been doing recently. And a good thing that is.
Light weigh bombs: That’s all about limiting collateral damage for fighting non wars in front of CNN. When we really need to blow shit up we need big bombs. Nobody intends to drop 250 lb bombs on enemy airfields, refineries, factories, or capitols. Those are entirely for taking out a bad guy safe-house next to a mosque or hospital.
Penetration speed altitude: FB-111 or any other fighter/bomber will be penetrating at real close to M1.0. Like 500-600 knots. And at 100 feet or lower. A B-52 will be penetrating at 350 knots at most, and at more like 500 feet. The B-52 penetration profile was good enough against early 1960s radars, SA-2s, and MiG-21s and then-current Soviet tactics. The F-16/FB-111 penetration profile was/is good enough against SA-6s, Mig-23s, and some, not all, SU-27 /MiG-29s. IOW, it’ll still work against anybody except near-peer adversaries.
Wild Weasel: F-16s with HARMS do that mission now. I think the term WW is pretty well deprecated, but I’m not 100% sure of that.
Small arms fire: Low altitude is a dangerous place to overfly massed infantry. Everybody starts firing their AKs into the air. Some grunt is gonna get lucky and some jet in a big gaggle is going to take a hit. The bottom line is that in a full bore WWIII scenario there’s no safe place to hide. OTOH, plinking “terrorists” = irregulars in the mountains is different. There’s no reason to go low. Their comparatively few small arms are not as dangerous as massed regular infantry, but they still might get lucky if you muck around down there. So we don’t.
ECM, etc: ECM is not a cloaking device. It reduces the range at which the enemy can get a good track. It doesn’t prevent tracking. It increases the odds of a break-lock. It doesn’t guarantee a break-lock. Chaff & flares are last ditch devices that may or may not be effective. And all of them are less and less effective every day as the enemy develops ever better systems.
I sure don’t know the current state of play for bleeding edge systems, and if I did you wouldn’t be reading about it from me. From the open press it’s clear that generally speaking the US in general and USAF in particular has really downplayed EW in preference to stealth over the last 30 years. And may well now be caught with its pants down just now as the Russians and Chinese have made / are making major EW breakthroughs that we don’t have effective counters for under development, much less being deployed today.
Hi/low fight: The reason to go low is to sneak in. The reason to stay high is that you’re in your own airspace covered by your own AWACS/GCI and your own SAMs. For sure considering only onboard radars the low fighters will detect the high fighters a bit sooner. But that’s not the real situation; you have to include all that other stuff. And the low fighters aren’t really interested in finding the high fighters; they’re far more interested in not being found at all. Always remember that your radar can be detected at about 10x the range you can detect a target with it. LPI helps, but only so much.
Once it comes to weapons employment, any given missile will have 2 or 3x the range shooting downhill from high altitude and high Mach versus its range shooting uphill from low altitude and low Mach.
Late add: We’re getting a long way from the OP’s Q and probably ought to stop the hijacks down rabbit holes.
Hmm.
What I really meant to say was—
Good stuff here:
U.S. Air Force Bomber Sustainment and Modernization: Background and Issues for Congress
June 4, 2014
Jeremiah Gertler
Congressional Research Report
I think the general discussion has hit the nail - really, the area around Israel, the immediate neighbour targets, are not very big and not that far away. The one mentioned target that might push the range limits is Iran. But, you can’t use one possible, extremely unlikely mission to justify huge expenditures… one hopes.
Another point peripherally mentioned was “Light weigh bombs: That’s all about limiting collateral damage for fighting non wars in front of CNN.” Modern smart bombs are more about hitting the target precisely on, rather than dropping a carpet of massive ordinance within a city block. SO the load is lighter, and targeting relies on knowing what to hit. Anything that can’t be taken out with smart bombs probably can withstand a carpet bombing too.
The superpowers expect to extend force and act around the world. Countries like Israel are more preoccupied with local defence.
A recent development in bomb tech is using dummy bombs with the smart bomb guidance kits on them. 500 pounds of concrete will straight up flatten a main battle tank if you can accurately hit the commander’s hatch with it.
On that note, when was the last time something like a B-52 dropped a load of conventional bombs? As I understand it, in the last decade or two of low-intensity wars, the B-52 has pretty much been serving as a high-capacity bomb truck where it loiters over an area waiting to drop guided bombs wherever requested by troops on the ground.
Would a B-52 have any role against an enemy with reasonably modern air defenses?
Not that a similar scheme hasn’t been considered, mind. Or even a vertical launch missile battery version. :eek:
Of course, naturally, if Israel (or a similar country) wanted to launch their IRBMs or ICBMs at someone, it’d probably generally be cheaper and easier to just launch them from a ground site. Not nearly as operatic, alas.
There have also been proposals to convert 747 or 767-sized civil aircraft into cruise missile carriers with truly amazing missile counts. The thought being that with weapons of a sufficiently long stand-off range there’s no need for the aircraft itself to have any of the typical military battle-worthiness mods that add so much cost & weight.
Yes, as long as it’s used outside the effective range of those modern air defenses. The B-52 can carry about 20 cruise missiles which is handy for overwhelming defenses.
Also, its long range means it can stay on station for a long time without refueling which is handy for maritime surveillance.
Boeing B-52 Stratofortress High-Altitude, Long-Range Strategic Heavy Bomber (for some reason that website won’t allow me to copy & paste but there’s more info in the first paragraph)
The first world version of this:
These guys might be laying it on a little too thick:
(for those interested in reading more: Why Boeing's Design For A 747 Full Of Cruise Missiles Makes Total Sense)
But that’s the point. Most US recent activity has been against third-world countries with less effective defence equipment. The first thing they do, to, is send in the smaller jets and particularly cruise missiles to detect and remove any threat to air superiority.
So with Israel, for example - they don’t have to worry too much about sophisticated long-range SAM’s - there are probably a small number of installations purchase from a superpower (cough Russia! cough). The first step is to take those out, and a lumbering bomber is not the weapon to do so. At the same time they will probably take out the air force and air base runways, also limited in number.
As for the B52’s circling waiting to drop ordinance, the scope of most Israeli operations probably doesn’t need a B52 full of weapons at any time, so it’s a waste for fuel. In fact, Israeli options tend to favour air strikes rather than ground operation lately. Except, of course Gaza, where it seems accuracy is unnecessary, nor is intelligence and correct targeting. But then, the distance across Gaza is not much longer than a runway for a B52.
The same applies in other locations - most regional powers have limited need for bombers, and cannot guarantee the air superiority needed to defend them against more agile fighters. Chile, Brazil, Argentina - none could guarantee air superiority at this time AFAIK, even if they were more hostile than things seem nowadays. South Africa - all its neighbours are backward enough that they don’t really need to carpet-bomb, like the US in Afghanistan - where’s the targets? (In fact, IIRC there was some discussion about that in a Bush cabinet meeting - they wanted to bomb Iraq right away because there was nothing of value in Afghanistan to bomb.) Same around the world - India and Pakistan? Heck, they got nukes. Iran and the Gulf? The USA got them covered air-wise. North Korea knows it can’t control the air, so it concentrates on missiles and nukes.
If you look at airpower in WWII, only the Americans and the British ever seriously built heavy bombers, because they were only good against massive land targets like cities, and saturation bombing, and only if you had a significant fighter screen or outright air supremacy. Even the Luftwaffe didn’t need bombers with a 2000-mile range to conquer most of Europe.
The Japanese and the Soviets didn’t build any our-engine bombers because they’re lousy for close air support or any other target where ‘or eight-miles-either-way’ isn’t quite surgical enough for a few tons of HE. Plus a fleet of heavy bombers is like an aircraft carrier group - you can’t justify them at all tactically because bombers are strategic. . Which basically means they cost a crap-ton of money and would suck at actual combat. If they didn’t, they would be tactical.
Most nations’ strategic interests – Israel’s included - end about 10 miles outside their borders, and air forces are expensive. Since most nations don’t have the need to drop conventional weapons on people in whole other hemispheres at all, let alone eight hours from now, there are more effective ways to spend trillions of dollars a year.
Israel’s targeting in entrenched urban areas in Gaza was under extraordinary control, equal to or greater than any urban air campaign in military history.
Your use of the hyperbolic word “unnecessary,” and the present tense, coupled with your obvious knowledge of the issues involved - leads me to believe the comment was more politically tendentious than informative.
Jeez, another spot-on cite to that website, which I never heard of before. Thanks to both of you.
Minor nitpick, the Japanese, Germans, and Soviets all tried to build various varieties of strategic bombers, to varying degrees of success, throughout WWII. The Soviets built just under a hundred Petlyakov Pe-8 bombers, though single and twin-engine bombers were evidently a higher priority. It is worth mentioning that the Soviets had to depend on a supply of American and British aircraft (along with ammunition, fuel, trucks, tanks, etc.) to stay in the fight as it was, so they were pretty limited across the board in terms of locally produced kit.
The Germans were late to the strategic bomber game, just like they were with naval aviation (Germany partially built two aircraft carriers). They came up with various prototype designs, including one ambitious design for an “Amerika Bomber”, which was supposed to allow them to bomb the Continental 48 from Germany, but by the time they started working towards that, they were already having to deal with their gradually losing battle of attrition against the RAF, USAAF, and VVS. Ultimately they couldn’t even spare the resources needed to defend their own airspace, let alone threaten someone else’s. Japan suffered similar circumstances, having to go so far as to try and modify the Douglas DC-3 design to use wooden construction instead of steel and aluminum (the DC-3 was produced in Japan throughout the war as the Nakajima L2D).
In any case, I understand many of America’s strategic bombers of WWII were originally marketed as Maritime bombers. Big planes with long loiter times capable of patrolling the seas and threatening any would-be threats. The B-17 Flying Fortress didn’t even have any powered gun turrets or a tail gunner’s position until the E model.
Pinpoint accuracy, just - a lot of pins.
Adding onto my previous train of thought, the big heavy bombers, whatever their many various shortcomings may have been, had one big advantage over single and twin engined bombers, and that is a very long set of legs. The B-17 Flying Fortress could fly about 2,000 nautical miles while carrying three tons of munitions. In comparison, the B-25 Mitchell (the twin-engined bomber famous for the carrier-launched Doolittle raids early in WWII) had a range of about 1400 nautical miles while carrying around a ton and a half of bombs.
Throughout WWII, the RAF and USAAF were able to launch very large strikes at targets located in Germany and Central Europe from bases in Great Britain and Africa, while the twin-engined bombers which made up the heavy end of the Axis air forces had to be based far closer to launch smaller attacks. To swing back towards the main topic, I don’t think Israel even has any declared enemies farther than a 1000 nautical miles or so away. Maybe if they decide to go to war with France.