That was likely going to be some sort of nuclear area weapon which was intended to proximity kill Russian AWACS. Of course the Russian AWACS was not that effective.
Why no Airliner Missile Launchers?
- Thread starter Riain
- Start date
The idea of 747's carrying AIM's is silly, for the obvious reasons you suggest. I was talking about the problem with the current fear of hostile fighters taking out AWACS aircraft. It won't be that easy for the enemy to do that. The only technical point I'll disagree with you on is a MIG-31 wouldn't detect an E-3 at twice the range it would detect them. It's power output, and the curvature of the earth would prevent that.
IMHO had there been a political perception of a more credible Soviet Nuclear threat during the cold war era, then the US likely would have found the money for dedicated air liner or air transport type air craft carrying long range nuclear missiles (and probably funded a number of other systems as well.)
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It's more that one missile is deployed with only a single warhead; the W76, and it's British 'Holbrook' clone, and W88 have the option to detonate without the fusion stage and even without the tritium boost for the primary.
Not at all, glas I could assist. Most 'modern' thermonuclear weapons can be detonated in one or more reduced yield modes.
Riain
Banned
In that situation the US would be more likely to buy more conventional fighters and bombers because they're more suited to the roles. I think the missile truck airliner idea wilts in the face of close scrutiny.
Why go for the kill when you can just make it switch off? Anti radiation guidance is a fairly old concept.
Riain
Banned
I once read in one of those Cold War WW3 books that NATO got an E3 up on day 2 to bring order to the air battle. The Soviets kept attacking it and it had to divert attention from the air battle to save it's own skin. If the stakes are high enough such simple short term degradation of the AWACS coverage might be a worthwhile outcome.
The only use I could see for an AAM equipped airliner would be to operate as a high endurance defense against bombers and cruise missiles in areas that are out of range of fighter escort
I will probably be more efficient to design a dedicated aircraft then use a passenger airliner
I will probably be more efficient to design a dedicated aircraft then use a passenger airliner
As it became impractical for B-52's to penetrate Soviet Air Defenses they were easily modified to carry 24 ALCM's. The B-52's were already paid for. They had the structural strength, advanced offensive, and defensive ECM, were hardened against EMP, carried secure communications equipment, and had inflight refueling capability. Look at the cost of buying new Air Force One aircraft, that only have some of those capabilities. A 747 cargo jet is a very efficient transport, but it's not a combat aircraft.
AWACS are high flying beasts right ?
What about the good ole S200 can it knock one out at a range of 200 km ?
Riain
Banned
The S200 is a fixed site SAM, at best it might be in East Germany so an AWACS won't get within range to be threatened.
Fuzzy Dunlop
Banned
In my old 'Airplane' magazine the follow up to 'Take Off', in the section regarding the E-3 Sentry, it states and shows how a mere three E-3's (overlapping their radar coverage) would control the entire airspace over West Germany and into East Germany.
Much obliged!
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McPherson
Banned
In an idealized world, and in artists' renditions that might appear to be the case. In the real world, depending on the ground clutter, target altitude bands, how signal return or emissions controlled the 'painted" targets are, the weather, and the state of the radar and how many separate scanning events at which bearings and azimuths and how large the signal processing load is, the "control" is more like "whack a mole" with targets popping up and disappearing all over the coverage and with a rather limited response loop (the hammer) possible to whack them.