WI: B-70 Valkyrie Enters Service
- Thread starter Delta Force
- Start date
Does anyone have any information about the last flights of these aircraft? The only reason I know about their existence is witnessing an overflight when I was a boy, maybe 11 or 12 in the early nineties.
I lived in Southern NJ at the time and was outside playing. Being in the flight path of Philadelphia International, we were used to hearing planes. But this thing sounded way different, and I heard it before I saw it. Looked up, and there it was, this alien looking plane. Seemed like it was descending, maybe only at 15K feet. I didn't have any reference for this, so my dad took me to the local library and I searched and searched until I found a book on the plane. I even wrote a letter to McGuire AFB to see if they knew why a plane from the sixties, with only one example left, was flying over NJ. No response...
I lived in Southern NJ at the time and was outside playing. Being in the flight path of Philadelphia International, we were used to hearing planes. But this thing sounded way different, and I heard it before I saw it. Looked up, and there it was, this alien looking plane. Seemed like it was descending, maybe only at 15K feet. I didn't have any reference for this, so my dad took me to the local library and I searched and searched until I found a book on the plane. I even wrote a letter to McGuire AFB to see if they knew why a plane from the sixties, with only one example left, was flying over NJ. No response...
Trouble is, you can reach 40,000 metres right over the launch site, or 300 kilometres downrange, but not both. The B-70 will be coming in with jamming, manoeuvring, and possibly shooting back. Having the gravity gauge, manoeuvrability and payload makes a lot of difference. Crucially, the B-70 was fast enough to actually get inside the OODA loop of an air defence system, which is what could've made it so effective. That's not to say it can't be intercepted, but it would've been difficult - a SAM system needs to overmatch the performance of the target aircraft quite considerably to be effective.
Meanwhile, at 200 feet, your low-altitude penetrator is vulnerable to things like rifle fire, power lines (the air defence people will help by hanging extra ones across choke points, painted in camouflage colours) and unusually large trees. In WW2, a bad high-level raid like Schweinfurt took 20% casualties, whilst the low-level CHASTISE suffered 40% casualties against the same air defences.
Shooting down ballistic missiles is, by comparison, really easy. Go to the park this weekend, you'll see kids doing it for fun. Sure, a ball is slower than an ICBM, but a bat is slower than an ABM; it cancels out, and the mathematics really isn't that difficult.
You might want to rethink that. I know that's the official story. I and several other members here might know another story.
I'm pretty sure I have read somewhere that the SR-71 did flights over the USSR. Isnt it one of those "deny but everybody knows the truth" type of things?
Planes travelling at Mach 3 do not turn on a dime. And had the B-70 entered service, the Soviets would have configured their defenses to ensure that outpacing OODA wouldn't be a trivial task.
Your big, hugely expensive Mach 3 bomber is not facing anything like WW2's conditions, where the only ground weapons capable of reaching high altitude were flak guns that had to rely on time fuses. Defenses against high altitude flight advanced far more quickly than the cutting edge of aerospace technology.
B70s would be an expensive boondoggle that could not guarantee that it could perform its primary mission. At least B-52s could launch stand off cruise missiles to suppress air defenses, or slip under radar nets or Soviet interceptors, which didn't get reliable look-down, shoot-down until the MiG-31 entered service. Plus, it could be used for a conventional bombing mission to justify its existence in any world where the Big Show doesn't happen and civilization doesn't end.
SRAMs probably, cruise missiles I don't know. Though even a SRAM has a range of over a hundred miles, and that from a subsonic, low altitude platform, so it would really help with the whole "everyone can see you" thing. I don't know whether it would help enough to overcome the B-70's disadvantages, but it would certainly help.
How many SR-71's did these high altitude defenses shootdown? Since you say they advanced more quickly than aerospace technology.
But the SR-71 just skirted the Soviet border...and no hearsay and 'the friend of a friend that's in the know assure me' leitmotiv are not really proof that the Blackbird really entered very deeply in Russia...or any other things if we want to be correct.
Ehy the B-70 look cool, is very sexy but it's just more simple and economic use ICBM, at least the B-52 can be used for conventional bombing and is pretty devastating at this
I am not talking just the Soviet Union. The SR-71 entered the airspace of other countries that used Soviet Air Defense missiles and Soviet aircraft.
According to this, in 26 years they fired over 4,000 missiles at the SR-71. I think you can make certain assumptions about where the plane went.
http://www.vice.com/read/brian-shul-blackbird-spy-plane-102
http://www.vice.com/read/brian-shul-blackbird-spy-plane-102
Delta Force
Banned
It would depend on the B-1.
The B-70 would probably be more survivable than the B-1A due to its higher speed, but the B-1B would be more difficult to detect due to its low observable features and low altitude infiltration flight profile.
However, if the enemy somehow detects the aircraft, such as by developing look down/shoot down Doppler radar, the B-70 has a speed and altitude that would make it more difficult to intercept. Only high end strategic level systems would have a chance, and they would likely require careful coordination of a nation's air defense system due to the speed at which it could pass through sectors.
A sea level attack approach was proposed in official USAF documents, but given the notoriously poor performance of the B-70 at lower altitudes I'm not sure how feasible that would have been.
Apparently the version that would have been produced for SAC had the ability to carry two GAM-87 Skybolt missiles externally and up to four 8,000 pound nuclear bombs internally (source here).
Delta Force
Banned
You must be referring to the SR-71. There were SR-71 flights in the 1990s, but the last B-70 flew in 1969 to the National Museum of the United States Air Force. There were two made, but one was lost in a mid-air collusion with an F-104 while posing for a photograph of aircraft powered by General Electric engines. The F-104 pilot and the B-70 copilot were both killed.
Perhaps you saw a Concorde or an F-106? You might have even seen a Tu-144, as the type flew in the United States in the 1990s as part of a NASA test program.
Under certain circumstances, a Tu-144 could look quite similar to a B-70. It even has canards.
Here's a Tu-144, with canards deployed.
Here's a B-70.
I think that if you're talking about a B-70 attack going in alone, they would have poor survivability. But...the B-70's wouldn't be going in alone--there would have been all kinds of low, medium, and high level penetrations, not to mention ICBMs going off. In that case, I can see the B-70 getting the job done.
But the whole point of the nuclear triad was redundancy.
Each of the legs of the triad had to be able to deliver an effective knockout blow to the East Bloc alone, so that even if the other two failed or the enemy had developed highly effective countermeasures that nullified them, the third could do the job on its own.
SAC didn't just need bombers that could take advantage of the chaos of a generalized nuclear war. They wanted a system that could still deliver a killing blow even in the event of a catastrophic Soviet first strike, which knocked out command and control, and obliterated the ICBM (and later SLBM) forces.
Saphroneth
Banned
Do note that in the event of a generalized nuclear war, then Soviet SAM sites are fair game. That is, the bombers CAN expend some of their punch on burning their way through the IADS in order to get to the targets.
This is obviously non-optimal, but if the B-70 can knock out SAM sites reliably then the bomber force as a whole can burn through to the actual target.
This is obviously non-optimal, but if the B-70 can knock out SAM sites reliably then the bomber force as a whole can burn through to the actual target.
Saphroneth
Banned
Best Defense against a SAM is a 100kt Nuke through their radar dish.
Meh, a 10KT nuke half a mile away is adequate. But yes - basically, Desert Sabre (I think that's the one? Where the Coalition dismantled the Iraqi IADS) but with 10-50 KT nukes instead of PGMs.
I went to college up the road. During my four years at UD, I think I went to the museum about 7 times--several even on class assignments. If you can, I'd recommend getting there before they move stuff from the current R&D hangars (which contain among other things the X-15, XB-70, and others) to the new fourth hangar they're building at the main museum. It's a lot more personal of an experience the way it's all crammed in--I once banged my head on Tacit Blue while backing up to try and get a shot of all of another plane. In my defense, it is a stealth prototype...