What happens if the B-70 enters service? First, its OTL record wasn't the myth of "Evil McNamara destroys superplane". Eisenhower cancelled it, it was brought back as an election-year pork promise, was cancelled again after nearly causing a constitutional crisis (and it must be mentioned that despite the initial vote, Congress backed down quickly), and Soviet defenses played little to any role in bringing it down. The B-70 was a hyperspecialized platform whose only use was to provide a high-and-fast platform in the event that missiles couldn't be made in time. Once they were, it was worthless. Totally useless and cost-ineffective for conventional bombing, and putting standoff missiles on it defeats the purpose of making it so fast. Vulnerability (low altitude takes advantage of the USSR's size and can be done with existing platforms, vs. high altitude where they can see it coming and use SAMs near the targets) was just a secondary reason. So, B-70s are put into production. SR-71 crews have a bad time as the Soviets build their planned counter-SAMs (there were many designs considered including the BOMARC-styled R-500, but they were cancelled along with the B-70), but little else changes. The B-70s spend their time on nuclear alert and nothing else, and depending on politics, get withdrawn either after the fall of the USSR or much more quickly.
WI: B-70 Valkyrie Enters Service
- Thread starter Delta Force
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Sure the Soviets could have rebuilt their defences - but that's a hideously expensive task, far more complex than just running a few telephone lines or building a bigger firework to throw at the incoming bomber. And while the manouverability at high speed isn't great, it's still better than that of a ICBM RV (which has next to none at all).
Importantly, take a look at the engagement sequence for a B-70 coming in at 70,000 feet (about 12 miles). That means for a typical intercept the missile must be launched with no less than 12 miles to travel if the bomber flies right over the SAM site, obviously the longer ranged the missile the further it has to go.
Now, your example of the SA-5 has a peak speed of Mach 7 but it won't do that in the climb - that will be the speed coming down in a ballistic track from apogee to strike a target at extreme range. It's also got to accelerate from a standing start. Assume about Mach 1 (600 mph - 10 miles per minute) for the climb, and the B-70 has a little over a minute to react and make a turn. Even if it was the archetypal lead sled it could turn through 180 degrees in that time - turning the missile shot from a collision course intercept to a tail chase. When your missile averages rather less than Mach 7 (given the nature of missile engines and the flight path that will follow, I think that's a given) then your engagement envelope goes down from the full 300 km to very much less. With a missile that can average Mach 4.5 against a Mach 3 bomber the effective range is 100 km - but as soon as the bomber makes more than one turn that goes down radically, as missiles tend not to have large aerodynamic surfaces so lose a lot of energy in turns.
The B-70 was dropped not because it couldn't work, but because other systems offered the ability to do the same thing (destroy targets within the Soviet Union) and had advantages the US felt to be beneficial that the B-70 did not. Sending B-52s in low is very cheap, for instance, as you already own the aircraft, while SSBNs make a counterforce strike by the enemy very much harder.
The B-70 wasn’t just a backup to ICBM’s. It was designed as part of the US nuclear Triad, one of those sides is bomber aircraft. To pronounce it worthless because ICBM’s were put into service is an erroneous statement. There is no reason that the B-70 couldn’t be a conventional bomber. The B-1 and B-2, despite being designed with nuclear weapons in mind have also become effective conventional bombers. The issue with low altitude is you are now vulnerable to just about every weapon in the enemies arsenal from infantry weapons to older interceptors. When your aircraft is flying at Mach 3+ and over 75,000 feet there is only a small subset of weapons that can attempt a intercept. You also have time to re-act to the launch because you have altitude, speed and gravity to your advantage. If the Soviets start building SAM’s to counter the B-70 those SAM’s have to be larger and more resource intensive to build which means you are going to have less missiles at each battery.
Every weapon system doesn’t operate in the vacuum. If the B-70 was put into production you would have seen widespread service by the early 1970’s in SAC. This also probably means no B-1 bomber so all the money spent on the B-1A and then B-1B is spent earlier on the B-70. Probably by the early 80’s the Soviets would be developing better counters to the B-70. However the B-70 platform isn’t sitting still either. The platform itself had growth and its full speed and potential were never realized in it’s short testing program. Even if we ignore performance increases we would also see better performance out of the ECM platform on-board. We would have also seen in the introduction of nuclear armed like the AGM-88 HARM that launched from Mach 3 at 75,000 would have won any race against SAM’s launching from the ground. Once you get into the 90’s you have the introduction of things like the AGM-154 JSOW which from high altitude could be launched up to 70 miles from the target, but that assumes subsonic speeds. We can easily assume a JSOW released from the bomb-bay of a B-70 at Mach 3 at 75,000 would have a considerably longer range. The precision guided weapons also turn a large bomber like the B-70 into a very effective conventional weapon platform because they allow highly accurate bombing from high altitude and high speeds.
If the US turns away from the strategy of trying to sneak it’s bombers through defenses and use speed and altitude we also see different designs. Also already mentioned the B-1 bomber as we know is never built. The USAF bomber development focuses on the next step which is a hypersonic bomber. With every weapon system a clock is ticking on when it becomes obsolete or more vulnerable to enemy systems. We can safely assume by the 90’s the B-70 would be more vulnerable to Soviet/Russian weapon systems. However things like the introducing the JSOW would improve the survivor ability of the B-70. If the decision is to use speed and altitude we can then assume the USAF would have a more robust hypersonic program and we can assume a replacement for the B-70 would be something in the Mach 6+ range with altitude easily in excess of 100,000 feet. This type of speed and altitude would leave current SAM missiles woefully inadequate.
-Extremely small bombload compared to the B-52 and B-1.
-Can't hit anything conventionally if it flies high and fast.
-If it flies at medium altitude and speed, then its expensive speed and height capabilities are squandered.
Ramjets, son. Ramjets.
(As for older interceptors, it's not a question of shooting it, it's a question of finding it. If we're talking conventional war, that's one thing, but flying low and just needing to hold out enough to launch missiles is quite another. )
If you're attacking from far away, there's no need for speed..
Hmm, I can think of something that goes that fast and high-yes, I got it. Ballistic missiles. No need to risk a crew in those either.
Just because it is high and fast doesn’t mean it cannot high anything conventionally. Never heard of JDAMS and JSOWs?
The assumption of being able to penetrate deep into Soviet Territory down low without being detected is dubious at best.
The JSOW is a glide bomb. The higher the altitude and speed the longer it can glide.
A bomber has a unpredictable flight path a missile doesn’t. Also a bomber can be re-used and carry more ordnance to its target.
I have to point out that JDAMs and JSOWs were introduced in the 1990s, thirty years after the B-70 would have entered service. Prior to that, the best it could do would be television-guided bombs (given the speed and altitude, I'm not sure that laser-guided weapons would work very well), which would be a tad problematic. It's more likely that it would be retired in the 1980s or 1990s during the end of the Cold War, due to the expense of operation, the age of the airframes (and likely significant stress from high-altitude, high-speed flight), and single-purpose mission, before capable guided weapons could give it a new lease on life.
Of course, the unpredictable flight path only really matters if there's some kind of interceptor...which neither the Soviets nor the United States ever deployed in significant numbers, despite the number of ballistic missiles being deployed. It might have been a bit tricky to attack Moscow, but then again you could just throw a ton of warheads at the place without really depleting overall weapons stockpiles.
Additionally, while ballistic missiles do, of course, follow a ballistic trajectory, the RVs, on entering the atmosphere, may in fact maneuver as lifting bodies, also known as Maneuverable Reentry Vehicles, or MaRVs. It is said that McDonnell Douglas delivered a biconic MaRV to the DoD in the late 1970s or early 1980s, though of course the whole thing is highly classified and I don't know anything more than that.
The B-70 would have realistically have started entering squadron service probably not until the late 60’s early 70’s when it was introduced. The first flight of AV-1 had first flight in 1964. With no B-1 bomber I don’t see the USAF retiring the airframes after only 2 decades of flight. I also don't see high altitude and high speed flight really stressing the airframes more than low level flights like the mission profile of the B-1B bomber. When you look at bombers like the B-1B and B-2 bomber they are also expensive to operate. What would the USAF replace it with if it retired it in the 1980’s? It doesn’t have the B1B and the B-52 is even older. The only thing would be the possible next generation bomber which would very well by a Hypersonic bomber.
For Strategic bombers like the B-52, B-1B, B-2 precision weapon attacks were not really employed from these bombers until the JDAM's and JSOW were introduced. The B-52 was employed as essentially a bomb truck during Vietnam and Gulf War to saturate large arrays. The main point I am making is that conventional weapons from strategic bombers didn't have high accuracy until the introduction of these types of weapons. So criticizing the B-70 as having poor conventional weapon accuracy is a red herring in this argument because it had the same issue as the other strategic bombers. The most accurate conventional weapon was Air Launch Cruise missiles from B-52. The B-1B didn't even participate in Gulf War 1. However all 3 bombers are now regularly used in conventional weapon attacks because of the advancement in weapon accuracy. There is no reason to suspect that a B-70 in service wouldn't also benefit from the same thing.
I understand your point. However based on time frames you probably wouldn’t start seeing Hypersonic bombers until the 1990’s if this path was followed. Essentially the replacement for the B-70 around the time frame the B-2 was coming into service. The Manned bomber gives unpredictability that a missile doesn’t have. Also unlike a missile, a manned bomber can be re-called after launch. The manned hypersonic bomber also gives flexibility in choosing a conventional or nuclear ordnance. Nobody wants to launch a ICBM with a conventional warhead on top. I will lead it up to other readers to conjecture how the USAF’s push into development of hypersonic bomber technology would also push other technologies forward at a more rapid pace.
The question, as of 1990, will be whether the B-70, undoubtedly an expensive aircraft, is worth keeping. The B-1B and B-2 were worth keeping because they were less than ten years old, hadn't had any effective defenses built against them (well, the MiG-31 in the case of the B-1B, I suppose), and before questions could really build up the JDAM and JSOW came in around 1998-1999 (which is why I said thirty years
) and gave them a useful conventional role.The B-70, however, will be older, there will likely be more defenses built against it so its survivability as a bomber will be more questionable (that is, there will be a higher probability that the Soviets/Russians will have deployed a lot of defenses against it), and it won't have any initial conventional role. I'm not convinced that Congress would want to keep it, that the Air Force would want to save it, or that the Administration would necessarily preserve it. Imagine a more anti-military administration than Bush's, for instance, then consider how many cancellations Bush/Cheney pushed through.
Of course, the Cold War could always end later than OTL and end up with older B-70s, anyways, too.
Quite possibly the B-2. Putting the B-70 into squadron service doesn't mean that they will suddenly ignore/forget about the possibility of stealth and low-altitude penetration; indeed, the expense and difficulty of building a high-speed, high-altitude bomber, and the likely development of more advanced Soviet defenses against it, will tend to drive that. A hypersonic bomber operating at over 100,000 feet will be very expensive to develop, since it's basically a spaceplane, so a subsonic stealth aircraft might look like a bargain. Following the usual procurement rule of "look to the next system when you start shipping this one," they'll be thinking about how to replace the B-70 in the early 1970s, where it will be even more difficult and expensive to push even higher and faster. I think it's quite plausible they'll go "No, this isn't really working" and try something different in the hopes of being cheaper. We know that stealth is expensive itself, but it might be attractive to them.
Yes, and you can see that neither the B-1B nor B-2 were deployed in Desert Storm, despite being available, because they were far too expensive to use in saturation bombing attacks, especially against unsophisticated adversaries. It is only the advent of precision warheads that gave them a conventional role. The key thing, though, is that their nuclear role (especially that of the B-2) was secure enough that there was obviously no question of retiring them from service in 1989-1990 (and of course both were practically or literally brand-new at that point), so they were able to hold out until those precision weapons were developed and deployed in 1998-1999. The key thing is whether the B-70, a decade older than the B-1B and based on designs which by 1990 would be thirty or more years old, would have the same chances of surviving Congress and a potentially rather cut-happy Defense Department (and of course the fact that the Air Force isn't run by bomber men anymore).
I'm not convinced that the B-70 would have a secure nuclear role in the early 1990s with the development of SAMs and interceptors by the Soviets during the 1970s and 1980s (obviously OTL their missiles were only marginally capable of intercepting a B-70, but IOTL they weren't up against the B-70, and they probably didn't feel the SR-71 was such a large threat that they needed to spend a large amount of money on countering it), and prior to the advent of precision weapons it would be completely useless for conventional attacks; not just because it wouldn't be able to hit anything precisely, but because even if it did try a saturation attack its bombs would tend to spread out and disperse, leaving a rather unconcentrated attack. You could get around this by going to lower altitudes, but then you have to ask yourself why you're using your really expensive high-performance bomber to do bombing runs when you could be using the B-52 and probably get similar performance.
I understand the advantages of manned bombers, but that doesn't mean that the Air Force will be given carte blanche to procure ever-more expensive weapons systems. A hypersonic bomber will be really, really expensive, and given that no one has actually developed a hypersonic crewed aircraft despite periodic interest (with the exceptions of the X-15 and Space Shuttle, of course), any development program is likely to stretch out significantly and be cancelled with the end of the Cold War, if it even goes ahead in the first place, just like most of the strategic weapons systems that the United States was developing at that time.
It is quite notable that during those overflights the US avoided having the aircraft fly too close to any of the locations where it was known that SAMs capable of intercepting it were deployed. All of its missions and flight plans were developed to ensure it never went anywhere near anything that might bring it down. It is a bit like saying no Tu-160 has ever been brought down in combat.
Also, the Soviets did successfully get MiG-31s in an intercept position over international air space in the mid-80s multiple times.
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Delta Force
Banned
After the SR-71 and B-70, the next jump in speed and performance is really more of a suborbital spacecraft than an aircraft.
53,000 pounds and up is a sizable payload capacity.
The B-70 systems formed the basis of those used on the B-1A. Also, accuracy is important for a bomber, even with a nuclear weapon.
That's true, but for some targets deeper in the Soviet Union the precision and power of gravity bombs was desired.
The fact that bombers are manned is often cited as an argument in favor of them, as manned aircraft have more targeting versatility. Also, bombers have more versatility. An ICBM is useless outside of a nuclear war, but a bomber can be used in a conventional role.
Ironically, the B-52 fleet was being worn out in the 1960s flying at lower altitudes than the aircraft was designed for. The switch to standoff range missile attack in the 1970s and 1980s helped save the airframes. The B-70 would probably spend most of its time flying subsonically, as flying everywhere at Mach 3 during peacetime would just wear the aircraft out and force them to refuel every hour or so.
I think it also depends on what else SAC acquires, and what becomes of the B-52. If things aren't butterflied too much, the B-70 could be used for air attacks against nations with less developed air defense networks instead of stealth aircraft. Because stealth came to the West in an unusual way, with someone reading about it in the Soviet academic literature, it's possible that could be butterflied as well, with stealth technology lagging behind. The B-70 could be used for Operation El Dorado Canyon in 1986 instead of the FB-111, and for the raids on Baghdad in Operation Desert Storm instead of the F-117.
I am not well overwhelmed with confidence at this source of a former Soviet Pilot claiming to have achieved missile lock on a SR-71.
It is also telling that it took the Soviets till the 80's to start claiming to intercept a Mach-3 aircraft. Production B-70's would have started being in service in the late 1960's. The B-70 would have had better ECM and would have shot back.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pye_Wacket This proves how difficult a aircraft flying at such high speed and altitude is to intercept.
The last Strategic Bomber the USAF fully retired was the B-36. Right now they are looking to push the B-1B into 2030, the B-52 will be pushing 80+ when retired. The B-1B had effective defenses against it as soon as it rolled off the production line. You could string cables through a valley and that would be a defense. The B-70 will still be able to outpace most of the SAM systems in the world in the 90’s or into 2000. The only ones to truly threaten it like the SA-10 still only achieve about a 25% probability of kill. Even a widespread deployment creates issues because the missiles have to be much bigger so you will have less missiles ta site. The USAF will do what they did with B-52’s and B-1B’s. They will cut back the numbers some but not take the bomber out of service. I am not also convinced that a B-70 type aircraft would be really that much more expensive to run than the current swing wing B-1B which is also know as really maintenance intensive and expensive to run.The question, as of 1990, will be whether the B-70, undoubtedly an expensive aircraft, is worth keeping. The B-1B and B-2 were worth keeping because they were less than ten years old, hadn't had any effective defenses built against them (well, the MiG-31 in the case of the B-1B, I suppose), and before questions could really build up the JDAM and JSOW came in around 1998-1999 (which is why I said thirty years
The B-70, however, will be older, there will likely be more defenses built against it so its survivability as a bomber will be more questionable (that is, there will be a higher probability that the Soviets/Russians will have deployed a lot of defenses against it), and it won't have any initial conventional role. I'm not convinced that Congress would want to keep it, that the Air Force would want to save it, or that the Administration would necessarily preserve it. Imagine a more anti-military administration than Bush's, for instance, then consider how many cancellations Bush/Cheney pushed through.
Of course, the Cold War could always end later than OTL and end up with older B-70s, anyways, too.
I don’t disagree, they could go either way. The problem is with Stealth that once you are countered you are essentially a sitting duck. Even if the enemy has missiles that can strike at your Mach 3+ aircraft you can still make it really difficult for them. The knowledge from the B-70 could give the USAF confidence in pushing forward on the hypersonic or they could retreat back to subsonic stealth aircraft.
As I alluded to earlier, despite the USAF not being run by bomber men anymore they still haven’t fully retired the B-52, B-1B or B-2. The B-2 had not reached initial operational capability until 1997. The B-1B was kept back to maintain the nuclear Triad during Desert Storm. So this leaves the B-52 to serve as the bomb truck for large scale conventional bombing. I see cutbacks to the force but not outright elimination of the B-70 because with no B-1 bomber the USAF only has the B-52 and the B-70 until the next bomber comes into service. This is further exacerbated if like historically, funding is cut way back for the B-2 bomber and only a handful are purchased. Even in the 1990’s the B-70 despite its age still can fare well against defensive systems.
I am not convinced the B-70 wouldn’t still have a nuclear role in the 1990’s. No matter what a Mach 3+ aircraft is still difficult to intercept so it isn’t a sitting duck. Very simply SAM batteries that are threats could be taken out by nuclear tripped anti-radar missiles. Nothing shuts down a threatening SAM battery like a 100kt ground burst. This only leaves a handful of the best Soviet interceptors that can threaten the aircraft. Unlike someone flying low or using Stealth the B-70 still has speed and altitude to its advantage.
Well if the Hypersonic bomber development is canceled that leaves even more of a reason to keep the B-70 since it will just be the B-52 and the B-70 for strategic bombers.
The debate on the B70 has been extremely interesting and thank you for all the posts so far. If any one is interesting a PoD where B70s not only go into service but are actually used in a war read Ride of the Valkyries by Stuart Slade. OK, so he loves bombers and is an optimist so not every one's cup of tea (another Turtledove?). I still like his intense style. You can really smell the gunsmoke when someone opens fire.
Apart from being a bomber fanboy, Stuart's writing is horrifically dull and he can't maintain a coherent plot. The battles he writes remind me of nothing more than really flat, literalist let's plays of wargames, and the last battle in that book is where he forgets it's alternate history and uses historical Soviet designations for the missiles that fruitlessly fire at the B-70s.
And interestingly enough, it, too, was a "high altitude, high speed" bomber
Though by the standards of its time, of course.Again, you're looking only at OTL deployments; ATL missiles, because the B-70 exists, are likely to be more capable against it. Ramjet-powered missiles, for example, so they're powered all the way up and can get longer effective ranges.
And of course wires in the valleys only works if you know which valleys to string them in
Well, they only planned to procure 65 aircraft. I doubt they'll concentrate them all in a single raid, so any given site probably won't have to deal with more than one or two. You can keep lower-performance missiles around to deal with the B-52s and their cruise missiles.
The thing is that there already weren't going to be that many to begin with. Once you factor in the inevitable operational losses, "cutting back" may quite effectively be equivalent to retiring them.
Concorde and SR-71 were certainly both quite expensive to operate, and the former was lower performance and the latter much smaller than the B-70. I think it's a good bet that the B-70 would be a maintenance hog and quite possibly a bit of a hanger queen.
Hypersonic is just really, really hard, and never got anywhere much IOTL. Forgive me for being skeptical that an aircraft which isn't any more performant than the SR-71 will somehow drive forward a desire for it very much. And of course you have to consider what they'll be thinking in the 1970s, when they start this B-1 next bomber program: continue on this path that the B-70, not to mention the X-15, has shown to be very expensive and difficult, or this new idea that could be much cheaper and more effective (can't shoot what you don't see, after all)? They're not going to see, off the bat, the problems with stealthiness, nor its expense.
Of course, it's quite possible that there is no Desert Storm, so B-52s carrying cruise missiles are considered to effectively support the nuclear mission in the reduced threat environment of the post-Soviet era, and they can afford to have a short gap until the B-1 (since our B-1 probably won't come into service, the B-2 will probably be the B-1...) can be put into service. Probably if the B-70 is retired then B-1 procurement won't be cut back as much as OTL; at least, the 132 aircraft order would probably only be cut in half, giving it a closer to 1-1 replacement.
Well, say they switch to using AWACs (which they did have OTL: the A-50) to cue their SAM sites, rather than having the ground radars on all the time (or at all). What good is the anti-radar missile then? The Soviets are not static threats that will fail to adapt to the threat posed by the B-70 and whatever weapons it carries. The fact that the DoD felt that it was becoming more vulnerable and that the United States and Soviet Union both abandoned the high-speed, high-altitude approach suggests that, although existing defenses are not capable against them, they weren't really survivable if they had gone into full service and defenses had been built specifically against them.
Delta Force
Banned
Could Pye Wacket have helped to improve B-70 survivability against interceptors and SAMs?
Also, for a rather unusual proposal, what if the B-70 was converted into an AWACS and/or electronic warfare platform, using its large payload areas for equipment? Alternatively, what about giving them powerful radars and long range missiles, turning them into very heavy interceptors?
Also, for a rather unusual proposal, what if the B-70 was converted into an AWACS and/or electronic warfare platform, using its large payload areas for equipment? Alternatively, what about giving them powerful radars and long range missiles, turning them into very heavy interceptors?
EW platform good idea, AWACS no. There is no value in a flying radar station racing around like a blue arsed fly when a slower one can achieve the same at lower costs.
No need for 150 of them. Give NASA a total of 3. Give two SAC squadrons a total of 10 each. Base one of them in the Eastern US/Britain. and the other in Alaska. A possible third SAC squadron stationed in Minot could have another 10.
EW would work well on some, but not all. And it wouldn't replace the B-52.
HSHA - B-70
LSHA - B-52
HSLA - B-1B
LSLA - B-2
The B-1A would likely be produced as a successor to the B-70. In short, if you produce the B-70, then you'll likely see replacements for it in the form of the original B-1 and a future replacement for the B-52 as the B-3. Probably a purpose built aircraft with highly more efficient engines, increased payload, and higher payload diversity. Hell, it might even bring back the tail gun just for the hell of it. Making it an airborne Phalanx-CIWS.
EW would work well on some, but not all. And it wouldn't replace the B-52.
HSHA - B-70
LSHA - B-52
HSLA - B-1B
LSLA - B-2
The B-1A would likely be produced as a successor to the B-70. In short, if you produce the B-70, then you'll likely see replacements for it in the form of the original B-1 and a future replacement for the B-52 as the B-3. Probably a purpose built aircraft with highly more efficient engines, increased payload, and higher payload diversity. Hell, it might even bring back the tail gun just for the hell of it. Making it an airborne Phalanx-CIWS.