WI no US B-52 deterrent in the Cold War?

You know the thing about missiles? They can't be recalled. Any mistake made with an ICBM can't be rectified. Furthermore, I'm afraid that an ICBM can't perform a multi-role mission, while a heavy bomber can - and has, consistently.

More importantly, I'm not saying that we should NOT have developed ICBMs and especially SLBMs, just that we should not have capped bomber development at the B-52. Yes, I know that we have the B-1/B-2 program today, but the fact of the matter is that instead of a rapidly declining B-52 fleet, we could currently be deploying hundreds of B-70s and (more importantly) their derivatives, in addition to missiles and stealth bombers.
So far, no mistakes with ICBMs needing to be recalled as compared with numerous mistakes with bombers bombing wrong targets, albeit conventional ones.

The B-70 was too expensive, too vulnerable, and not needed. It also was not able as a bomb truck as it flew to high and too fast to drop iron bombs with any accuracy. (And it would have cost too much to deploy as a conventional bomber.) Do a search on the B-70. Its failings as a usable weapon were discussed at great length. While the B-70 was an amazing piece of technology, it was incapable of effectively fulfilling a useful role for the United States.

Given the costs, there was no way the United States could have deployed hundreds of B-70s. They would have been too expensive to procure and operate besides being incapable of fulfilling their mission profile due to advances in SAMs. Just as with the B-58, they were a technological and financial dead end.

Of course, the B-70 may appeal to you if you fail to understand the implied truth in Jukra's sarcastic statement making fun of weapon wankery:
the duty of various military forces is not trying to equip and train themselves for the role given to them by their respective political commanders but to field cool military equipment.
 
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You know the thing about missiles? They can't be recalled. Any mistake made with an ICBM can't be rectified. Furthermore, I'm afraid that an ICBM can't perform a multi-role mission, while a heavy bomber can - and has, consistently.

More importantly, I'm not saying that we should NOT have developed ICBMs and especially SLBMs, just that we should not have capped bomber development at the B-52. Yes, I know that we have the B-1/B-2 program today, but the fact of the matter is that instead of a rapidly declining B-52 fleet, we could currently be deploying hundreds of B-70s and (more importantly) their derivatives, in addition to missiles and stealth bombers.


What exactly are we going to be using those for anyways? how many missions have heavy bombers carried out against the taliban or iraqi insurgents in the last five years? Predator drones are far more useful in ground attack roles right now, in fact, UCAV's in general are going to be the next generation, I would rather we take the money and develope those rather than build a fleet of bombers that are going to be obsolete in the next 20 years anyways.
 
What exactly are we going to be using those for anyways? how many missions have heavy bombers carried out against the taliban or iraqi insurgents in the last five years? Predator drones are far more useful in ground attack roles right now, in fact, UCAV's in general are going to be the next generation, I would rather we take the money and develope those rather than build a fleet of bombers that are going to be obsolete in the next 20 years anyways.
And even cheaper and--if competently deployed--more effective is diplomacy. While the United States seemed to have avoided the fiscally responsible use of diplomacy during Dubya's administration, diplomacy still can be even more effective than bombers in achieving goals.

Anyway, let's get back to why the B-52 was not in the United States inventory.
 
Strategically, after the development of ICBMs and especially SLBMs, the bomber leg of the Strategic Triad was not really necessary. If a design as good as the B52 doesn't appear by the early 1960s, then the Air Force may well decide to scrap it's long-range bomber program and concentrate on ICBMs. If that happens, the biggest impact the lack of a B52 would be, ironically, the impact it would have on American capability to deliver large quantities of CONVENTIONAL ordnance on a target. This would affect the conduct of the Vietnam War as well as both Gulf Wars. Of course, its possible other aircraft could be found to fill the conventional delivery role. But it's hard to imagine any of the OTL contenders for said role doing as well as the "BUFF" as a conventional bomber.

Yeah. That's why, despite never fielding a decent heavy bomber (except maybe for the Tu-4 :p), the Soviets maintained a credible nuclear threat throughout the Cold War. Plenty of ICBMs and SLBMs by the '60s and '70s.

And as Jukra said, ICBMs can take a lot of modifications which were not adopted OTL due to the lack of effective ABM systems to increase their ability to penetrate defenses. Chaff, dummy warheads, dummy missiles, and so on. ICBMs, being cheap and easy to develop, and nuclear warheads being very destructive, ABM systems will be inferior for the foreseeable future to simply swarming them with rockets.
 
I'm not saying the decision didn't work out fine. I'm just saying that if we needed a modern "bomb truck" available in significant numbers today, we wouldn't have one available due to the decision to focus almost entirely on missiles. The fact that we don't really need one doesn't mean that McNamara was right; it just means he was lucky.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
Did Navy win, and the United States decides to base its deterrent forces on supercarriers. (Point of departure--Truman realizes LeMay is totally whacko. :D)

Yes, as opposed to James Forrestal, who killed himself? Right. :rolleyes:

The fact was, Dave, they were both fucking nuts. Had the war turned out differently, LeMay would've been tried as a war criminal. He said that himself. Oddly enough, he told that to McNamara right after WWII ended. McNamara was on his staff at the time.
 

Stephen

Banned
GPS guided bombs droped from B52's have proven quite acurate and useful in battles with the Taliban etc as they have long loiter times and pack quite a punch. In the future a bomb truck for pumuling insurgents is may be all you need as modern anti aircraft systems may make flying over any country with some king of army suicidal even with "stealth".
 
The fact was, Dave, they were both fucking nuts. Had the war turned out differently, LeMay would've been tried as a war criminal. He said that himself. Oddly enough, he told that to McNamara right after WWII ended. McNamara was on his staff at the time.

I agree with that, insofar as I agree that the victor will always have the power to unjustly try the losers as war criminals. Some of the Nuremburg convictions, in my opinion, were a bit dodgy and disingenuous given similar Allied behavior.

But absolutely - if we'd lost, LeMay would certainly have been tried for firebombing civilians. I just don't agree with the assessment that he was "nuts". Hawkish, yes. Crazy, no.
 
The fact is, it is highly unlikely that the USAF will not have a strategic bomber wing, so even without a B-52, there will still be a B-36, or some other plane to fill the role that the B-52 did. The Red Airforce at the start of the cold war was quite deficient compared to its western counterparts, so the USAF has no reason to think that bombers would not be effective. Once missiles become the primary deterrent then the airforce is still going to have a rather large bomber inventory to use for conventional means. Aside from the rather unlikely occurrences I have already stated, I just don't see much anything that will get the Pentagon to not adopt a heavy bomber based nuclear deterrent. No matter what, the only thing I can see making the planners at the pentagon abandon nuclear bombers is a drastically different WWII, since that is what war planners in the US used to base most of their planning on for just about every aspect of a hypothetical WWIII scenario.
 
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