XPost: soc.history.war.misc

William Sayers
Retired from a career of watching foreign military forces wail on each
other.3y

How were B-52s expected to get through Soviet air defenses to their targets?
I have some expertise in this dating from the 1980s and, quite frankly,
the B-52s would have had no trouble at all from Soviet defenses except
in the most extreme cases. That may sound like a bold statement, but it
was quite true.

First and foremost, the B-52s would have arrived hours after the war
began, and hours after ICBMs and SLBMs had ravaged the Soviet defenses.
Many of the missile strikes were designed specifically to blow holes in
the Soviet defenses, taking out SAM battalions, interceptor airfields,
and air defense command posts. Others would have done damage by
generating electromagnetic pulses, blinding radars and frying computers.

Then, there’s the fact that PVO (Soviet national air defense) couldn’t
be everywhere at once. In fact, much of Soviet territory would have gone virtually undefended because of the vast expanses. Soviet air defenses
were well mapped out, and the bombers would have taken routes avoiding
most of them, until they got in the vicinity of their targets. As late
as the 1980s, PVO was not particularly good at low altitude
interception. Frankly, KAL 007 showed the world that they weren’t that
good at easy, high altitude interceptions, either. In 1978, they shot
down another KAL airliner over the Kola peninsula and that aircraft
circled around for an entire hour looking for a place to crash land,
after the interceptor pilot reported the airliner destroyed. These were peacetime interceptions of single, defenseless airliners that were
making no effort to evade interception. Can you imagine how difficult
that would have been in the middle of a nuclear war against multiple
targets that were well equipped to defend themselves?

Then, of course, were the aircraft themselves. First off, the rather
large airframe was stuffed full of Electronics Countermeasures (ECM).
Black boxes on black boxes, chaff bundles and flares by the hundreds.
And then there was the defensive gun. When the Vietnam War was over, the
score was B-52s - 2, MiG-21s - 0.

Then, there were these:


That’s an ADM-20 Quail decoy missile popping out of the B-52’s bomb bay. B-52s generally carried 2 to 4 Quails, in addition to nuclear bombs in
the bomb bay. The Quail was a drone that could fly a pre-planned course
of up to 400+ miles while reproducing the radar and infrared signature
of the actual bomber. To make matters more confusing, it could drop
chaff along the way.

Then, there were these:


The AGM-69 Short-Range Attack Missile. The SRAM had a range of up to 110
nm, Mach 3 speed, and a 210 kt nuclear warhead. It could fly a ballistic profile for maximum range, or for shorter distances, it could fly a
terrain masking profile. The B-52 could carry eight of them on a rotary launcher (shown above) in the bomb bay, and a further 12 under the
wings, for a total of 20. How accurate was it? I had a friend whose crew
was chosen to launch SAC’s yearly live SRAM. The navigator started to
update the missile on where it was, and the missile told him to stuff
it, that it knew better where they were. The nav told the missile to
stuff it, and pressed the override button forcing it to take the nav’s position input. When they launched the weapon with forced launch
coordinates, the last thing they heard that missile say was, “I told you sooooooo…” And no one ever saw it again.

The missile was good enough to take out primary targets, but its main
purpose was to clear the bomber’s path of air defenses, so they could
get to the target. They say that when that missile was launched, there
was nothing in Heaven or on earth that could stop it or keeping it from impacting within the lethal radius of the warhead. And the BUFF carried
20 of them…

Finally, there was this guy:


The AGM-86 Air-Launched Cruise Missile. The ALCM started life as the
Subsonic Cruise Armed Decoy, or SCAD. The idea was to update the Quail,
but force PVO to track them down and kill them because they were armed.
At some point, the potential of the missile was realized, and the role
of decoy was dropped in favor of it becoming a primary weapon. Range:
1,500 miles. Warhead: 150 kt. Accuracy: This is the missile with the
original, “In your window!” capability. The B-52 could carry up to 20 of these, or a mix of ALCMs and SRAMs.

Until the fielding of the SA-10/GRUMBLE (S-300) SAM in the 1980s, PVO’s weapons were obsolescent and their command/control systems remained that
way. They had too much territory to cover, a hopeless mission, and
lacked the ability to efficiently deal with clueless, defenseless
airliners. It would have been a wipeout. Of course, at this point, there wouldn’t have been a lot of celebrating.

Oh, and by the way, the B-52 loss rate for Operation Linebacker II (the infamous “Christmas bombing” of North Vietnam in 1972) was 2.1%. 15
losses in 714 sorties. Hardly the slaughter it’s often made out to be.

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6 comments from
David Rendahl
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David Rendahl
· February 7
Some rather sweeping statements in there. You seem to have mixed up
decades worth of development into a single package. Quail for instance,
only working for about five years before radar advances made it
obsolete. Described by USAF general as ‘being only slightly better than nothing’.

SRAM arrived in 1972 as a stop-gap almost a decade after Quail and had a terrible reliability record, your great story probably had more to do
with SRAM failure rate than anything else. It was also a predominantly
B-1B weapon.

You left out the bit in its history when they were all pulled from
service early because the rocket motors were found to have deteriorated.
It’s fully updated version was cancelled in 1978 as the mission no
longer existed for it to work. It’s replacement was cancelled as part of START.

You say - until SA-10 their equipment was obsolete? Are you suggesting
SA-2 was no threat in 1960? SA-5 no threat in 1967? Maybe obsolete in
1990 but the B-52s accepted a huge loss of performance to fly low-level
to avoid these things from 1960 onwards so they musta had some kick.
B-58, XB-70, B-1A all scrapped or cancelled because of the threat.

The manned bomber community in the USAF had a torrid decade in the 60s.
Came up with all manner of spin to keep themselves viable.

But as soon as enough ICBMs were available to do all of the USAFs deep
strike (late 60s) the B-52s were kept on to use up airframe hours over
Vietnam, seed The North Atlantic and Arctic Ocean with sea mines or else
from 1980 launch ALCMs from outside the range of PVO.

I loved the second strike idea, B-52s following up from an SLBM and ICBM
attack aimed at SAM regiments so the B-52 could drop on the bases,
cities and factories etc.

Firstly B-52 bases are the most vulnerable of the triad to first strike,
they may not be around to go second. SLBM were the day after the day
after solution as they were the most survivable. B-52s were the pressure
cooker plate - you can launch them but recall them, a kind of last warning.

And surely if you can hit a SAM regiment (possibly spread over a couple
hundred sq miles around your most vital H-bomb targets) cheaply,
efficiently and without risk of interception with a MIRV then you’d just
take out the high value targets with more.

Using the more advanced and less risky weapon to carve a way for a
follow up B-52 penetration?

I loved the idea you paint of a B-52 equipped with multiple quails,
multiple SRAM, blasting and decoying its way through the defences to
launch an ALCM that didn’t need the parent aircraft to enter Russian airspace? Which time period would this happen?

B-52 had a viable mission with free fall weapons at altitude for maybe
the first four years of service (1956–1960) then a very dodgy medium
level mission with Hound Dog until they were put in storage from 1966.
They had an even dodgier low level mission into the early 70s. You
coulda done their mission with 747s after that (in fact they tried).

I too have read accounts of how they planned to go in under the radar,
but seeing how the F-111 and the B-1A were both curtailed from 1969
because they couldn’t manage that mission - despite being faster,
smaller targets with purpose built avionics for the task - can’t see how
a B-52 could do it.

Their terrain following radar was a generation behind F-111 and B-1A so
a lot of it was done by eyeball, trained for over the Nevada desert,
which tends to be significantly less foggy, rainy and windy as the
Arctic circle side of Russia.

It’s also worth pointing out that the missions over North Vietnam were
of very short duration (usually well under half an hour feet dry) Hanoi
is less than 100nm from the coast, Haipong was on the coast and most of
the Trail wasn’t covered with SAM.

Russia is a bit bigger than that.

B-52s going there wouldn’t have the same level of support as Linebacker
which had naval vessels on SAM watch, ECM, ESM and ELINT patrol, they
had RB-66 and tactical bombers flying deception, CAP and SEAD missions
and they didn’t even face the full spread of Soviet air defences - no
Su-15, no SA-3, No SA-5.

So I do t think the Vietnam experience is a good comparison. What is
really telling is the almost compete abandonment of all systems serving
manned penetration missions over Russia between the mid 60s and mid 70s.


William Pellas
· February 7
David, that’s an excellent and quite thorough response. I am not
familiar enough with the nuts and bolts of the NATO-USAF deep
penetration nuclear strike capability versus Soviet defenses to comment knowledgeably, so hopefully the original author will see your comment
and reply. My quick 2 cents is that the B-52 was declared dead and
buried and otherwise “obsolete” more times than I can count, and yet
kept coming back for more. Certainly some of this was due to the
development of reliable standoff weapons capability, particularly ALCMs,
but I’m not sure that the “BUFF” and the systems it fielded prior to
that were or would have been as ineffective or unreliable as you
describe here. While I certainly do not underestimate Ivan, I do take
his own claims of invincibility with a grain of salt.

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David Rendahl
· February 7
Ivan was very vincible, you just couldn’t bank on it. All military communities ebb and flow with threat, personnel and opportunity. The
trick is catch the ebbs and manage the flows as the dynamic forces get
in play.

This is why I have a hard time with the top ten, top trumps: which is
best stuff. Is the Su-27 better than F-15C? Who’s flying it, who
maintained it, how many hours does the aircraft have on it, what weapon restrictions are in place because of availability and maintenance, who’s
got the most advantageous position, who saw who first, who made the
fewest mistakes, what combat support can each rely on and who’s
operating that?

In the early 60s the USAF had for the second time in a generation told
the powers that be that manned bombers penetrating enemy air space and
dropping bombs on important things was the most efficient use of war funds.

They madesome incredible claims from the late 30s to late 50s to the
tune of doing away with all but a coast guard navy and air base guard army.

Bolstered by the (debatable) success of Hiroshima and Nagasaki they
demanded and got a massive, eye watering sum of money to field manned
strategic bombers and all their support systems because they said it
would work well into the 1970s.

It took until 1956 to get right (KC-135) and between Sputnik in 1957 and
Gary Powers in 1960 the dream was punctured. Rockets it seemed were the
way ahead, and America was behind the curve.

I don’t know is how much experience you have of military officers being
shown they’ve screwed up! It’s not cinematic.

Curtis LeMay went before Congress throughout the late 60s begging for
funding for the B-1A, FB-111 and even the resurrection of better manned systems, in many occasion he warned that the B-52s would wear out before
the mid 70s (as planned) and we would have nothing to replace them with.

After much politic the manned strategic penetration bomber was dropped entirely. But the B-52 had become a totem of that cause, it got new
wings, stopped flying low level, became an airborne arsenal ship (Boeing offered a militarised 747 to do that job at a fraction of the cost)
however such was the scale of issue of B-52s and spare parts the
investment couldn’t be abandoned.

SAC operated 67 squadrons of B-52 between 1960–1992. They were planned
for replacement from the early 70s. One third were gone without
replacement by 1966 another third without replacement by 1977. Those
left flew mission profiles more akin to airliners - no low level, no
evasive manoeuvres. There were simply too many airframes and available
parts to warrant building a new airframe to drop mines and ALCMs from.
Which is why B-1A was cancelled, the resurrected B-1B was cut back and
B-2 had a very different role.

There are 7 squadrons of B-52 still operational, and if they didn’t look
so damn good at air shows and the super bowl and didn’t still represent
the man-in-the-cockpit mission of the Air Force they’d have been gone
long ago.

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William Pellas

· February 7
You’re speaking about the whole of military science, and your point is obviously valid. Winning and losing in any given battle or engagement is
about many different factors, some of which you mention here, and all of
them contribute to one degree or another in creating a mismatch for one
side or the other which often proves decisive. To add a further
complication, in a war in which there are multiple nations or armed
services fighting in different geographic locations or theaters,
equipment, tactics, and logistics that work well in one instance may
well be completely outmatched in another, even though they are otherwise identical or largely so. To give just one case in point, the Brewster
Buffalo was savaged by Japanese fighters in the early battles of the
Pacific War before it was withdrawn from US service. But when the same
aircraft entered Finnish service, it was extremely effective against the Soviets. Why? Because Finnish engineers and mechanics studied the
Buffalo and made a few carefully thought out modifications which quickly remedied its worst characteristics and maximized its strengths. Numerous Finnish pilots became aces flying the Buffalo, which in its original,
much lighter configuration (as envisioned by the manufacturer before the
USN got to it) could turn with the Japanese Zero. The Finns fixed the Buffalo’s balky engine which never did well in the much warmer Pacific,
and took out most of the extra armor plating and other equipment
previously added by the Navy. It also helped that the Soviet Air Force
of that era—that is, the early war years—was not as good as the
Japanese, being hampered by poor pilot training and battle tactics
(though it did field some decent warplanes).

So, sure, the B-52 would have been more able or less able to penetrate
Soviet defenses depending on which era we’re discussing. Yes, I am aware
of the proposal by Boeing for a cruise missile arsenal plane version of
the 747 and have long thought that it made all the sense in the world.

However, I would NOT say that the B-52, as a purpose-built military
aircraft that has undergone numerous well conceived and well executed
upgrades, is still not head and shoulders above a modified 747. It
definitely is. It is still in service because it works and it is still
the most bang for the buck that the USAF can get from any heavy weapons platform, current or projected. In this regard it is quite similar
(though again superior to) the Russian Tu-95 bomber.

Once the long-planned engine upgrades to the B-52 are complete, these
along with a number of sensor and ECM modernizations will result in an
bomber that is so different from the current iteration that the Air
Force is considering calling it a new model altogether, the “B-52J”.

Re: the Avro Vulcan, it was rightly famous and a very powerful war
machine, if ultimately (I would argue) a medium rather than heavy
bomber. I have long thought it a real shame that the RAF didn’t emulate
the USAF and keep a smaller number of the total force in its inventory.
Say, something along the lines of 50 of the total manufactured, enough
to equip 2 squadrons while still having a few around for use as trainers
and attrition replacements. The other 70 or so machines could have
served as parts hulks and so on. Re: the story of the Vulcans
penetrating US airspace, I can well believe it. Other than the
interceptors that were supposed to shoot down Russian bombers coming
over the North Pole, I don’t think the US has paid much attention to patrolling the approaches to either coast in the Lower 48. Not that the
Vulcan couldn’t have done it anyway, just saying that US air defenses
are shockingly inadequate, or so it appears to me.



David Rendahl
· February 7
David Rendahl's answer to Is it true that Britain’s Vulcan bombers successfully nuked America twice during training exercises?


Dave Tarrant
· Mon
Nice off-set to the many other negative presentations. Commentary below provides perspective. Regardless, good article.

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