[dingaling]

> Intercepting a B-52 sounds like just about the easiest job in combat aviation.

Not particularly. A rough rule of thumb is that an interceptor needs a maximum achievable speed twice that of the cruising speed of its target in order to close the geometry of the interception. A Su-15 couldn't quite achieve that with its full complement of missiles against a Mach 0.9 B-52, but a MiG-25 could do so. [0]

The second problem is basing the interceptor in a location that the long-ranged incoming bombers can't just dog-leg to avoid. The Mach 2.8 MiG-25 barely had enough margin to intercept supersonic bombers such as the B-58, Mirage IV, A-5 and FB-111 but those all had much shorter endurances than the B-52 and V-bombers, and so ironically made easier targets; they had to follow much more predictable direct ingress routes and weren't equipped with air-launched decoys.

~~

[0] flip the actors around and you can see why the US abandoned the Mach 3+ YF-12 interceptor. The F-106 and F-15 were fast enough to intercept incoming Tu-95s that slipped past the SAM belts, and the faster Soviet bombers didn't have the range to threaten the USA.

[honkhonkpants]

Your reckoning of the capabilities of the B-52 has me scratching my head. It can fly at 0.9 M, at high altitudes where it is guaranteed to be obliterated by long-range SAMs before it gets anywhere near a target of strategic value, and it can fly at low altitudes, at speeds where any eastern bloc fighter could have caught and destroyed it. That's why I think the idea of American long-range strategic bombers striking the interior of the USSR is just a silly fantasy. It would have required air supremacy to do that, and if you've established air supremacy over the USSR the war has already ended. Indeed, a war between nuclear superpowers would not have lasted long enough for a B-52 to get even half way to the USSR, much less for them to sit on the ground waiting for their air refueling wings to get into a forward position (and probably get annihilated, but that's another problem with the air warfare fantasy). A full-scale war between the USA and the USSR would probably not even have lasted long enough for the President to get his pants on.

[NickNameNick]

That really depends on time period. Remember, the b-52 was introduced into service in 1955, and first flew in 1952. Well prior to the introduction of ICBMs.

[honkhonkpants]

Yes but we're speaking about 1976 here.