I always wondered why the B-52 didn’t get replaced by converted airliners (787 has quite similar dimensions I believe). Would be much cheaper to run and could do practically the same thing, no?
There was thought given to using 747s as cruise missile carrier aircraft.
Each 747 CMCA would have carried dozens of AGM-86 nuclear-armed cruise missiles on rotary launchers that shuffled around the plane's cargo bay on rails (the missiles would be ejected one at a time from a small door near the rear of the fuselage).
I read something about those systems, they really have that already in service? Damn.
Those kind of system would be really „cheap“ to deploy, you overwhelm a lot of air defense systems with it and well it’s transportable outside of air defense range.
They look the same to a layman, but they are very different airframes, with a different wing sweep and different load capabilities, among many, many other differences.
of course the b-52 is a completely different airframe. Just wondering what the reasons are you wouldn't be able to convert airliners to be used in that role. It's been done for fire bombing!
Each 747 CMCA would have carried dozens of AGM-86 nuclear-armed cruise missiles on rotary launchers that shuffled around the plane's cargo bay on rails (the missiles would be ejected one at a time from a small door near the rear of the fuselage).