Toss bombing + JDAMS + B52

I was wondering if such a thing might be effective. The B-52 has quite a bomb load and is considered most effective when carpet bombing. Now contemplate that kind of loadout with individually guided bombs equipped with winglets, it seems it would also be capable of doing a wide area attack of multiple targets in a single sortie.

To get an idea of how toss-bombing works...
en.wikipedia.org...

The closest comparable aircraft in that article is the B-47. The B-52 supposedly can't withstand the stress of a immelman like that (at least if you want to keep it airworthy long-term), but for purposes of adapting the concept for a wide area attack a hard climbing high bank turn while doing the drop could get the job done. The idea would be to drop the bombs sideways so they disperse over a wide target area while not having to overfly the targeted area. (Possibly having enough reach for the bomber to avoid most anti-air defenses.) Guidance takes care of the rest as the bombs fan out from the release point.

Thoughts on this?

A lot of B-52 in the past have sheered their tales off from bad turbulence, Not the most educated on B-52 engineering but I'm guessing it'd be a bit of a dangerous idea to get a 60 year old Bomber with a bad history for Tale stress to start doing Toss Bombing.

But multiple laser guided strikes is a good idea as long as its not in a very hot Air Defense zone. I imagine it'd be heaven for enemy fighter jets though.

reply to post by pauljs75


JDAAM already gives you a pretty sizable drop range from altitude. I'm not sure how much that would increase with LABS-type maneuver from a B-52. From a fighter, or something with better rate of climb, yes. The B-47 was a six-engine fighter compared to BUFF.
The new JDAAM-ER will be a glide bomb, and give you an even better range. Why stress an ancient airframe? The BUFF isn't going to be out and about in highly defended airspace anyway. That's what the stealth airframes are for.

reply to post by nostromo85


There were only a few that happened to, one of the worst of which was an engineering team from Boeing. They were doing a flight through the mountains, and all but a few feet of the leading edge of the vertical fin was snapped off. They were hit by a rolling wind gust that was 90 degrees to their flight path. After that event the tail was reinforced, and that was the last time it happened like that.

As for toss bombing in a B-52, terrible idea. It's not stressed for something like that, and if you pull up too hard, or too fast, you can overstress the airframe badly.

reply to post by pauljs75


Star and flag for thinking outside the box.

UVDan

reply to post by _Del_


The B-52 could hit a whole slew of targets at once, not many other airframes can do that. I wouldn't say to do the immelman as in typical toss-bombing (it was proven not to be any good for the B-47 either), but a high banked turn to limit G loads. (Not lofting the bombs upwards as much as throwing them sideways. The idea is a bit different than providing more range as in the original concept of toss bombing, more of mo' dakka in one go and spreading out the drop so it fans out. Pull a turn as fast as you'd be willing to turn around to get the heck back to where you came from as everything is let go.) The point is to have a flying platform that can arrive on short notice with the hitting power of an artillery battery in terms of an area of effect. Also multiple inbounds might give someone the clue that something is up. A lone bomber capable of hitting over 50 targets spread out over a couple miles with 500lb bombs in one single manuever might have its uses, if it can do so without overstressing the airframe.

Maybe the B-1 or B-2 could do it, but B-52 seems more likely able to drop it's whole load at once considering the configuration of bays and wing mounts. Something that would have a very high impact on a target-rich environment, but where things are spread out in a way that would limit usefulness of a carpet bomb style run typically used by a heavy bomber.

More or less it's wondering if an alternate manuever in performing a strike may take better advantage of guidance attached to the ordinance. And yeah, it's thinking out of the box in terms of using the aircraft in a way that few would expect.

reply to post by pauljs75


As old and creaky as the B-52 is I wouldn't want to try it.

A BUFF is capable of dropping one bomb if they want to, or dumping everything at once. If the threat environment is high enough, they're going to be used as a missile platform, and lob cruise missiles, until it's safe enough for them to go in. Once it's safe enough to go in, there's no reason to try to evade, as we have air superiority at that point.

Why in the name of Samuel Langley and the Blessed St. LeMay would you want or need to do a toss-bombing run with a B-52? The guidance packages already in place on JDAM and other weapons of that type can already spread them over a wide area after release, without placing probably-fatal strain on irreplaceable airframes. The B-52 can do some fairly amazing things, but aerobatics aren't part of its resume.

reply to post by Brother Stormhammer


Tell that to the IDIOT that killed his crew (of all senior officers) in Fairchild. He had been written up repeatedly for trying to make the aircraft do things that it wasn't designed to do, but everyone looked the other way. End result, a dead crew (one of whom was on their last flight on the fatal one).

Originally posted by pauljs75
reply to post by _Del_

 

A lone bomber capable of hitting over 50 targets spread out over a couple miles with 500lb bombs in one single manuever might have its uses, if it can do so without overstressing the airframe.

It can already do that with the JDAAM. It doesn't have to overfly the target to drop a JDAAM or JDAAM-ER. You can drop a JDAAM (or several)) from a BUFF in level flight at altitude and still plink a target (or several) 10-20 miles away. With the JDAAM-ER you can more than double that distance.

If you just want to simulate an artillery barrage against armor or something, do it with a JSOW or two from 80 miles out.

reply to post by Zaphod58

There are a LOT of things I'd like to tell Lt. Col. Holland, but this is a family-friendly message board. I'm still mildly disappointed that there wasn't at least one firing squad convened for the people who kept letting a (several adjectives deleted) hot-dogging loose cannon continue to get behind the (more redacted content) controls of an irreplaceable strategic asset, leading to loss of same (surely that's SOME form of treason-by-negligence?), and the loss of equally irreplaceable senior officers (manslaughter or worse).