Low and slow airborne missile platforms apparently have a continued mission.
Until we have enough Satellite nukes, a high altitude, fast delivery platform provides an initial, selective, credible threat to actual threats (Iranian "leaders").
“Low and slow airborne missile platforms apparently have a continued mission.
Until we have enough Satellite nukes, a high altitude, fast delivery platform provides an initial, selective, credible threat to actual threats ...”
Low and quick crewed penetrators still have a mission, as would high/quick ones if the country had bothered to develop any.
Standoff missile launch platforms are merely the last manned systems still operating. The nation (nagged and prodded by the likes of Robert Strange McNamara) simply lost the inclination to build anything more capable.
The entire arc of development and deployment of crewed aircraft has been highly contingent on politics (the non-germane sort) and over-application of operational “lessons learned” from USAF ops in Southeast Asia have been enshrined, set in stone like religious dogma, unalterable laws of physics, or Marxist-inspired Historical Inevitability: hence the dominance of relatively nimble single-seat fighters, which are in reality only a little more maneuverable than bomber aircraft, but with all the constraints little airplanes can never escape: low payload and embarrasingly short legs.
Pop culture now believes without question that aircraft like F-16, F-15, F-18, F-22, and F-35 are the only machines capable of surviving the modern combat environment, so the rather weak offensive capability each does embody must be accepted.
The results were never so inevitable, the tradeoffs not nearly so direct nor simple.
Had design and development not taken a different track over 50 years ago, the situation might be very different now.
Interested forum members should research Project Pye Wacket.