Yees, aware - including Marshalls involvement. Anyway, a Tonka couldn’t get up to 49,000 ft or above…
Stupid question alert…
As we’re just talking about a tactical nuclear strike rather than a strategic one, what would prevent us from being able to retrofit existing munitions that are compatible with current in-service aircraft to be able to carry a warhead?
I would assume that there isn’t enough space? The F35-B has a massive fan in the middle to allow VTOL/STOL. The F35-A is CTOL only, so I would assume has a bigger bomb bay?
Many/most USAF fixed wing aircraft are B61 cleared. Not sure if the USN is in the Tactical Nuclear bombing game anymore. Because the USAF now has true global reach (see last weekend). Could be a political decision or logistics/storage of ordinance on ships decision for USN to be iron bombs only.
Weight, basically.
I imagine the Typhoon can’t take the weight? I recall the Tornados basically being used as weapons batteries for them.
Nope, F-16 is the primary platform under the nuclear sharing agreement, with F-35A being the replacement.
F16 for Airforce. But I think someone else answered that USN doesn’t have the capability.
Sea Harrier could carry the WE.177a back in the day apparently (which surprised me!)
No doubt their pilots will know it’s a one-way ticket if it goes up, just the same as the Vulcan crews
The S in FRS Mk 1 (and other aircraft, such as the Buccaneer) indicated ‘strike’ (as in nuclear strike).
You just finally want to drop some sunshine.
Turn that car park in glass! One of the Biggin Hill selection questions - you are tasked with a nuclear strike on a military tgt, as you run in to attack, you see a school about 300m short of the tgt. What would you do?
“Bomb gone.”
It wasn’t going to be easy, that was sure, certainly wasn’t expecting a base to come back to. Without giving national secrets away, there were NATO tgts & UK tgts. The NATO ones had some latitude (& fuel!) to expect to land elsewhere, not necessarily in the UK. As for the UK ones, well, jumping out of the aircraft some distance away from the bucket(s) of sunshine that had gone off wasn’t going to guarantee much luck with the belt of gold sovereigns!!
Hmm, if you were close enough to see that there was a school 300m short of the target, then you weren’t gong to get out of the fireball if you did drop. Anyway, spotting things like that is a job for the J2/J3 gang, not that it would matter if we had got to the point of the BOIS.
Just saw they are still only buying 138, so this is instead of 12 F-35B not as well as.
Oh damn.
I read earlier that the As were to “complement the Bs”. I assumed that meant it was 12 extra.
This was the post. I misinterpreted it! IT certainly reads like 12 additional aircraft.
We were promised (honest, guv!) that the time delay from drop to bang would be sufficient to escape any fireball / blast… Quite an interesting cse doing all the nuke stuff.
Do you think they told that to the crews designated to drop warheads from helicopters