Arsenal Airplane? This should be no surprise.

On Friday, Inside the Air Force reported that

        The Pentagon is considering a modified commercial wide-body aircraft packed with cruise missiles as a possible low-tech replacement for the Air Force's aging B-52 bomber fleet, a previously unreported option being floated as part of a wider assessment of how the Defense Department might modernize its long-range strike capabilities, according to DOD sources.

        A “tiger team” formed earlier this year to examine the underlying need for a new long-range strike aircraft is looking at the option of a so-called “arsenal airplane,” according to Pentagon officials. The team was set up after Defense Secretary Robert Gates in April canceled the fledgling Next-Generation Bomber program.

        At issue is a fundamental question about the composition of the future bomber fleet: how much of it must be capable of penetrating sophisticated enemy air defenses? And what, if any, portion can operate like the B-52 does today—at a safe distance from enemy air defenses?

Frankly, none of this should be surprising, and for two reasons:

1. The B-52s aren’t remotely penetrating bombers, but they’re the ones needing replacement. There were plenty of good reasons for terminating the Next-Generation Bomber (NGB) project, but somewhere near the top of the list had to be the misordering of priorities. The NGB seemed intended to replace the B-2 Spirits—oddly, the newest segment of the long-range bomber fleet, and not the B-52 Stratofortresses, the oldest segment. If the B-52s work as standoff missile carriers today, then arguing for more aircraft like the lightly used B-2s will be difficult.
2. This idea is at least thirty years old. I first remember hearing about this idea in the early 1980s, when no one really thought that the B-52s could reliably penetrate even Warsaw Pact air defenses. That was the whole point of outfitting them with the Air-Launched Cruise Missiles (ALCMs)—but if B-52s could employ ALCMs, the argument went, then why couldn’t an airplane with lower operating costs, like a converted airliner?

So frankly, if the B-52s are really in dire need of replacement, and they all operate from safe standoff, then it’s really unclear why the performance of a converted airliner wouldn’t suffice for that segment of the fleet. There are plenty of ways to fulfill that requirement, but two alternatives stand out as minimizing risk and enhancing commonality:

• Buy a bomber version of the Navy’s patrol plane. American and Canadian P-3s are operating over Afghanistan today on surveillance duty, and were they equipped for it, dropping JDAMs from the weapons bays just wouldn’t be a stretch. To replace those rather old P-3s, the US Navy is just now starting to buy P-8 Poseidons from Boeing—basically 737s converted to drop sonobuoys and torpedos. Adding some new air-launched cruise missiles and bombs to the repertoire would be a routine integration matter.

• Buy a bomber version of whatever tanker the USAF buys. After that last protest decision, and the shifting of the bidders’ plans, that could be either a Boeing 767, a Boeing 777, or an Airbus A330. The integration challenge here would be a bit greater, simply because none of those aircraft are known to have been cleared for weapons separation, but the fundamental principles are pretty much the same.

Naturally, any such project would be a boon to either Boeing or EADS, and a relative loss to Northrop Grumman, which had begun designing the NGB (in a black project that was too big to hide on a public company’s books). Northrop could be anticipated to team up with EADS to offer a bomber version of the A330, particularly if the USAF winds up confirming is desire to order the Airbus as its next tanker. On the whole though, the benefits ex ante probably accrue to Boeing, and not just on home field advantage. Boeing builds a torpedo-bombing airliner today, and EADS is still seeking its first sale of a maritime patrol Airbus. That will play well when the risk-reduction slides go up at the pitch briefings.

Whatever the outcome, however, let’s note that “low-tech” is a poor description of any of the airplanes in question. Some aspects of parametric performance may be lower, because the radar cross sections are so much larger, but the lower operating costs and greater upgradeability of the aircraft may more than make up for that. Technology, we’re figuring out in the post-Cold War context, means a lot of things.

Comments

[Peter La Franchi]

You are correct in noting the extended history of this concept. It was extensively studied by the United Kingdom as part of its Future Offensive Air System (FOAS) project from the late 1990s onwards. BAE Systems went as far as doing detailed concept work on fitting an Airbus A310 with a racking system that would carry large numbers of Storm Shadow cruise missiles and eject these from a special bay in the empenage. That specific aircraft concept was also flagged to the Royal Australian Air Force during the late 1990s as a potential replacement for its General Dynamics F-111C fighter bombers. Interestingly a common reaction of government officials in both nations was to raise the question of what impact would the use of civil platform in an offensive role have for how non military versions of the same platform type would be treated by hostile air defence systems in times of conflict.