It comes down to positive control. If you use a robot bomb carrier, it will be a weapon bus, EXPENDABLE used as a total war weapon only in extremis, with no recall design, and only on a ONE WAY trip. 

 

That is why this idea of a UCAV bomber for nuclear weapon delivery is insane as are its proponents. 

Comm's fails...Having read Robert's Ridge all I can say is that in a very permissive electronic environment, the Taliban functionally being in the Stone Age, satellite communication failed SEVERAL times...due to overloaded circuits or due to electronic jamming being conducted by the Allied Forces (the book makes no conclusions).

 

So in Afghanistan, in the face of NO electronic opposition or interference units lost the ability to communicate...at the most inopportune times.  All I can say is that you have far more faith in electronic communications, under extreme pressure, than I do.

Herald,

If you are going to call people idiots, you may want to get your facts right. SAC was disbanded under the Bush I administration in 1992, not by Clinton.  It was part of Gen McPeak's sweeping reorg in response to the end of the Cold War, big drawdowns, and the expeditionary combat experience that blurred the line between tactical and strategic forces in a conventional war.  I'm not a McPeak fan, but if you want to throw political spears he can be held against both side - appointed by Bush I, backed Dole's presidential run in '96 and GWB in '00, but also served under Clinton, backed Dean and then Kerry, and was Obama's military advisor and committee co-chairman.

BTW, the Yom Kippur War was 1973, not 1972.  This was in the middle of the Watergate scandal and there are some claims that Nixon wasn't involved with the DEFCON decison at all, rather the NSC decided and issued statements in his name.

Opinion:

 

1 June 1992, was the date that idiiocy occured. Half a year. 1973 Arab Israel1 war. One year off, again, wrong on fact again. You backed DEAN? .Get a mental health checkup. My memory may require I look at possible onset of Alzheimers, but supporting Dean indicates McPeak has galloping insanity. As for Obama, current data track indicates he made a third hige error in judgement.. . 

 

Ascerbic comment::

 

The Russians ran a bluff in 1973. Factpod claimed: Nixon was drunk.on the 11 October when the British PM Ed Heath tried to talk to him about the crisis, sole source climing being Kissinger, which indicates to me that that  maniac, Kissinger, was running around mismanaging US foreign policy during the crisis solely by his own arrogant accounts. By the 23, that double dealing double crosser had convinced himself and the panicked Russians (Schlessinger pushed for the Defcon 3 over K's objection and Nixon agreed) to put through that cease fire. The thought of Kissinger trying to play general and decide when to declare "victory" should have chilled the blood of any sane man. That miscalculating egomaniac never could read a crisis right oir negotiate a viable agreement. That is why I suggest strongly that  it was actually Nixoin who sobered up and dealt with Brezhnev as he explicitly told Kissinger he would do in a memorandum of instruction he sent to that hubris driven Secretary of State on the 19th October.

 

Now as to the Clinton administration being packed full of idiots..........

 

Mark Danner articles. ALL of t...

 

Herald

.   

 

read for comprehension...MCPEAK backed Dean and then Kerry...we have no idea who Breaka backed.....

 

Well then.....Breaka, who did YOU support? Problem solved.   

 

Brainfart does not excuse me, though many's the time you've done the same when you misquoted me.

 

Herald

 

 

 

JFKY,

I do have faith with it because it's something I've worked with and on everyday. That doesn't mean to suggest that your concerns are no valid. Just that as an engineer we can design redundancies and create ways to mitigate the chances of failure. That's why I wrote to GF that if we wanted, we could deploy a Unmanned Nuclear Bomber this year with existing technologies. It would be quick and crude but it could be done if we absolutely wanted it. Give 5-9 years though and the technologies would be mature enough to be competitive with manned platforms and certainly exceed the performance. Again that doesn't mean that institutional resistance wouldn't still be an obstacle.

With regard to failure. Again, remember, even the B-2 and Raptor go down. And like the electronic conditions over Afghanistan, it doesn't have to be due to enemy activity. No one can legitimately say there is no chance of failure. But I can say that with proper test and development it is possible to make the system as reliable as manned aircraft. It just takes time. A good program to look at would be Global Hawk. It's a prototype that was rushed to war due to urgent needs. It has the AI capability to deal with loss of coms and in 30,000 plus hours of flight has had very few losses considering that it was a prototype, maintenance and operator proficiency wasn't mature ect. 

-DA 

 

-DA 

Sure we could hang nukes off a UCAS. That doesn't mean we would have the positive control required of a nuclear weapon.

Spin. I mentioned that if we rushed something it would be crude but still doable. Also, our control of the nuclear payload would be no less secure than a nuclear tipped CM. Why a nuke on a CM isn't even an issue on a one way trip but somehow it you put it one a platform that can be recalled all the way up to the release point is the million dollar question. Let me break that down.

AGM-89B is fired, on the way to the target, it can crash, be intercepted, fail to explode and cannot be reused or recalled.

ND-UCAS takes off and has all of the above characteristics of a CM. Additionally, it can be recalled. It can loiter on station until needed and if designed to do so, can even fight back in the EW and physical domain.

Its a gain.

-DA 

-DA