Forum: Modern Military Aircraft

That_Engine_Guy wrote:

tacf-x wrote:

Wasn't the USAF considering the A-12 as an f-111 replacement?.

You speaking of the McDonnell Douglas/General Dynamics A-12 Avenger II aka "Dorito Chip" or the Lockheed A-12 Blackbird?

I don't think it's the latter, but you should have read the description of an A-12 Blackbird dropping a 1000lb solid tool steel bomb from 85K' and Mach 3. The results would have been eye watering!

TEG

Nope, I'm talking the dorito.

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tacf-x wrote:

That_Engine_Guy wrote:

tacf-x wrote:

Wasn't the USAF considering the A-12 as an f-111 replacement?.

You speaking of the McDonnell Douglas/General Dynamics A-12 Avenger II aka "Dorito Chip" or the Lockheed A-12 Blackbird?

I don't think it's the latter, but you should have read the description of an A-12 Blackbird dropping a 1000lb solid tool steel bomb from 85K' and Mach 3. The results would have been eye watering!

TEG

Nope, I'm talking the dorito.

The Dorito was posited as an eventual replacement for the F-11 (and the F-15E), but we're talking 15 years later in time than the B-1. In reality, IMO, even if the A-12 hadn't (literally) collapsed under its own weight, the fact that it was a Navy designed and managed program pe
pretty much insured that USAF would in fact not have bought it.

Regarding Lockheed's A-12, it wouldn't have been able to drop a weapon because first, it didn't have any place to put it, and second, it had no mechanism to launch it. On the other hand, at least one of the YF-12's "separation tests of inert bodies" to verify the launching mechanism before they blasted an AIM-47 out of there were actually tests of the feasibility of delivering an air-to-ground weapon from that kind of speed and altitude. This served to validate that if the B-12 concept ever resurfaced, it was viable.

Regarding how far something would go from that speed an altitude, we can get a feel from the numbers predicted for AGM-69 (SRAM). Launched from a B-52 SRAM had a range of up to ~100 miles. Launched from a B-12, the same weapon was expected to travel ~500 miles.

Forum: Modern Military Aircraft

Differences betwen B-1A and B-1B?