Drone-Proof City

[undercovergeek]

He is probably referring to the number and type of aircraft required. The US has a number (80, 90?)of B-52s (carrying up to 70,000 pounds of iron bombs) and roughly 15-20 B-2 Spirits (carrying up to 50,000 pounds) which could be used to saturate a large area with ordinence. The only other country with operational heavy bombers that comes to mind is Russia with it's Tu-160 (80,000lbs), of which it has about a dozen and are probably configured for cruise missiles at the moment.


I suppose you could try to carpet bomb with tactical bombers but that would require an awful lot of sorties. Precision bombing is a better use of their abilities.

is it even still used? did you guys use it in the Afghan mountains or was that precision

[bayonetbrant]

Depends on what you're trying to do.  If you just want to erase a few grid squares, there's something to be said for carpet bombing.

[Longdan]

It works real good if you don't care who gets killed or what gets broken.
Carpet bombing in WW2 had mixed results:

Carpet bombs wrecked Panzer Lehr,
They also snuffed General McNair.
The city of Caen was blown full of holes
But so were a lot of Canadians and Poles.

[besilarius]

In a sense, you don't need a lot of planes for a localised carpet bombing, three B52s do fine.  You need good intel to effectively do it, though.
In a Vietnam Arc Light strike, the lead flew down the designated line, and the other two were offset to port and starboard.  (I think RED CROWN, Air Ops, coordinated the intel and the events.  Required very fast reactions for the strike to catch Charlie in the open and deployed.)
It was really scary if you were not expecting it, and were only a mile away.  The experienced guys quickly sat down, while the newbies tried to stand, as the earth trembled.
I think there was an Arc Light strike NATO called on a Serbian battalion that was attacking.  A buddy told me that they were caught out in the open, and were just decimated worse than Panzer Lehr.