In the age of Hypersonic missiles, doing a nuke attack with bombers is extremely foolish and totally pointless in my opinion. I think this whole Nuclear triad idea is obsolete. If you are indeed trying to nuke your enemy, use missiles. If you really need to get close and don't want to use an ICBM, don't use a bomber, use a submarine.
Who says bombers cannot carry and launch ballistic/hypersonic missiles of their own? A H-6N carrying an air-launched DF-17 can easily achieve 3000-4000+ kilometers of strike range, in addition to the bomber's own combat radius (plus any addition from mid-air refueling support).
In this day and age, when you have internet and can post videos of your ICBMs launching during a test, why would you need billion dollar planes doing flybys?
Because ICBMs cannot be recalled once launched, unlike bombers which can be called back when their order is rescinded.
Bombers also offer the choice on whether to carry nuclear weapons AND conduct nuclear strikes, or to carry nuclear weapons AND NOT conduct nuclear strikes. That's where the unique deterrence value offered by the likes of bombers lies - By offering an offramp.
That's the key difference.
China doesn't have a bomber doing flybys near US for the last 70 years ever since they got the nukes. Did that reduce their deterrence or their ability to do "I can nuke too" PR one bit?
Let me refresh your memory:
Prior to that, the H-6s also conducted joint patrols with the Tu-95s by loitering around South Korea and circling around Japan multiple times since the late-2010s.
So instead of that question of yours, you should be asking: "Why is China suddenly flying H-6Ns on deterrence patrol near Alaska for the first time in July 2024 since China obtained both nuclear weapons and H-6 bombers in the 1960s? Why they didn't do that before?"
Nuke Bombers are 60s technology and no longer needed for any reason whatsover. Its better to spend the money on something more useful. H-20 will be useful as a conventional deep penetration bomber.
Who says that bombers cannot be dual-role (nuclear attack + conventional strike) capable?
Pretty much every single strategic bomber in service today are capable of both nuclear and conventional attacks, since all of them are actually designed with such capabilities in the first place. In fact, whether to equip these bombers with nuclear strike capabilities or not is actually a matter of policy (a.k.a. political choice).
In the age of Hypersonic missiles, doing a nuke attack with bombers is extremely foolish and totally pointless in my opinion. I think this whole Nuclear triad idea is obsolete. If you are indeed trying to nuke your enemy, use missiles. If you really need to get close and don't want to use an ICBM, don't use a bomber, use a submarine.
Nuke submarines can also be called back.
"Foolish and pointless" - Nope, definitely not.
I've already provided the explanation for ICBMs above and in the prior post.
As for the nuclear submarines, they are hard to reach when conducting patrol missions at depth. EM waves travel poorly through water than in the air (high school physics). This is let alone the fact where SSBNs are much slower to get into position for launching their SL-ICBMs than bombers.
That leaves the bombers as the only viable platform for such scenarios, as they can be reached quickly (communications), and are reasonably fast to move (positioning) and travel around (transit).
Moreover, Maybe add self-destruct feature on your ICBM if you don't want to detonate? Or launch later? ICBM takes minutes to reach targets, Bombers will need hours to get into position.
Massed/all-out nuclear attacks occur in the span of minutes, not hours. There's not a lot of time left to doodle around.
In the meantime, adding self-destruct feature to nuclear-armed missiles is the real Fool's Errand. What if those self-destruct features misfire, and the missiles self-destruct instead of heading towards their intended targets? Especially when the enemy is already conducting nuclear strikes on us?
This basically renders the entire nuclear deterrence void and redundant, which is akin to shooting oneself in the foot. That's why the trigger/button lies with the humans, not the machines themselves.
