Yes, those stealthy BWB tanker aircrafts having larger RCS than the VLO bombers certainly is a big minus in terms of stealthiness and survivability in high-risk airspaces. However, those BWB tanker aircrafts are not going to accompany the VLO bombers all the way to their designated mission areas - They are only going to fly as far as they need to refuel those VLO bombers before they make a U-turn and head back to base. Only those VLO bombers will continue towards their target.this is dangerous, as even a moderate decline in RCS would greatly reduce tanker detection distance by hundreds of km which is all is needed to go from "too dangerous to operate" to "within tolerable risk".
Instead of having to fly over Canada or Alaska, those BWB tanker aircrafts only have to fly to the Bering Sea, the Arctic Ocean or the Central Pacific at most, where US and allied military installations would be sparse and far apart, hence reducing the chances of interception by US, Canadian and/or Japanese fighters, for that matter.
HU-20 isn't exactly ambitious or out-of-bound per se, but a new refueling platform resulted from the need of a stealthy refueling platform that would extend the H-20's combat range all the way to CONUS. But a modification option for some base variant H-20 units to be fitted with fuel tanks and refueling drouge only (instead of bombs or missiles) should do the trick as well.maybe if a H-20U project is too ambitious, a payload module where some of the internal bays can be retrofitted with extra tanks to mix between a pure buddy tanker, an extended range lower payload version, and the base model, could be useful.
Shahed-like loitering drones is useful for Ukraine, Iraq, Yemen and Syria, i.e. countries that has flimsy to zero effective anti-air defenses against larger warplanes, let alone drones. But for countries with fully established and integrated layers of SAM network and even dedicated anti-loitering drone systems like the US and China, deploying Shahed-like loitering drones against targets with substantial anti-loitering drone system coverage is going to be very difficult and suboptimal.In addition, there can be more creativity in munitions, such as an extended range version of the Shahed. A 3500-4000 km flying range Shahed-ER style drone that can be dropped in the dozens would be devastating if launched from shore but even more devastating to a much wider variety of targets if launched from the air.
Besides, sending H-20s all the way from China and across the Pacific/Arctic just to attack targets on CONUS with Shahed-like loitering drones is going to be very wasteful. A better way of employing these loitering drones would be housing them inside containerized launchers, while being carried onboard normal container ships. They can be concealed amongst other normal shipping containers, which would then be activated to launch loitering drones once within range of its targets, which can be achieved when the container ships are around or within CONUS territorial waters.
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