You might wonder what is so relevant about bombers designed for long gone early coldwar world style bombing missions where they would fly over the enemy and physically drop nuclear bombs, but if you are used to my posts/comments you probably know what I am about to reference lol.
Rapid Dragon along with associated capability in legacy bombers such as the B-52’s Conventional Rotary Launcher for launching a mass wave of cruise missiles and other munitions point to an undeniable future of nuclear deterrence, fullscale war, and munitions deployment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Dragon_(missile_system)
As headline grabbing, eyebleedingly expensive and impressive fighter-bomber jets are, they represent somewhat of an inefficient compromise in modern warfare the way they are being used now in the Ukraine war (especially by russia) as they are optimized on one hand to survive in maximally dangerous environments with all the agility, speed and other limitations such as payload capacity that comes with but on the other hand they are expected to be the prime mover and launcher of air launched munitions.
Fighter-bombers are like F1 race cars, they are extremely good at what they do but they aren’t really any kind of day in day out machine for getting work done, they require a support system of machines that do actual everyday hardwork to empower their extreme capabilities and design demands. They are serious machines but they are delicate and every bit of payload they carry has to be carefully weighed against the costs of delivering it. During war, aviation mechanics do magic to make fighter-bombers behave like everyday commuter cars and not fragile F1 race cars but ultimately the fundamentally contradictory design goals make this always a mitigation and never a problem that can be decisively solved.
Though russia is leaning on its fighter-bombers to deliver a large portion of frontline artillery pressure this is not a sustainable tactic both from the perspective that fighter-bombers are the wrong tool for that job and from the perspective that once Ukraine develops hard counters to this reliance (such as deep strikes against airfields while russian jets are on the ground and vulnerable) it will blow the bottom out of the russian frontline war machine in a way that will leave russia scrambling to adapt before their frontline collapses.
The future is utilizing cargo aircraft and legacy bomber aircraft as platforms to launch mass waves of air launched munitions and russia is entirely unprepared for it. Strategically this places russia on a dead end since with their failing economy there is no way they will be able to sustain the everyday use of their fighter-bomber aircraft as if they were commuter cars and not specialized expensive machines to be fielded for specific situations. Nobody can afford that forever, especially not russia in its currently severely degraded state.
this is a workhorse
this is a fragile machine
Consider the difference in cost per unit of mass in munitions deployed by the above two aircraft, it adds up very very very quickly. While it is true a fighter-bomber can get closer to the frontline and use a dumber munition for the same strike mission a larger aircraft would have to rely on a more sophisticated standoff munition for, the evolution of guided munitions heavily favors larger aircraft as the range of these munitions and the autonomous capability of them expands rapidly.
also see this article I posted to this community for more complimentary evidence of russia’s collapse
What is the point in stabilizing the munitions vertically to then perform a pull up maneuver? Why not drop them like glide bombs?
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Normal airlift/airdrop crews don’t really require any additional training to utilize palletized launched effects.
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From the perspective of a missile designer the ideal launch scenario involves a missile hanging vertically in the air completely away from any humans or vulnerable equipment. The upside down part isn’t really an issue given modern missile/drone sophistication.
Why not drop them like glide bombs?
Because glide bombs require hardpoints to launch and any given airplane can only have so many hardpoints especially for the larger glidebombs that are extremely heavy.
Using palletized launched munitions a single large cargo aircraft can launch a staggering volley of munitions and make the capabilities of a fighter-bomber look pitiful in comparison. You can say that isn’t a fair comparison, a cargo aircraft is optimized to haul shit into the sky, but you have to step back and appreciate that order of magnitude efficiency and how it changes the balance of power in these calculations.
I am by no means saying glide bombs launched from fighter-bombers are going anywhere, but in terms of volume of force people are missing a critical part of the near-future picture of air launched munitions when they ignore the immense depth of capacity an airlift fleet has as a launch platform.
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Oh no how unfortunate