The Air Force Almost Got A Near Hypersonic Radar Plane Killing Cruise Missile Decades Ago
The primary goal was to give bombers, such as the B-52, a means to destroy Soviet air defense sites and airborne early warning and control aircraft.
By Joseph TrevithickJuly 1, 2020
The War Zone
Throughout the Cold War, the U.S. Air Force continually faced questions about whether its strategic bombers could make it past Soviet defenses to drop their nuclear payloads if World War III were to break out. The service experimented with and fielded a variety of different weapons and adopted different tactics over the years, all with the aim of ensuring these aircraft were as protected as possible from enemy aircraft and anti-aircraft threats as they flew to their targets.
In the 1970s, the Air Force began work on a new nuclear-tipped stand-off missile, a design in many ways far ahead of its time and capable of near hypersonic speeds. Its purpose was to nuke enemy air defenses as the bombers snaked their ways to their targets, but it also had a relatively exotic secondary role—shooting down Soviet airborne early warning and control aircraft.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/34036/the-air-force-almost-got-a-near-hypersonic-radar-plane-killing-cruise-missile-decades-ago
