US Navy Top Guns finally have the medicine for China’s sky-blackening bomber fleets
Story by David Axe • 24m
Late in the Cold War, the Soviets sought to blunt the Americans’ naval advantage – specifically, powerful US aircraft carriers with their heavily-armed air wings – by building up a force of long-range bombers armed with long-range anti-ship missiles.
The idea, if actual fighting broke out in Europe, was for entire regiments of Soviet bombers to fly toward US Navy carrier battle groups in the North Atlantic and fire six-ton Kh-22 ‘Kitchen’ anti-ship cruise missiles – potentially hundreds of them at a time – from as far away as 320 miles.
The Kh-22 isn’t terribly accurate, but its one-ton warhead can do a lot of damage. The Soviets figured that if they fired hundreds of missiles at a time, a few would get past the cruisers and destroyers protecting the carrier.
That’s why, in the 1970s, the US Navy deployed a fighter-missile combination – Grumman F-14 Tomcats armed with long-ranging Hughes AIM-54 Phoenix missiles – specifically designed to defeat the Backfires before they could launch their missiles.
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