The Unwanted Blog

A substantially less crazy-sounding idea than jetliners launching large missiles vertically, in the late 1970’s Boeing (and others) studied the use of cargo jets to carry and launch large numbers of cruise missiles.

The Carter years, for you younguns who don’t remember back that far – and for you old farts old enough to have experienced the 1970’s and managed to repress memories of that dark time – were a time of economic despair, lost jobs, industries in decline and a space program that had been basically shut down. The President was swept into office on the promise of repairing a broken nation dealing with major internal divisions, troubles in the Middle East and skyrocketing oil prices.The President, rather than bringing the nation together, turned out to be rather an incompetent boob, creating *more* division and basically mangling both the economy and foreign policy. Let us hope such times do not come again…

The 1970’s actually did look like this.

Anyway: it was a time when expensive new defense procurements were in massive doubt, the anti-nuke nuts were running rampant and the aviation industry didn’t see much in the future.  But still the Soviet Union was lurking just over the horizon, so a need was seen to modernize the nuclear delivery force… on a budget.  President Carters cancellation of the B-1 bomber left the US without a new manned strategic nuclear delivery system; without the B-1, all the US had was the B-52 which was starting to appear rather old and obsolete (as opposed to today, when they are two or three times as old as they were then…).

Boeing put forward the idea of using 747 cargo conversions for mass cruise missile attacks. Rotary launch racks would be carried internally in the spacious cargo bay…  nine racks each holding eight ALCM’s gave a respectable loading of 72 cruise missiles, each potentially armed with a single nuclear warhead. There was a single launch port on the starboard side of the aft fuselage. The rack next to the port would eject a single missile sideways through the port, rotate the next missile into place, and then launch it. When all eight missile had been launched, the rack would slide to the left; another rack would slide aft into the position just vacated. When *that* rack was empty, the first rack would slide forward, giving room for the second rack to slide sideways, and a third rack to slide aft into position. In this way, nine racks could be carried and moved into position. It would be somewhat cumbersome, and certainly a slower process than unloading the equivalent rotary racks that the B-1A would have carried internally… but then, the B-1 could only carry three such racks.

Boeing filed for a patent on the concept in 1978 and received it in 1980.

“Missile Carrier Airplane,” US patent 4,208,949

This would have been a far easier design to bring to fruition than the BAE vertical launch concept, and would probably have had a greater total load of nuclear whoopass. However, it falls short in the all-important coolness factor, and would have been useless in the micro-satellite launch business or anti-missile duty. Since the cruise missiles, jetliners and rotary racks described thirty years ago (yeeeeesh) are still available and essentially top of the line, the concept would seem to remain valid. In recent years Boeing has discussed in somewhat vague terms the “arsenal plane” concept, where a relatively large and slow aircraft would be loaded to the gills with offensive weaponry. While their artwork has tended to show some sort of blended wing body in that role, the 747 would still be a potential candidate.

NOTE: If you liked this little post, then you’ll love Aerospace Projects Review. Go take a look. NOW. Do it.