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0 pointsvonmoltke9y ago0 comments

The Toyota Hilux isn't an aircraft. The B61 is an air-dropped dumb bomb. Any aircraft that can load it and drop it in the air can deliver it. If you didn't care about accuracy you could roll the thing out the back of a C-130 and successfully deliver it.

The point is, there is no equipment required to deliver the B61 other than a standard weapons rack with any air-to-ground aircraft has. The only A/G aircraft I am aware of that can't deliver the B61 is the F-22A, and only because the bomb won't fit in the weapons bay.

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sdenton49y ago

I was under the impression that many nuclear bombs had arming mechanisms that required special electronics in the plane. Is that not true for the b61?

vonmoltkeOP9y ago

The B61 is designed to be delivered from any aircraft that can carry Mark 80-series iron bombs. Combined with the two-man rule (which means at least partial arming on the ground for a weapon launched from a single-seat aircraft), this means most of the setup needs to be done on the ground. It may be that the weapon is completely armed at that point, save for a failsafe tied to the rack that keeps the bomb from going off when still attached to the aircraft.

dingaling9y ago

That is incorrect. For example the F-16s delivered to Pakistan lacked the nuclear firing circuits.

"Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Arthur Hughes also tells Congress that the nuclear wiring has been removed from the planes"

Similarly when the UK withdrew its WE177 weapons the nuclear circuits were removed from the RAF's Tornados, and the Typhoon lacks them too.

justin669y ago

> It may be that the weapon is completely armed at that point, save for a failsafe tied to the rack that keeps the bomb from going off when still attached to the aircraft.

Weird. This would make these modern weapons a lot less safe than some of the bombs we've lost (without catastrophe) in B-52 incidents over the years.

chiph9y ago

Other than maybe the A-10, all the US tactical and strategic aircraft have that wiring.

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