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A comment on The XB-70 (2019). Parent comment

Re:The XB-70 (2019) by aerostable_slug on Tuesday February 25, 2025 @04:54PM (#43178022)
There was thought given to using 747s as cruise missile carrier aircraft.

Each 747 CMCA would have carried dozens of AGM-86 nuclear-armed cruise missiles on rotary launchers that shuffled around the plane's cargo bay on rails (the missiles would be ejected one at a time from a small door near the rear of the fuselage).

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Re:The XB-70 (2019) by mrguyorama on Tuesday February 25, 2025 @05:16PM (#43178266)
Which was an interesting idea, but it eventually evolved into a much much better one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Dragon_(missile_system)

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Re:The XB-70 (2019) by ianburrell on Tuesday February 25, 2025 @06:47PM (#43178988)
Rapid Dragon is using cargo aircraft for cruise missiles.
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Re:The XB-70 (2019) by BonoboIO on Tuesday February 25, 2025 @10:31PM (#43180297)
I read something about those systems, they really have that already in service? Damn.

Those kind of system would be really „cheap“ to deploy, you overwhelm a lot of air defense systems with it and well it’s transportable outside of air defense range.

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