This is the old "parasite fighter" concept. It came from a big problem in WWII: fighters had less range than bombers, so bombers had no fighter protection near their targets.
Then came "fighter-bombers". The F-15, which is a fighter, has almost the bomb load of a B-29, considerable range, and the ability to fight its way to a target. It also can usually put a bomb on the target, rather than somewhere in the general neighborhood, so fewer bombs are needed. (In the WWII era, bombers had trouble consistently hitting the right city. There were cases where the wrong country was bombed. So vast numbers of bombs were dropped.)
"It was common in the early years of the war for bombers relying on dead reckoning navigation to miss entire cities. Surveys of bombing photographs and other sources published during August 1941, indicated that fewer than one bomb in ten fell within 5 miles (8.0 km) of its intended target."
And that is in _daylight_ bombing.
I also remember reading that some British bombers accidentally bombed British mainland in bad weather (with at least twenty miles of sea between their target and Brirtsh mainland) http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C2454254 may mention such cases, but isn't online.
The Smithsonian has (had?) a great exhibition on the history of navigation techniques. Some content is available online too [1], including this newsreel showing some navigation techniques [2].
Being so used to GPS, it's hard to wrap my head around that.
With an easily affordable consumer electronic device that can fit in my pocket, I have better navigational abilities than the absolute best money could buy until a handful of decades ago.
Pickup sailing. Get up to where you can sail longer distances, between ports not day sailing. Without a GPS. Then do it at night. And, occasionally, not by choice, do it in the fog. This gives you a real persoective of what it takes to get from point A to point B. Even with accurate maps it can be confusing as hell. I used to sail a lot. Got pretty good at celestial navigation. Night sailing was always my favorite.
I think you are wrong about the F15 which was designed as a pure fighter with the slogan "not a pound for air-to-ground" - http://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/f-15.htm later, bomber capability was retrofitted on.
A better example would be the Tornado used by the RAF which is a true fighter-bomber.
I'm not sure that's an accurate description of the Tornado - the strike, ECR and air-defence variants were actually fairly different designs based on the original "multi-role" concept.
The RAF no longer uses the Tornado F3 air defence variant as these have been replaced by Eurofighter Typhoons, whereas the Tornado GR4s are still flying and will eventually be replaced by F-35s.
On the other hand, by the time this report was written the F-15 programme already existed, and the hypothetical scenario it starts off with involves a sortie from Europe to the Middle East to engage MIG-21s, which sounds like something well within the F-15's capabilities, especially with air-to-air refuelling.
Did you mean the F/A-18 and not the F-15? The F/A-18 was always designed to be a multi-role plane, but the F-15 was originally designed just as a fighter.
Interesting. Seems that there would be no need for expensive catapult/catchwire operations. Just synchronize speeds and grab the drone with a big mechanized claw of some sort. Drone takeoff could be just like dropping bombs.
Oh that is a lot of fun. I find the idea of stacking micro fighter jets inside a 747 pretty amusing. (not to mention the 'nuclear powered airplane' which is the final evolutionary stage of this platform :-)
Of course it does not look like the unholy love child of a Parrot AR drone and a nuclear air craft carrier :-)
Vehicles in aircraft was a popular concept in the 70s. See the Phoenix aircraft from "Battle of the Planets" aka Science Ninja Team Gatchaman. Don't judge my bad taste in entertainment too harshly, I was just a little kid at the time.
man, now i know what it was! - about 35 years ago, living in USSR near border we had some reception of some foreign TV and this was like nothing else available on USSR TV, these series blew our minds, it was literally "out of this world" :) I'm actually torn right now between curiosity to watch it now and fear that it will spoil the magic that it built in my mind those decades ago :)
Wow, I watched that show as a kid too! For an anime series with an actual airborne aircraft carrier, see Star Blazers. In my memory all these old shows have blurred together, as if from another life time: BotP, Star Blazers, Robotech, Voltron. I'm sure they must have borrowed a lot from each other.
Voltron YES another youth memory that I assure you does not look so good in 2010s.
General startup advice that can be learned from this : Kids have always had really bad taste. You can make money off that. But always keep in mind, "the kids like it" does not equal "that proves its good". Teens arguably due to hormonal impact have even worse taste than kids.
Can someone explain the purpose of this? The only reason I can think of to have this (which Animats mentions in a comment) is to allow fighters with modest fuel tanks to attack deep in territory they couldn't otherwise reach. But this problem is a lot easier to solve with in-air refueling, which has been used since the Korean war.
it definitely can save money/time/etc... when used in a most typical modern conflict against localized and less [military] powerful enemy, like Iraq, Libya, ISIS, etc... that lacks modern airspace offense/defense capabilities.
It would be much less useful against another type of opponent, like Russia, China, probably Iran (at least it comes close to it), Syria (has pretty functional fighter jets and bought S-400 missile systems) - ie. the ones who possess capabilities of striking airborne targets hundred miles away.
Striking requires targeting. S-400 is a very impressive piece of tech, but in order to strike something thats 2k miles away, you need to be able to see it. (Unless it has blind fire capabilities where you can target an area/altitude and have the missile search for a target there.)
Jamming and other countermeasures would make something like this that is a drone mothership very interesting over large land masses.
US has a huge edge anywhere there is water, but deep inland, have a fully mobile and defensible air field that can go anywhere is extremely compelling. Doubly so when you already have established air superiority.
>in order to strike something thats 2k miles away, you need to be able to see it.
that is done by satellites in particular. And China for example develops ballistic anti-ship missile which would be able to strike targets 2K miles away. A ballistic warhead coming at 10M would present next level of challenge even for ship-based anti-missile systems. I don't see a flying aircraft carrier able to carry any meaningful defense capabilities against such an attack. My point here is that, even more than in case of naval aircraft carrier, such flying carrier would be useful only when total dominance is established, which wouldn't be the case with any meaningful military opponent. Of course there is no actual plans to fight an actual war against any such opponent :)
Then came "fighter-bombers". The F-15, which is a fighter, has almost the bomb load of a B-29, considerable range, and the ability to fight its way to a target. It also can usually put a bomb on the target, rather than somewhere in the general neighborhood, so fewer bombs are needed. (In the WWII era, bombers had trouble consistently hitting the right city. There were cases where the wrong country was bombed. So vast numbers of bombs were dropped.)