Bomber

bomber is a military airplane designed to attack targets on the ground or at sea by dropping explosives. A bomb, a metal case filled with high explosives, is just one of the weapons that a bomber can drop. These airplanes also may be armed with mis­siles, rockets, and guns.

Types of Bombers

Most air forces have bombers of two main types: fighter-bombers, also called strike fighters, and strategic bombers. Strike fighters, such as the U. S. Navy F/A-18 and the British Royal Air Force Tornado, can fly as fast as a fighter plane, although how they perform is affected by the weight of the weapons they carry. Their main role is to carry out tactical (battlefield) attacks on troop
concentrations, airfields, bases, ships, and supply routes. Some bombers oper­ate from naval aircraft carriers, while ground-attack airplanes such as the A-10 Thunderbolt fly over a battlefield to destroy tanks, artillery, or other small targets.

Strategic bombers, such as the B-52 and B-1B, are bigger planes. They can fly for 10,000 miles (16,090 kilometers), and even farther when refueling in the air from tanker planes. They are used to attack targets such as factories, military bases, ports, and cities. Even when they fly above 50,000 feet (15,240 meters), these planes are relatively easy to pick up on radar and so risk being shot down by fighters or ground-to-air missiles.

In 1989 the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber gave the bomber a new edge. Its revolu­tionary technology (a flying wing shape and special materials used in construc­tion) enabled it to sneak through radar defenses. Most early bombers had crews of eight or more, but the B-2 needs only two crew members and can

DROPPING BOMBS

A bomber’s weapons may be carried inside the aircraft, in a compartment known as the bomb bay, or attached to the outside of the aircraft. In the early days of air warfare (1914 to 1939), bombs were simply dropped from airplanes over the target area, frequently scattered to increase the chance of actually hitting the target. During World War II, large groups of bombers flew together in formation, often guided to the target by a pathfinder plane that marked the location of the target with flares. Accuracy improved as bombing and navigation equipment became more sophisticated, but bombs still were dropped in a fairly haphazard man­ner. A modern bomber can attack targets many miles away, using elec­tronic guidance systems to send its weapons precisely to their targets. Laser-guided bombs fly along a laser beam directed at the target either from the bomber or from another plane flying nearby.

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