Didn’t it ever occur to these geniuses that if you had an aircraft carrying nuke-tipped cruise missiles it wouldn’t NEED to “penetrate” deep into heavily-defended enemy territory? It could just stand off safe and far from Soviet air defenses and attack its primary targets from a distance.

The Cold War era was filled with unnecessary (and dangerous) weapon systems like this, technological schemes that were designed to attract DOD contracts, not defend the nation or deter aggressors.

The Reaganites wanted to put MIRVed high accuracy bunker-busting missiles on nuclear submarines, in other words, to convert our most secure and dependable deterrent system into a totally destabilizing first-strike weapon. I personally worked on systems designed to frustrate Soviet second-strike capability. IOW, I was working on a first strike weapon. And I could tell by how they were deploying their systems that they KNEW what we were up to. This is related to my concerns about unnecessary tech. We do these things simply because we can. And because someone will fund them, or because we perceive they will be profitable.

No, I’m not slamming high tech for the sake of slamming it. It has its place, and when its needed, people will use it. Its just that it seems to have an attraction to both the gee-whiz engineering weenies and the Neocons they like to hang out with that far exceeds the potential utility the new tech might have on the battlefield, or the marketplace.

As for self-driving cars, don’t tell me you haven’t figured that one out yet. They’re not making it easier or safer for motorists and commuters. They’re trying to come up with ways to fire truck drivers, bus drivers, taxi drivers, and still keep as many internal combustion engines on the road burning fossil fuel as possible.

Witness the loopy idea of shackling two primitive jet fighters on the wingtips of a prop-jet bomber. A little CAT would twist the wings off that bomber like a fly in the hands of Kim Jong Eric.

There was an adjacent video from the same year about experiments with “parasitic” observation aircraft (our trusty F-84 again) being towed along under the belly of a B-36. It took only a few years to come up with the right answer, extended-range surveillance craft like the U2 and SR71. But what struck me about the video was that the technique they perfected was exactly what was needed a couple of years later to launch the X-planes from under the belly of a mother ship. A technique that was really only practical under laboratory conditions, shazaam, proved the perfect thing for test flights under laboratory conditions.

But to get to my main point, I have to counter your assertion that we choose to use digital techniques because they’re cheaper and eliminate skilled labor. Sometimes that’s so, but frequently digital techniques are the only way to accomplish something.

To circle around to the topic, digital fly-by-wire could have made the various mothership/carrier configurations practical, just as it makes just about every supersonic aircraft practical.

And ya know what? I’d feel safer on a highway populated exclusively by autonomous vehicles, because they will absolutely be better drivers than 99.99% of humans.

One more anecdote from personal experience: Long ago at the start of my career, I worked with early disk drives that used a slick photosensor with two glass slides that produced a fine moire pattern, that fed into digital electronics to create a positioning feedback loop capable of positioning the heads over the disk with micrometer precision. None of the mechanical components, in any conceivable configuration, assembled by the most gifted human watchmaker, could ever have come close to the necessary precision.

Some things are just not possible without the use of digital techniques.

And some things will be made worse by the application of digital techniques. But how can you predict ahead of time which will be which?

Purely mechanical engineering is pretty robust, since most of the failures turn up in design, testing, or early operations. By the time it evolves into its final form, all the glitches have been ironed out.

I believe we often employ digital technology not because it works better, but because it is cheaper to build–which is another way of saying it takes less skillful, highly paid craftsmen to put it together. And sometimes you get clues as to how clueless the young, inexperienced engineers are that put it together.

For example. Have you noticed how in electronic equipment the fittings are usually made of black plastic or metal, and the labels for them are usually embossed in tiny, black, raised lettering? When you add the fact most of these plugs and switches and fittings are in dark, hard to reach places, old half-blind farts like us can’t read the text well enough to know what’s what. Surely, it doesn’t take any engineering genius to make the lettering a contrasting color to the chassis so people can read it? And if they can’t figure this out, can you imagine how many bad decisions are incorporated into the innards of the gadget?

Replacement parts should be symmetrical: only go in the right way, or it shouldn’t matter how they go in. If something is not reassembled correctly it should be obvious, even to the technically ignorant. The order in which components are removed and replaced should be either irrelevant, or obvious. If you can put it back together so it LOOKS right, it should WORK right. Nothing should require special tools. In fact, if you can strip and reassemble without tools, its even better.

Study the mechanical design of the Colt 1911A1 Auto Pistol if you you want to behold true engineering genius. Over a century old, cheap to build, easy to maintain, safe to operate, brutally effective, will work in dismal environmental conditions–and you can train illiterate teenagers how to use and maintain it.

Sure, with increased capability you are forced to increasing complexity. That goes without saying. But that only means the engineers need to be smarter.

And in combat or even peacetime ops, one may be lost, and to return the bomber would have to fly back with just one, with the other wing empty. The result is you can fly with two escorts, but you cannot use just one, you have to deploy both, whether you need both or not, which makes the configuration awkward and unflexible.

Its a lesson engineers are prone to forget. Just because something can be made to work, it doesn’t always mean its a good idea. And in the event things don’t go exactly as you planned, the extra complications can make it really cumbersome. The extra capabilities are paid for with the price of increased complexity.

Sure, it’s possible to conceive of situations where these towed escort fighters could help the bomber carry out its mission. But there’s a lot of potential for them just to get in the way, too.

It’s clear that the bomber can carry (if necessary) only one escort at a time, but it would only be a temporary situation. With the thrust coming from only the tow, and off-centerline, the bomber pilot would have to apply considerable rudder to keep the aircraft on course. This would increase drag, hence fuel consumption, and defeat the whole purpose of the concept.

In a long range mission, this means the bomber might lose one of its escorts, say in combat or due to a mechanical malfunction. This would mean the other fighter would have to be jettisoned, sacrificed, in order for the tow to make it home. If the bomber were damaged or disabled in any way, both fighters could be stranded deep in enemy territory, or far out at sea, with no ride home.

Now I grant you these considerations might become irrelevant in certain high-risk, high-reward missions, but would the expense and extra complexity required to equip these aircraft and train their flight and maintenance crews make sense in the long run? Look at it this way, the expense of plane modifications and crew training might be better directed to developing other capabilities. And there’s always the drop in performance and maintenance costs of aircraft so equipped when they might only rarely use those modifications.

In short, its a needless complication of systems which, to put it bluntly, do not survive long during combat operations.

An analogous concept was considered during the early days of jet airline commercial flight. Serious thought was given to using aerial refueling techniques pioneered by the military to extend the range and pay loads of commercial aircraft, but the idea was discarded because it was too expensive, too complex, and too likely to go wrong in a civil context.

Engineers have a tendency to come up with schemes like this. They are often brilliant and visionary, but sometimes serve no real practical purpose. Aviation is an area where these Rube Goldberg monstrosities often pop up–after all, don’t all little boys love airplanes? Think of the supersonic transport. It should have been very clear that there really was no market to justify such an expensive technical system just to save a tiny handful of money-is-no-object passengers a few hours on a few routes. The vast majority of all airline passengers spend more time in traffic on the way to and from the airport, getting through airport security, idling on the tarmac or circling their destination than they do in the air. Unless you’re a businessman who flies from New York to Tokyo to attend crucial meetings several times a year, getting there a few hours early at twice the cost makes no sense.

And now these nerds are daydreaming about sub-orbital rocket planes and hypersonic transports. What they should be employing their design talents on is wider seats and more carry-on luggage space.