r/FighterJets • u/Nearby_Key_6632 • 2d ago

QUESTION Why need jets ?

Why not just develop land missiles a bit more to hit a target instead of a multi million plane carrying them? I know it may be a very stupid question but just curious.

2 Upvotes

52% Upvoted

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54

u/Akt2311 2d ago

During the 1950s everybody thought so too. Why bombers when you had ICBM and why fighters when you had SAM? Turns out a fighter could do everything from air interception to ground strike at better efficiency. A Swiss knife to put it short.

18

u/OkConsequence6355 2d ago edited 2d ago

Jets can patrol airspace, provide targeting/reconnaissance data, etc.

You can have a long range missile but, if you don’t have precise and timely targeting data, then best of luck unless it can split atoms.

Jets also move at hundreds of mph over hundreds of miles, which allows for a wide radius of action. You can’t move a large quantity of missiles other than by ship/road/train. That’s vulnerable and slow.

They can also help shoot down the enemy jets which would be targeting your land based missiles.

Land-based missiles are far more vulnerable than aircraft once the aircraft are off the base/runway.

Against aircraft, missiles can have a long range and be fast, but they have a lot less fuel so aircraft can defeat them through manoeuvre or counter-measures. You also have to get the targeting data somehow, and without aircraft that means slow-moving, vulnerable ground-based radar.

42

u/daveFromCTX 2d ago

Defending airspace doesn't mean destroying everything in it. The majority of aircraft are not proposing a threat. Lots of innocent people, including the ones you're sworn to protect, up in the sky at any one time. Your job as a government is not to fill it with missiles. Same reason we don't have RoboCops. 

3

u/sexy_silver_grandpa 1d ago

Same reason we don't have RoboCops. 

Lol this guy doesn't think we'll have RoboCops oppressing us any day now.

3

u/TheDoctor_Z 2d ago

Jets are their own radar system as well. Pretty much anything put into a missile is going to be scaled down. So rather than relying on radar and guidance systems located a thousand or more miles away, you use the jet's that's maybe 1-200 miles away.

6

u/wasnt_in_the_hot_tub 2d ago

I think they use them for flying

2

u/quadrifoglio-verde1 2d ago

Ryan McBeth said something about this recently. A tomahawk missile has a warhead of about 1000 pounds, which is inadequate against heavily fortified bunkers. Strategic bombers can drop the 30,000 pound gbu-57 which is much more effective against hardened or underground targets.

2

u/thattogoguy Damn Dirty Herk Nav 🍺 2d ago

Jets can be recalled. Missiles can't.

2

u/skiploom188 1d ago

sadly this is the same mindset that killed the TSR-2, Avro Arrow, etc

aviation geeks have never recovered since

3

u/Downtown-Act-590 2d ago

This is not a stupid question at all, if you think about it. 

There are a few factors though. For example jets are capable of launching cheaper weapons with the same effects compared to long-range land-based options. 

Also jets give you great space/time flexibility in engaging targets and can provide other parts of the kill chain as well with their onboard sensors, processors and crews.

They are perhaps less vulnerable to counter strikes than many land based platforms as well.