Reply #6: This sounds fishy to me

[krispos42]

At this time we were in the middle of bombing Iraq. Third week of blasting the country hard.

What target existed that could require a nuclear-armed bomber flying over a hostile country for hours on end?

The bombers typically sat at alert on a runway, like at, say, Diego Garcia. Much safer and cheaper than wandering around the unfriendly skies of Iraq.

Or a few F-111s out of Turkey with nukes on board. On the runway, ready to go, and only a few hundred miles from Baghdad, as opposed to thousands to Diego Garcia.

The Navy also had plenty of A-6E Intruders that could carry nukes if required that could launch right from inside the Gulf.

Not to mention a nuclear-tipped Tomahawk launched from a cruiser. A Ticonderoga-class cruiser with vertical launch capability could fill it's magazines with up to 122 of them. And the battleships we used to have at sea could carry 16 of them, I believe. Why not a battleship?

And we can't forget the boomers, can we? An Ohio-class ballistic-missile sub loitering out in the Indian ocean projects nuclear power 7,000 miles in either direction. Each sub carries 24 missiles, each missile carries 8 warheads of 475 kilotons each. 91 megatons total.

There were several viable options to keeping nuclear weapons in-theatre that didn't involve flying for hours over hostile country, during a war, in a 30-year-old plane.