Yeah the trend seems to be, since missiles have each time more range, just to keep as much of your nuclear deterrent safe in the air, a flying wing with massive range will not move very fast but in the air above Russia it cannot be really be attacked from the US. That configuration is also ideal for a range of applications different from the strategic role too.
The other factor is that if you spend big money and buy a supersonic bomber like the Hustler then you have to blow lots of money in peace time training to attack targets in supersonic planes.
Making the missiles longer ranged means they can actually be even faster but carried around in a big expensive slow bomber.... the evasion and penetration of enemy air defences is transferred to the weapon which in theory only gets used once which makes them cheaper and easier to train with too...
Twelve small hypersonic missiles are going to be harder to intercept than one marginally supersonic bomber...
And with a subsonic bomber you could make external weapon hard points and carry even more missiles externally... much like the Bear carrying weapons externally is not going to slow it down all that much and from the range they will be launching actual RCS is not important but extra missiles on target will be...
The VCE will allow it to do extended supersonic and subsonic flight, allowing PAK-DA's to properly retire the Bears and the Backfires. One universal bomber (that replaces 2 bombers) for both rolls will make it cheaper and less complex than the current situation overall.
The thing is that tha PAK DA will easily replace all the Bears anyway... and Backfires don't even come in to it... a navalised Blackjack could be developed to replace the Backfire if needed... just produce an extra 50...
They said the PAK-DA would substitute all other bombers,
The Bear and the Blackjack are different enough to be complimentary... once they decided it was going to be a subsonic flying wing I believe the plans changed from it replacing everything to just replacing the Bear in the strategic role and the Backfire in the naval role.
Volume over speed I suspect so the replacement for the Backfire has become much bigger and much heavier but also slower... but the Backfire was never going to be doing that much flying at supersonic speed... being stealthy and carrying big long range hypersonic missiles would make it rather more effective... and cheaper to operate.
Now new setup will be like this:
I am pretty sure they intend to make more PAK DA than Tu-160M2 and that over the long term the Bears will be going first with the Backfires likely being reverted back to the navy very quickly but then eventually replaced with naval PAK DA... using missile size and range to compensate for platform speed or lack of it.
It would not surprise me if the eventual PAK DA does not have its own drone like the S-70 but much bigger...
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