perhaps the same fuselage albeit somewhat slimmed down in ruggedness, but a low wing design, with longer wings , more powerful engines, more conventional undercarriage, a bigger front section behind cockpit for food/restroom/extra crew seating/mission module, with the rest devoted to aux fuel tanks and a single bomb bay. plus wing pylons for 6 harpoon size ASMs.
imo we already have such a readymade template to work from. its called the Embraer 195
http://www.embraercommercialjets.com/#/ ... s_detail/4
http://www.embraercommercialjets.com/im ... ad/135.pdf
while purists and war mongers may sniff at this vs the massive strike power of a B1/Blackjack, I point to certain advantages
- high COTS content - less modification cost/risk
- Embraer is non-Khan and a global major now, brazil economy is surging - so they will be around
- we are already working with embraer
- high uptime and ease of upkeep as a commercial jet, few if any special parts needed
- relatively small and cheap so we can afford a lot of them for various missions vs a few specialized backfire types. those pylons can be mounted but kept empty. the bomb bay could use modular racks of SIGINT eqpt in that role.
- we can skip the rotary bomb bay occupying the entire fuselage to a simpler arrangement of upto 4 large missiles inside and 6 small ones outside with cabin above left empty or some part having aux fuel tanks.
hence a single one could deliver the missile strike of 4 MKIs + 3 rafales together.
with missile ranges increasing, for land strike it would hardly need to leave the safety of our airspace...just a mobile TEL to reposition and fire quickly vs land TELs.