My 2 paisa for the Thread starter,
First of all,the tread itself looks like a phrase rather than a perfect sentence.Which I meant is that you need to be more elaborative.Since this is a casual reply,dont take anything serious.
"With the advent of multiple role fighter aircrafts and advanced missile system has the fighter-bombers become unnecessary in present day warfare?"
Agreed to some extent that you came up with an alternative to bombers,which are multi-role fighters.
But again before I simply jump into conclusion ,I would like to put few scenarios and comparisons which may be worthwhile.
Firstly,Bombers are rich mans toys.One can call any modified fixed wing aircraft for bombing purpose as a bomber.We can convert all the Indian Airlines planes removing the seats for extra storage space and having a open-up in the bottom part of the fuselage for either carrying a rotary launcher or man-dropped dumb bombs.This might serve the purpose of bombing ,but against a tiny enemy who had never seen any AD in his whole life.Hence the need came for a dedicated bomber with built in launchers/bomb drop mechanisms.Since the capability of AD went up,rich mans came up with stealth one to deceive the AD.Since the whole thread is in context of India,we have to consider the strengths and weaknesses of our enemies.
We have two main adversaries surrounding us on east,west and north.And one of them posses a formidable/contemporary(imported or copied) AD system while the other posses a gen older system.Hence the bomber that we(india) choose should be capable of both kinds of threats.Since x>y we go with a bomber that can deal with X threat.
Now the real question arises.Do we really need a bomber to bomb China/Pakistan?
My personal advice would be Yea.
Reasons?
Though we posses or getting more Multi-role aircrafts, both their range and weapon carrying capability is limited.At present an MKI can take of from the far east with 8K full bomb load and can only go as far as 3500km deep into chinese airspace with no option to come back unless we can send an refueler along with it. Means keeping both the fighter-bomber and refueler at risk.
But again,no ***** just sends a bomber or multi-role aircraft right into the enemy airspace for bombing.
Before the bombing practise one has to sanitize the enemy airspace and clean up all the AD`s(which is SEAD).
given the case with china---which needs a kick asss strategy by the marshals to take care of the AD`s.Since china is a huge territory and majority of its AD`s are based on the coastal regions while the western,north-west and south-west were less densely populated with AD`s. Getting air superiority over this air space can be considered an easy job.But the real game starts when one has to venture into the near coastal region.
I for one can term the region as the most defended one on this planet,since all the chinese assets were laid over there and 80% of population also rests there.
Assuming its a pure conventional war and no nuclear exchanges taking place:
The bomber take of from Indian soil and starts sanitizing the ground forces after the fighters sanitizing the airspace and suppressing AD`s. You can do the same ground sanitization using ground forces.For that we need to put more boots on the ground in the initial run and is a time consuming process.While using bombers is rapid and quick victory(even though its costly ,but worth the money.since losses are quietly minimal after SEAD) Again repeat the same process ,but with heavy numbers.Since China holds a significant number of S-300`s we need bombers and fighters with conventional ALCM`s for long range strike.there will be a no point of return atleast 500km from the central china.Hence you need to strike from outside where bombers with huge weapon carrying capability comes into play.Salvos has to be fired,where multi-role fighters can fulfil the job.All this strategy is considering that we are the ones causing the aggression and invading them with superior quality,but with inferior quantity.
And for pakistan, usage of bombers is over kill.
apart from the capability based advantage of having bombers, there is a spin-off too. i.e a demoralizing the enemy.mentally incapacitating the enemy by making him fear that we had bombers.This makes the enemy scrable for yet another strategy to counter bomber force. Militarily,the more different varieties of offensive/defensive equipment you posses, the more the enemy has to think countering them. Keep your offensive options diversified,yet keep them under control by limiting the logistics nightmares.
And for a nuclear exchange scenario,bombers increases your range of options in delivering the nukes,which ofcourse has to follow more or less the same strategy.Since one may be having a min of 3k range cruise missile for being air launched,the threat to bombers decreases drastically and they can be used right at the starting of war.(in Indo-China scenario)
the cons?
Highly expensive,
Need more maintenance.
But in the end the pros simply over weight the cons.And the opinion will tilt towards "YEAH We NEED Bombers."
And another major advantage of bombers is inter-continental reach which ordinary multi-role fighters cant.
And a tid-bit is that no one can finish a war without losses ,unless he is waging the war against some primitive weapons holding nation.Even you develop an ultra stealth bomber, you may have to take a shot.But loosing a bomber is not a loss in the war.
Note:the whole thing above is considering that India still maintains the quality edge over china.If one just considers the quantity edge instead, then having a 1000 bombers wont bring victory.
