Because I frequently look up military aircraft a lot on Wikipedia, and time and time again, I keep hearing how bombers are slower and less maneuverable than either fighters, attackers, or multirole aircraft. So does that mean that bombers are more heavily armored than the other three types of military aircraft? If not, and armor just weighs down *any* plane, why are bombers the largest, slowest, and leave maneuverable of the military aircraft, anyway?
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The answer obviously depends on the country, doctrine, time period and exact definitions. These days, “bombers” don’t really exist anymore, so I’ll focus on WWII, as that’s the period where these things were really starting to get defined.
There were certainly heavily armed and armored bomber craft, probably most famously, the US’ B-17 “[Flying Fortress](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-17_Flying_Fortress)”. There were other heavy bomber designs like this, which featured either heavy armor, heavy armament or both. But ultimately, that’s not what defined a “bomber”. The defining characteristic was the ability to carry a lot of bombs or one very big bomb.
There were bombers that were made to just fly higher than fighters could reach, there were bombers that were just fairly fast, there were close-air support bombers which could do some dog fighting as well, if it came down to it and there were poorly armored, non-armed bombers which relied entirely on escorts. In other words, just about any design you can think of has been tried at some point.
The reason they’re so large mostly comes down to the fact that they a) carry very heavy bombs and b) often have to travel very large distances. In other words, they carry a lot of boom and a lot of fuel. This requires a lot of room to store those payloads, as well as large wings to lift it. Additionally, large engines to propel the heavy weight.
Having said that, there were also some extraordinarily maneuverable “bombers”, in the form of fighters that got small bombs strapped on them. Which happened to far too many designs to list here, but one notable mention would the Japanese Zero, which was an exceptionally maneuverable aircraft and could still carry a decent boom. Nothing you’d call “bomber”, but enough to ruin someone’s day.
Long story short, it basically comes down to the rocket equation. In other words, if you want to transport a heavy thing, you need to take more fuel, which is heavy as well, so you need more fuel to carry the fuel and so on and so forth. Ultimately, if you wanna fly a big chunk of metal, you need a big plane.
In Modern times? No. They simply avoid engagements by operating too high, too fast, or too stealthily to be detected.
They are the largest, slowest, and least maneuverable because, you know, of all the bombs.
WW2 bombers used to have a lot heavier armor, modern planes that bomb at high level rely on speed and stealth rather than protection, ground attack aircraft or multirole aircraft tend to be more heavily protected with the warthog A-10 Thunderbolt II being at the high end of the protection scale. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Republic_A-10_Thunderbolt_II
No aircraft really has a ton of armor. Which is why bullets can take them down. Even turning World War II bombers were shot down all the time by enemy aircraft with only bullets (no missiles yet). Some of them have some additional armor around the crew areas.
What makes them have different qualities is what they are used for.
Fighters and Multi-Role aircraft are designed to be fast and maneuverable.
Bombers are also designed to carry a lot of ordinance, and in order to do that, are usually much larger. We do have smaller bombers (like the B2) but other bombers are bigger.
The F35A is 51 feet in length, and has a maximum takeoff weight of 70k pounds.
The B52 is 159 feet in length, and has a maximum takeoff weight of 488k pounds.
The B52 can carry 70k poundsd of bombs. As much weight as the total F35A.
That’s what makes them slower.
This should answer your question and is also (imo) very interesting.
https://worldwarwings.com/the-statistics-that-kept-countless-allied-fighter-planes-in-the-sky/
Armor is useful only if you are shot at.
Generally, light armor was used only on fighters between 1940-1945. Sometimes on few bombers with no success (makes slower and heavier an already heavy slow plane, making it a poorly armored sitting duck) Then missile era started and armor became useless. The only armor you see nowadays is on planes which only role is close to ground air support, where basically you want to avoid a lucky shot from a ground general purpose machine gun to cripple the plane or pilot.
Bombers can’t be faster or fly higher than interceptors, because they carry bombs. If you can get that fast and that high with bombs, so does an interceptor which has no bombs. There’s no way to escape.
So bombers always relied on escort or stealth. Stealth can be anything from weather (night, clouds) to very low flying to avoid radars, to very high flight to gain time onto your interceptor (did work for very few years) to actual radar stealth.
There was a brief time where bombers had defensive armament, which had the main purpose to force the attacher to shoot from further away, for less time and needing more effort in maneuvering. On defense, you don’t need to win the fight, you need to dissuade the attacker, or inconvenience it, or make it pay a cost.
Bombs are large and heavy. WW2 bombers also had more armor than fighters. They also usually want them to have a long range, and fuel is heavy too.
In general, the power-to-weight ratio of a plane is going to be worse if you’re trying to carry a bunch of heavy crap around. There are practical limits to how large you can make an airplane and still have it usable at regular airfields, which limits how much power the engines can generate. And the longer the range, the more fuel you have to carry, which means the plane will be even heavier near the start of the flight. The structure of the plane also has to be stronger (and usually that means heavier) to carry more weight.
Conceptually it’s the same reason why a big cargo truck/van is slower and less maneuverable than a compact passenger car.
Modern planes rely on redundant systems, sacrificial placement of lesser systems, and targeted armoring. For example the control lines are duplicated and don’t run next to each other (redundancy). Radio placed outside flight computer to give the computer higher chances (sacrificial placement). Ceramic armor plates just below and around air crew in cargo planes and helos. In this photo you can see the armor around the seat https://images.app.goo.gl/7DVYbcakUicwJxzE7
Armor is mostly determined by how low and slow they operate. If it’s expected to be subject to small arms fire, like say an A-10 or an Apache, it will have more armor and air frame redundancy than other craft.
Any armor that would help against most surface to air or air to air fire isn’t getting into the air, it’s just too heavy, so it’s not worth much to armor high, fast or stealthy aircraft. At most they may have a cockpit tub to try and deflect shrapnel while the pilot(s) eject if the plane comes apart and maybe something basic like self sealing fuel tanks and some redundant controls.
The B-52 could carry 70,000 lbs in armaments and had enough fuel to fly 14,000km (about 1/3 the earth’s circumferance.
Big and heavy. Check out [this photo](https://www.businessinsider.com/heres-how-many-bombs-a-b-52-can-haul-2015-6) of the complete loadout of a B52.
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