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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In the US arsenal, the aircraft with the heaviest armor is the A-10. It has a Titanium tub to protect the cockpit, its engines are outside of the fuselage to prevent them from destroying it if compromised, it has significant redundancy, and has safely landed with a large portion of the aircraft damaged. By comparison, a fighter like an F-35 or F-16 can be taken down by hitting a single bird. The B-52 has redundancy in its 8 engines, back-up systems, and multiple engines can literally fall off and the aircraft can land safely. B-1 and B-2 aircraft do not have these resilient features. No bombers have special armor.
The aircraft mentioned are post-WWII. In WWII self-sealing fuel tanks allowed the success of bombers and fighters alike. Gunners on bombers allowed them to be formidable, but the small amount of armor left crews more vulnerable than if the aircraft were maneuverable like a fighter. As a result, bomber aircrew members from the 8th Air Force alone accounted for half the U.S. Army Air Core KIA from all of WWII.
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