Why are airplanes so important in modern warfare? After all, they do not carry a lot of weapons with them and can be an easy target for missiles

Question

Why are airplanes so important in modern warfare? After all, they do not carry a lot of weapons with them and can be an easy target for missiles

In: Other

Answer 1

>they do not carry a lot of weapons with them

But they do carry a lot of weapons with them. For example, one F-15E can carry 23,000 pounds of weapons. A B-17 from World War II could carry less than 5,000 pounds. Plus, up until very recently, aircraft-delivered air-to-ground weapons were much more precise than artillery.