What the proposed Buccaneer S.3 payload buys

How much more useful would the proposed Buccaneer S.3 be with an 18,000-pound external payload?

The extra 6,000 pounds would make it a substantially better bomb truck, adding three 2,000-pound or six 1,000-pound weapons beyond the S.2's external load.

The answer makes the design change concrete by converting payload into weapons carried rather than leaving it as an abstract number. Combined with the internal bay, the proposed S.3 could deliver a much heavier conventional strike package. That added flexibility is valuable even without changing the aircraft's basic mission.