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Military Grounds Stealth Bomber Fleet
Ponca City, We Love You writes "America's entire B-2 stealth bomber fleet, which has played a crucial part in all major US conflicts since 1989, has been grounded after one of the jets crashed near a military base in Guam. The crash — the first involving the B-2 — was the most expensive single aircraft accident in history. (The planes cost $1.2B each.) Officials assume the crash was caused by either mechanical failure or human error, but have grounded all B-2s to ensure there is not some fundamental fault developing in the 21-strong fleet. The crash occurred Saturday morning local time as the B-2 was taking off from Andersen Air Force base on Guam, a US territory south of Japan. An Air Force spokesman said, 'The cause of crash is unknown, pending an investigation. The pilots had ejected safely — no serious injuries. One is mobile, one is still in the hospital under observation.'"
It has been my lifes ambition to be modded down on slashdot. Please mod this post to -1. Thankyou.
A stealth bomber crashes? Nobody saw that coming.
Maybe I'm being naive again, but what is the point of designing an untrackable aircraft and then telling the whole world its fleet status? Why is the B2 in the news at all? Or should I be reaching for a tinfoil hat?
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
A reasonable write up over at http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/02/b-2-crashes-on.html
Knowing "officials", we should be thankful they at least confirmed that the crash was caused by a collision with the ground.
>Not just overclocking, the latest drivers support SLI too.
Man, that hood ornament must really fuck up the radar cross section.
We can also rule out a frozen chicken up one of the intake ports.
Oh, so you manage to spend more than everybody else even _without_ fancy new bombers.
See how that doesnt help your argument one bit.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
The B-2 Bomber fleet is over twenty years old. Not the technology, but the entire fleet. We (congress) authorized the purchase and maintenance of these vehicles, but at some point they will need to be replaced. Now, not only that, but these planes fly 44 hour missions, the longest on record. There are only, now, 21 of these planes left. Just under 5% of the fleet was lost in this one crash. At some point they will either need to retire the existing fleet and put in a new order, or expect the fleet to fall off one by one just like this. Still, we don't know if this was pilot failure or structural, but when you loose that much capability in one crash...it makes you think.
Victory is gained, not in knowing your opponents next move, but in preempting them.
We can also rule out "Act of God," because we all know He's on our side.
It wasn't hit by falling bits off a classied satellite, was it?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
So who are these guys?
Sometimes I wonder how much it would cost to build some more B52s. It's an ancient aircraft, but it does the job.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
"which has played a crucial part in all major US conflicts since 1989"
This statement is incorrect by about ten years. The B-2 didn't make it's combat debut until 1999 during the Kosovo war.
It isn't as though this really changes anything. There aren't any nations that will go "Oh well with those aircraft gone we can certainly take the US! Their 12 carriers, hundreds of ICBMs and such aren't any worry at all!"
You also have to remember that the planes aren't being destroyed or anything, just taken out of operation until they do a review. In the event of an emergency, they could be put right back in service. Also, the B2 isn't untrackable, it is just very hard to see on radar. It isn't invisible or anything. Any nation with reasonable satellite intelligence can easily keep watch on the bases (or maybe just base, they used to only fly out of Whiteman, not sure if that's still true) where they fly from and tell when they leave.
The B2 is a stealth jet, and there certainly are some things about it that are classified, but it isn't as though it is some big secret anymore. You can go and see them at air shows and such. It generally isn't even secret what they are being used for. They are just high altitude bombers for whatever conflict the US happens to be in. They are only special in that they are extremely difficult to track on radar (and thus to get a missile to lock on) and that they have a truly world-wide range with refueling (and like a 6000 knot range even without).
In this case no one died, and the situation doesn't call for any immediate use of that plane so it's no big issue that the fleet is grounded.
It's also important to consider that much of the technology that is developed for military aircraft will find its way into civilian aircraft in one way or another. Fly-by-wire, composite materials, titanium details etc. are all a result from the military development. And if the accidents happens with military aircraft where there usually is an ejection seat available it also means that the risk of killing a lot of people is decreased. OK, the ejection seat can fail, it can eject at the wrong moment or the plane can crash into a bad position and kill people. But if a flaw with a design feature can be found on such an aircraft and not be put into the next generation of passenger super-aircraft it can mean a lot.
Of course it's bad that an expensive aircraft crashes, but it's still just money - and essentially the money is already paid and has already looped through the system a few times since. Leading edge tech is always expensive, but usually there are a lot of spinoffs coming through. Otherwise we would still be using artificial limbs using wood and hooks instead of carbon fiber structures, servo motors and computers for our handicapped. (OK, not everyone gets it but its coming through)
Then you may ask what the use there is for a B2 bomber in the end. It is useful in some cases, but the original intent spurned from the cold war is actually no longer there. It sure is a long way better at what it is designed for than the B52, but the B2 is a highly specialized craft while the B52 actually has found some other secondary uses too, which I suspect that the B2 will never achieve. And don't forget that the stealth aircraft business is always a developing part - which means that as soon as someone is able to spot the B2 as easy as a B52 then it will effectively be as obsolete as the B52 - or actually even worse. So in that case the B2 has to be replaced with something new. And I suspect that such work is already in progress regardless of what is said.
As for future military aircraft there is a high probability that they will be unmanned weapons carriers that gets updates from remote systems while still being able to function mostly autonomous. Such solutions will be cheaper per unit and still being able to pack a considerable punch. The disadvantage with such systems is that the picture sometimes changes by the minute in a battle and that means that they can end up doing the completely wrong thing. "Friendly fire - isn't". Of course - humans can also do that mistake so it's no real safeguard to have manned aircraft.
But in all - in today's world the use for heavy weapons is very limited since most conflicts of today are no longer on the scale of nations but reduced to conflicts within nations or even small groups as terrorists and using a bomber in such situations is like using a sledge to eradicate cockroaches in a kitchen. The collateral damage will be too great. And it doesn't matter how great an army you have if you don't have the information to use that army. Failure to get the correct intelligence about your enemy is just leading to overall failure.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
It cost $1.7bn to replace the space shuttle Challenger. http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/information/shuttle_faq.html#1
... if a stealth bomber crashes and nobody sees it does it make a sound?
It is 2.1 billion, not 1.2 billion according to what I read http://www.fas.org/man/gao/nsiad97181.htm/
Someone else pointed out that the marginal cost is lower, but the cost of starting up the production line again might even make it higher.
But if they only crash one ever 10 years, then we can probably hold out until the fully robitized versions designed and built in Bangladesh (or somewhere) get cheap...
I don't know... would a badger in the cockpit fall under "human error"?
Registered Linux User #449434
I love it when people complain how expensive something is. When you ONLY make 22 of something, factor in the R&D, and that is why the per copy version is so expensive. You think McDonald's double cheese burgers would be only $1 dollar if they sold only 20 per day? They sell thousands per day, bringing the per cost copy down. If they would TEACH economics properly in the United States, maybe asshats wouldn't comment on things they know nothing about. As once said by a GREAT statesman.... "It's not that liberals are wrong, it's that they know so much that isn't true"
Which is pretty comparable to commercial 4 engine passenger and cargo jets.
Oh -- that means it carries 20 tons at less than 5 gallons per ton-mile.
A 22 mpg pickup with 3/4 ton load is 29 gal/ton-mile.
A Prius at 45 mpg and an 500 lb load (4 pax) is 11 gal/ton-mile.
I don't think they make a Stealth Prius yet.
Pacifist paratroopers yell, "Ghandi!" when they jump.
Dear insane military-industrial complex,
We lost one of your ultra-secret, 1.2 billion dollar stealth planes on a routine mission in the Pacific. The nation was wondering if you would consider replacing this one for free. We've given you just about all the extra money we had saved up for years and years, and we've taken out serious loans to be able to pay for increasingly flamboyant and unnecessary toys. I'm only asking for this freebie because it is getting more and more difficult to convince people that we really need to be spending money on weapons like this when an insurgent army can bring us to our knees in the middle of Iraq. Plus, people are starting to wonder if 1.2 billion dollars would be better spent teaching more intelligence analysts how to speak Arabic, Urdu, and Pashto, and I really think that 1.2 billion would go a long way toward helping us really fight terrorism.
------ Tim O'Brien
...does the government dock your paycheck?
A Pedant writes: Challenger was a *space*craft - it didn't need air :)
The USSR was a big part of it.
You're blowing a lot of liberal fuses here. Massive violence, unleashed on largely civilians, by the US, for a prolonged period of time, with massive casualties on the US side (not nearly as massive as on the enemy's side, but massive nonetheless).
...)
And this was a good thing. In fact it wasn't just good, in fact 64 years later people (those civilians that were targeted) are still holding relatively massive ceremonies for thanking the US of unleashing said violence on, again, largely on them.
Because, as bad as the US was in WWII, it was a lot better than the other guys.
Just like every other war. The US soldiers were no angels. Nobody's really claiming that. But every conflict they were a hell of a lot better than the guys they killed, and every retreat by the US military was immediately followed by genocide (e.g. Vietnam, Korea, Gulf War I,
Today, liberals claim the opposite. They're "postmodern". Every ideology is equally good. Islamic ideology is equally good as american. In practice, that means blowing up your neighbour by kidnapping a mentally ill girl and strapping a remotely-controlled bomb to her, because you disagree with him not stoning his daughter to death for looking at a boy, is equally good as bringing down saddam.
Constant genocides was how Saddam came to power, and how he stayed in power. Of course fighting against an army that commits genocide as a matter of policy is morally reprehensible, right ? Well that's how democrats view things.
That's liberal (liberal as in the democrats ideology) ideology for you. Obviously it's wrong. That's why their "every ideology is equally true" mantra has to be defended by constant violence obviously.
You are dating your understanding of history - calling into question your credibility. As a matter of fact, Canada's navy at the time boasted one of the largest fleets in the world, behind only America and the UK. By the end of WWII the RCN had exercised dominance over the northwest Atlantic.
A classic sign of a declining empire is a massive surge in military spending. During the rise of an empire, many countries will voluntarily join the empire because it is in their own economic interest to do so. As the empire ages, satisfaction with the empire in outlying states begins to decline. The dominant power makes increasing economic demands on these outlying states, while providing decreasing benefits to them. In order to quell the dissatisfaction, the dominant power needs to use increasing amounts of force to preserve imperial power. The increased military spending becomes a huge economic burden for the dominant power, which in turn further increases the economic demands on the outlying states. This becomes a vicious circle of surging dissatisfaction in the empire, and surging military spending. It ends when the economy of the dominant power can no longer sustain the large military. The outlying states fall away to form other alliances, and the former imperial power becomes "just another country".
History has shown this to be true. The Roman Empire collapsed partly because its outlying states rebelled against a huge economic burden. The Spanish Empire collapsed after building a huge armada of ships, only to see the fleet destroyed by an upstart Britain. The British Empire collapsed, as outlying states fell away, despite its huge military power. The Soviet Empire collapsed under the burden of massive military spending. I believe that something similar is happening to America.
Many of America's client states are rebelling against the economic burdens placed upon them. A clear example of this is seen in South America, where several countries (Venezuela included) are acting in contravention to America's economic wishes. One can arguably say that the Islamic insurgency in the Middle East is also a symptom of dissatisfaction by outlying states in the Empire. As the American dollar has declined recently, other currencies, such as the Euro are displacing the US dollar is the currency of choice for international trade. Furthermore, the American economy is in deep trouble, largely because it has borrowed hundreds of billions of dollars to build expensive weapon systems (and also to build too many unproductive but expensive toys such as big screen TV's).
I don't want this decline to happen because I am a part of this empire, but make no mistake: it is happening. Our only hope in this is that America will fade peacefully, like Britain, to become "just another country".
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
The B-2 has an internal crew of 2. That's ignoring all of the ground crew, like Air Traffic Control and mechanics. The real size of the B-2 crew is considerably greater than 2.
Apart from the 'badger in the cockpit' scenario, yes, I can think of many other ways for planes to theoretically potentially crash, some of which are quite obvious: sabotage or bomb on board, being shot down, deliberately (e.g. kamikaze/suicide/treason etc. of pilot), in-air accident/collision, hit by meteorite, etc. etc.
Bzzzzt. Wrong. Thank you for playing.
F-18 (fighter)
EA-6 (Electronic warfare)
AV-8 (Attack/Fighter)
S-3 Viking (ASW)
Now, before you go all "the Harrier is a Marine Corps aircraft" on me, the Harrier is deployed on U.S. Navy commanded assets like the Bonney Dick, and the Corps is part of the DON.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
I'll get modded down for this one, as it is Slashdot, but here goes:
Many of America's client states are rebelling against the economic burdens placed upon them. A clear example of this is seen in South America, where several countries (Venezuela included) are acting in contravention to America's economic wishes.
Which explains why the U.S. and Peru just struck a free trade agreement and why the U.S. already has a free trade agreement with, pound for pound, what is arguably the most powerful and stable economy in South America - Chile.
Oh, but Chavez. He makes a lot of angry speeches against the U.S.! He MUST hate us! He must just be screwing us and cutting us out!
Try again. Venezuela's main export partner - still by massive, massive margins (46% in 2006, according to the CIA world factbook) is the U.S. He still sends vast majorities of his oil to the U.S. Economically speaking, he's lining up just fine. Security wise, he's causing a few issues with neighboring countries that we would like him to stop, but as far as his massive oil industry - which is the only real engine his economy has - massive amounts of it are coming here, and there's little reason for him to change that.
Also of note, according to CIA World Factbook figures from 2006: Brazil imports almost twice as much from the U.S. as it does Argentina and exports twice as much to the U.S. as well.
Furthermore, the American economy is in deep trouble, largely because it has borrowed hundreds of billions of dollars to build expensive weapon systems (and also to build too many unproductive but expensive toys such as big screen TV's).
Oh please. The American economy has stalled a bit, but we're not even at the point of a classic recession (failure to increase GDP).
The economic system you are discussing is referred to generally as "neo-Marxism", with its focus on large states ruining the outlying countries for their wealth in an evil capitalistic world. What neo-Marxists never came to realize is that the world is not a zero sum game - and that rhetoric rarely translates into cold hard cash.
Now, what the U.S. likely is experiencing is more akin to hegemonic diffusion. The U.S. is, pretty much, an undisputed world Hegemon at this time. However, to maintain this hegemony, it must maintain trade (using its own resources) and trade a great deal with other countries, slowly diffusing its wealth to others. The great examples of this at the moment would be China and perhaps India. China is building a massive military based on income largely from U.S. trade, for example. China improves quickly, and the U.S. finds it increasingly difficult to maintain its relative position. The big question is whether this will switch to a bi-polar world (U.S./China), remain a uni-polar world (U.S., possibly China) or become multi-polar in the end.
Those types of comparisons are kind of silly. Consider that a lot of countries don't even pay their soldiers other than room and board. Ah, your link provides some info about that: the US military budget includes $110.8 billion to pay salaries (and college tuitions I would guess). Your selective quote also conveniently neglected to paste the line before your quote which says that comparison, "... is not adjusted for purchasing power parity." In other words, the same item both militaries have to buy might actually cost 8 times more in the USA vs China.
I don't dispute that america spends a lot on military, but the way people like to exaggerate and bias to make it seem more than it really is is annoying. My ex-gf used to ignorantly claim the *majority* of US government spending is military thanks to her believing disingenuous people misleading folks with selective stats and the like.
The Democratic party wants to get out of Iraq because, well, we WON. Saddam is out of power. His constant genocides stopped. He is no longer training terrorists -- in fact, the only terrorists in Iraq are a hell of a lot closer to the patriots of the American Revolution than the dimwitted asshats who attacked in 2001.
Those who say we never should have gotten into Iraq don't say it because they feel that somehow it was a morally bad thing. It was a tactically bad thing -- with Iraq neutralized, Iran is now unchecked in the region. We should have stayed in Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan, and finished what we started. And if we HAD to invade Iraq, we should have gone in and handled it a hell of a lot better than we did. (Did you know that there were still Nazis running Germany immediately after WWII?)
The only thing morally reprehensible here is the lies that the right-wing neo-facists constantly spread about what Democrats believe. It's as if they can't come up with a simple argument about why they're right and the other guy is wrong, without misrepresenting what the other guy is saying. No, wait... that's exactly it.
In parting:
1: Democrats began nearly every just war we've ever fought. And more than a few of the unjust ones. If you wanted to split the political parties to simple terms, the Democrats think the military is a tool to be used. The Republicans feel that the military is a good end unto itself. (Both are oversimplifcations.)
2: Interesting how you're ignoring things like WWI, or the Indian Wars, or the Civil War, or the War of 1812, or the American Revolution. Sometimes we fight an army with no moral compass. Other times we do. It happens. (And the only post-American withdrawl "genocide" I recall was in Iraq, when we didn't follow through like we said we would. Korea and Vietnam were, well, war, followed by run of the mill starvation.)
I don't know who *you* think was primarily responsible for the Allied victories during WWII, but I'm quite sure it would be entertaining to hear. The French, perhaps? Maybe the mighty Canadian forces?
That would be the USSR.
The US played a secondary role in WWII.
You make some good points, but I don't entirely agree with you.
I disagree. I am not discussing a "neo-Marxist" system. The simple fact is that American client states send America resources, and America sends them back other resources in trade. If the client state is sending America goods in return for a pittance, then this situation is in America's favor. This imbalance in the trade of goods is highly comparable to the situations in previous empires. It doesn't matter whether the trade takes place in the context of a free market system between private corporations, or within the confines of a neo-Marxist empire. You still have a dominant power receiving a huge amount of goods without having to give much back in return. That for me is at the heart of what it means to be an empire.
I didn't say that Venezuela had stopped trading with America. What I said was that Venezuela was not acting according to the economic wishes of America. They have expropriated oil producing properties from American oil companies, including Exxon Mobile. They are keeping a larger amount of the proceeds of selling oil in the country, and they are redistributing those resources. They are also selling oil in currencies other than the US dollar, which is a huge blow to America's economic power. The moves in South America against the US are largely moves to demand more from America in compensation for the goods they ship to the US. And although there are still some US friendly governments in South America, opposition is growing.
We'll see. However, let's look at some of the facts. Firstly, if America is such an economic juggernaut, then why is it such a huge net borrower? One would think that such an economic superpower would be a net lender. And it might not be such a problem if that money was loaned out to finance increased production, to finance the building of factories and infrastructure. But instead, much of that money has been spent on unproductive consumption of disposable consumer goods, or indirectly on outrageously expensive weapons systems. The only redeeming factor of the American debt is that it is in American dollars, and will thus shrink as the dollar loses value. The simple fact is that the American manufacturing sector has been hollowed out, as evidenced by their shockingly large trade deficits. Close to 70% of the American economy is based on consumer spending.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
I would mod you down, because your comment doesn't have any logic or basis, but unfortunately I'm out of mod points.
Take for instance your comment on Chile (Most powerful nation in South America? Is this a joke?). You gotta be kidding. You are just taking facts out of your ass and making a pretty weak hypothesis on how US is becoming a Mercantilism hegemony. If you had some understanding on how economics work you would know that US of Amrica doesn't need to strike ridiculous commercial agreements to survive such as it is today. What is needs is a reform from the inside, and from there everything will just fall into place.
Let's be fair here: it's not exactly fair to compare the US military budget with the needs of defending the US alone, since we have many obligations to other countries. Japan, for instance, only has a small "Self-Defense Force", and depends on the U.S. to defend it from attack. A lot of the peace and prosperity of east Asia stems from our obligation to protect Japan--if Japan were to re-arm, it would endanger their relations with South Korea and China, severely hurting trade. Likewise, our presence in South Korea saves them from having to get into an arms race with the North.
Then there's Europe. Europe isn't in such a precarious position anymore, and we could probably withdraw our troops, but in order to get the same level of protection the European countries would have to spend more on their militaries. There's also the fact that, even if we did withdraw, NATO still obligates us to intervene should any of those countries be attacked. Iceland is a special case--they don't even have a military, just a permanently stationed detachment of the American military to protect them. Part of this is due to the strategic importance of securing the G-I-UK (Greenland-Iceland-UK) gap in the north Atlantic.
As for the Americas, Canada is part of NATO, and anyone who wanted to invade or attack the Western Hemisphere would be a threat to us, although there's the occasional allowance for very close allies like the UK. This is the original intent of the Monroe Doctrine--Monroe intended it as a mandate to protect the Americas from foreign intervention, although it was later abused by Roosevelt to justify US intervention.
By treaty or by necessity, we are obligated to protect not only ourselves, but also most of Europe, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the entire Americas. I would certainly expect that defending that much territory would require more money than the rest of the world's military budget put together.
The sad part is, most of that budget is pork. When the chips were down, defeating and pacifying Iraq took most of what we could deploy. Now, defeating and pacifying Iraq in the first place was a horribly bad idea to begin with, but the point remains--despite the spending, US military effectiveness is a lot less than we bargained for, and a lot less than anyone would expect looking at the numbers.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
While having previously engaged in the Hundred Years War with France, Britain was still a very minor power in Europe during the late 1500s. The major forces were aligned with the Mediterranean. Spain in particular was the dominant power in Europe, and would be for many many years to come, even after the Armada was defeated. To be honest, the British didn't defeat the Armada, it was "defeated" by a nickel-and-dime accumulation of circumstance. Anyway, the British Empire is still ~200 years (take or leave a few decades) away. Spain didn't collapse because of the expense of the Armada - it was funded in great part by the Papal States. However, there is a shift of CULTURAL focus during this period; England perceives herself as ascendant and looks at Spain as a decadent power waiting to fall. King Philip had vaunted his claims; He had sworn for a year he would sack us, With an army of heathenish names He was coming to fagot and stack us; Like the thieves of the sea he would track us, And scatter our ships on the main; But we had bold Neptune to back us and where are the galleons of Spain?
To be fair, Arleigh Burke destroyers and Virgina (or Los Angeles) subs also have support crews much larger than their actual onboard crews.
Wow... where to begin? First, the most ridiculous point. The US didn't even come close to genocide during WWII. Wiping out a couple of cities != a campaign to kill every living person of Japanese ancestry. The Nazis were indeed trying to wipe out every living Jew, Gypsy and what have you. It's not the same thing. The whole point to dropping nukes on Japan was to shorten that war and avoid an invasion of the Japanese mainland - which would probably have cost more American lives than the bombs dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki cost in Japanese lives. It worked, and worked well. As for the "secret economic imperialism" bit, yeah, we've meddled in the affairs of other countries, ever since we got big enough and economically powerful enough to do so. It's what big, economically powerful countries do. Take a look at history... Britain, Spain, Portugal, Russia, France, Germany, Rome, Egypt, name a major world power throughout history and you'll be naming a country that has exerted influence, economic and otherwise, to its own benefit. You seem to think that this is a bad thing in every case, and that those poor little downtrodden folk in such would-be Utopian places like Vietnam, Nicaragua and Venezuela would be just fine if left to their own devices. OK, yeah, right. Left to their own devices, most of those places would (and many have) descended into hellish shitholes that the rest of the world would then be pissing and moaning that the US won't help to clean up.
The USA did not give any aid to the other allies, they mostly made loans to to them so the could buy stuff from American companies. After Japan attacked perl harbour then they sent the army.
Without the USA the allies would probably have lost, that is obvious. England would not have turned back the German attack without all the food, supplies and money the USA sold and loaned. Loan with interest from private banks, who also financed the nazi before , and some even after, the USA entered the war. I think the last payment from England has been made just a few years ago. But the USA surely did not win the war by itself.
The F-4 Phantom went into production in 1960, ended in 1981, but the "Wild Weasel" variant was used even in the Gulf War. That's over 35 years, the longest of US jet aircraft.
The B-52 will reach 53 years of operational service this June. This type has flown since the avionics used vacuum tubes. It is expected to remain in service until 2040!