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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.'"
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."
We can also rule out "Act of God," because we all know He's on our side.
So who are these guys?
It cost $1.7bn to replace the space shuttle Challenger. http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/information/shuttle_faq.html#1
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.
"The Spanish Empire collapsed after building a huge armada of ships, only to see the fleet destroyed by an upstart Britain."
Do you just make this stuff up as you go along? If you're referring to the battle of the Spanish Armada in 1588, you should read Garett Mattingly's Pulitzer-prize winning "The Armada". You'd discover that (1)England was not an "upstart," and its fleet was roughly as powerful (probably more powerful) than the Spanish fleet; (2)It was an English fleet, not a British fleet (and yes, there was a real difference then), (3)The English fleet did not "destroy" the Spanish fleet, and, most important, (4)The defeat of the Armada marked the beginning, not the end, of Spain's strongest navy, and the Spanish empire *grew* in strength following that defeat; it did not "collapse."
Most of your other comments were similarly simplistic or just outright wrong. If you want to make sweeping historical statements it might help if you actually studied some history first.
It is as bad as I think because I've worked on all three bombers. The B-52 is robust much in the way an old pick-up truck is, things work because they're old school electronics. The only problem is that they're just like working on an old truck. If you need a replacement part alot of the time it meens a trip to the junk yard. I also got real sick real quick trying to trace down wiring problems on 50 year old wire bundles that are not necessarily wired the same on every aircraft. Of course while the newer digital aircraft are easier to fix, they can be nightmares when things don't show up on the diagnostics or don't hard break but fail erratically. That'll even have the engineers scraching their heads. Space wise I've only run into a few times where things were too cramped to work on. Typically of things that I'm sure some dumb ass design engineer said "They'll never need to get to that the plane is only going to be used for 20 years then replaced" Even the "brand new" B2 is over twenty years old
To say the B-52 has extra space is an understatement since most electronics these days are hundreth the size they were in the sixties, but again most of the Buff's problems are not lack of space or the inability to be upgraded, it's just the simple fact they are freakin ancient.
With the new weapon systems & munitions you don't need a specialized military aircraft to deliver them anymore. You just need something reliable that has a long endurance and can fly high.
My ideal B-52 replacement would be a B-747-8, (New Boeing 747 model coming out out). It's a well vetted design, with commonly available off the shelf commercial parts. It could carry 105,000lbs of cargo (bombs) and a full load of fuel with an 8000 mile range. For those keeping count that's 210 Mk 82 bombs compared to the B-52's 51. Park two or three of those in a race track pattern at high altitude along with two extra flight crews each and you could keep them up there 24/7. Throw in a little air refueling and they'd stay on station until either they ran out of bombs or out of hot pockets and little debbies, which ever comes first.