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US Military Working On 'Optionally-Manned' Bomber

Posted by Soulskill on from the contract-paid-by-skynet dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Despite massive budget deficits, the U.S. military is working towards a stealthy and 'optionally-manned' bomber capable of carrying nuclear weapons. The craft is intended to replace the 1960s B-52, 1970s B-1 and 1990s B-2 bombers. The new aircraft is meant to be a big part of the U.S. 'pivot' to the Pacific. With China sporting anti-ship weapons that could sink U.S. carriers from a distance, a new bomber is now a top priority."

10 of 278 comments (clear)

  1. Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove? by JoeMerchant · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So, more crew than a cruise missile? Multiple targets like a MIRV, ability to recall, and no (pilot/crew) lives at risk... what's not to like?

    1. Re:Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove? by Sir_Sri · · Score: 5, Insightful

      to deal with a PRC attack on Taiwan you will wake up in the morning and find a hammer and sickle hanging over taipei, and have to decide if you want to launch an invasion to liberate them from the phillipines or Japan, and if so how in the hell you're going to pull that off with china in control of the whole area at sea.

      Unmaned drones are all well and good against enemies who's greatest weapon is a 20 year old shoulder mounted anti aircraft missile you sold them, or a state that has no real interest in putting up a fight, with soldiers who don't want to die for the dipshit in charge. China is none of those things. You will run out of missiles long before china runs out of things worth bombing, and they aren't going to fuck around without electronic warfare capabilities. If they decide to take taiwan by force you're going to be scrambling to source electronic components, because they will control the sea around taiwan, shipping around korea will be treacherous at best, and the same could be said of most of japan and thailand, and it suddenly looks much harder to run a high tech war without reliable access to most of those goods. Possible, but difficult.

      not that rail guns are all that much more use. On a good day they're about 100Km range, and you can't get much more than that without assistance (rocket powered) simply because the air has too much of an impact beyond that point (friction, drag, random wind orientation in the intervening space etc.). I suppose if you had a ring around taiwan of rail guns it would give coverage over half the straights with china, but still, going in the other way a good missile will knock a ship out of commission for months at much longer range. Rail guns might be cost effective, but it remains to be seen if the cost savings is worth the tradeoff. It's basically like a new version of a battleship with triple the range, but still against missiles and aircraft carriers with ranges 5x the base, so I'm not sure it gets enough to be a deciding factor.

    2. Re:Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove? by Sir_Sri · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Eliminating chinese control and knowledge that close to its own coast isn't feasible. This isn't libya, which is a very sparse country of only about 6 million people, or Iraq, which was softened up for 12 years.

  2. No one see's a problem with this? by Coldeagle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Drones I can understand, they're primarily detailed to doing surveillance or limited to small munitions, but now we're talking about a full bomber that could be remote controlled? Seriously? There's nothing that can't be hacked! If it's controllable by something outside of the craft itself, it is vulnerable to hacking! Oh let's give enemies the opportunity to hack our BOMBERS, with a Nuclear option no less!

    1. Re:No one see's a problem with this? by Minwee · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This is why the episode of BSG where they didn't want to network the systems together because of the Cylons hacking in remotely is so laughable

      It's a little less laughable when you consider that the Cylons owned most of the electronics manufacturing business on the twelve colonies.

      (it would take a single firewall rule in that case... deny all incoming traffic)

      That's a nice thought, but it doesn't help when your firewall switches to "allow all" once it sees the right magic packet. Which is exactly what happened in the pilot episode.

      there's consumer grade encryption available that far exceeds the capability of the most advanced military computers to crack within a practical amount of time

      There sure is. But all it takes is one little "mistake" to turn it from unbreakable into child's play.

      Imagine a world where one company in, say, China makes more than half of the world's consumer electronics, including parts used for high security applications. In such a world it would be easy to see why people lie awake at night dreaming of Ken Thompson style hacks.

    2. Re:No one see's a problem with this? by Jonner · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Oh and one more thing, think about this folks...the PS3 was hacked by a bunch of talented guys doing it in their FREE TIME . Imagine what they could have done if they were paid to hack into something like a remote control bomber as a full time job!?!

      You need to be careful when using a term with such diverse meanings as "hack." The "hacking" of the PS3 you refer to is some people gaining control over their own machines in their possession. Normally, we refer to this as "using" the machine. The fact that the gaining full control over one's own property is now a challenge and considered remarkable is a sad thing indeed.

      Gaining control over a remote machine flying through the air at hundreds of miles an hour thousands of feet in the air is a totally different prospect. The USAF has the ability to employ multiple hardware as well as software security measures. They can communicate with their machines via narrow beams transmitted from satellites. On the software side, cryptographic security can actually work when the secret keys remain secret, something which is impossible to guarantee when the attacker has access to the hardware.

  3. Autonomous killing machines by girlintraining · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I see another layer of avoiding responsibility for casualties emerging here. Ignoring the technology's effectiveness or benefits, the industrial-military complex has never been good at taking responsibility.

    They were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
    They were depriving us of their valuable resources.
    Those people were [insert hate group here].
    They allowed themselves to be used as human shields.
    Sometimes you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette.

    I envision that in the future, innocent people will be killed and new excuses will be created and they will say it was because their biometrics matched that of the target, or that there was an error in the targeting system, or that they made a hostile gesture at the killing machine that was 'innocently' going about it's business above his house. But never do I expect to see them come straight out and say "We screwed up. Sorry."

    No matter how great the technology is, what I want to here isn't about how efficient it is, but how human the people pushing the buttons are. If someone is hurt or killed that wasn't supposed to be, will they admit it? Will they compensate the victim? The families? The rest of the community that was deprived of the loss? Until that happens, all that this new technology will mean is more creative ways for bureuacracy to avoid responsibility, which is, afterall, its primary function.

    If war was no more complicated than two societies who couldn't resolve their differences each sending a certain number of soldiers to be incinerated in some machine located on an island, and the country with the biggest number won, then I suspect war would be a lot less common. All these layers of technology and rationalization takes away from the fact that is all war is. Technology just means we have to sacrifice fewer to the machine than the other team does.

    --
    #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
  4. Re:first bomb by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A nifty graphic on the federal budget While defense is high, healthcare and social security both outstrip it and interest on the national debt is gaining ground rapidly. Not to say we can't reduce defense as well, but it's not the only bogeyman in the budget, and it's not the one with a rapidly increasing share of the budget either.

    As for the grandparent's assertion about Iraq, total spending in the total war on terror is estimated (on the high side) at about $4T. The deficit has increased by the same amount since Obama was elected. So is it the sense of /. that Obama is as big a disaster as the Iraq war? If you want to blame Bush, just remember the Democratic majority in congress for two years prior to Obama's election that passed those spending authorizations up to and including all Obama spending. Many of those same people voted to go to war in Iraq.

    Now go worship your Obama god having completely ignored any of the accepted facts above.

  5. Transition aircraft by Animats · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The "optionally manned" bomber sounds like one of those transition craft that appears as a new technology is replacing an old one. A classic example were steamships of the 19th century. Various combinations of paddle wheels, screws, and sails were tried. None of the hybrids were very successful.

    In bombers, the classic example is the B-36, with four jet engines and six propeller engines. The B-36 was a stopgap measure until the all-jet bombers were ready, and was quickly replaced by the B-47 and B-52.

  6. Re:first bomb by Flyerman · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Wasn't a lot of war time spending actually kept off the books? Wouldn't it make sense that you'd collect less taxes during a recession?

    If you want to blame Obama, remember that Bush had 4 years with a Republican Majority in both houses with which to balance the budget.