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America's Next Bomber: Unmanned, Unlimited Range, Aimed At China
An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. military is developing its next generation bomber with Chinese anti-access strategy — the ability to stop any enemy force from coming to fight with things like carrier killer missiles — in mind. The new bomber will replace older platforms like the 1950's B-52, the 1970's B-1, and 1990's B-2 stealth bomber. The new bomber will sport some unique qualities. It will have an option to be unmanned, will act similar to a UAV, have better stealth capabilities, will be connected to U.S. intelligence networks to create a 'smart' battlefield environment, and have near unlimited range thanks to in-air refueling."
"The U.S. military is developing its next generation bomber with Chinese anti-access strategy"
That can only be achieved if there's ZERO electronic components made in China in the aircraft....Good luck with that.
Nov 2011 Article: US weapons 'full of fake Chinese parts'
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8876656/US-weapons-full-of-fake-Chinese-parts.html
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
It's how you sell new weapons systems. This one's all about threatening China because it's hard to talk up the usefulness of $500m+ bombers against insurgencies.
I'm not involved in the bomber project they're talking about here, but I noticed that it looks almost exactly like the drone Boeing was fiddling with... just scaled up.
I wouldn't be surprised if this is basically a way to salvage (at least on a ledger somewhere) a huge amount of R&D costs sunk on a machine that never got bought up.
Ayup. We collapsed the USSR by forcing them to compete with our military spending, and now we're letting guerrillas "force" us to spend money we haven't got on our military.
Bin Laden was a bastard, but you have to admire a professionally done job.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Wrong. No one uses uranium to make weapons. No one. Uranium can only be used in gun-type designs which are 1) inherently unsafe and 2) extremely inefficient. When India and Pakistan developed nukes, they were full Teller-Ulam designs. If you think Iran would waste perfectly good uranium in a weapon, you're wrong. They wouldn't. They would use that uranium to breed Plutonium-239 and use *that* in a weapon. Uranium is very common, but not common enough to waste it in weapons when you can create vast amounts of Pu-239 with it.
Meanwhile, yes, the world's medical isotope supply is VERY DEPENDENT upon HEU targets. LEU is very inefficient, doesn't work for shit. So-called "anti proliferation" efforts have resulted in a near inability to generate medical isotopes to the point where if a reactor goes offline people die. And there are only FOUR REACTORS in the entire world producing medical isotopes. All are past their lifespan and running when a power-generating reactor wouldn't be allowed to. Every year they save more lives than nuclear weapons and accidents have ever killed.
I hope one of those four reactors doesn't go down when you or your family require cancer treatment or diagnostic imaging. Not like moly cows last too long.
"Well yes, we'd love to give you the best treatment for your rapidly growing cancer we can and find out where it is in your body with some nice Tc-99m, but well, a reactor went offline and due to political lobbying by anti-nuclear activists and the US state department, it will be at least 25 years until a replacement can be built. Although one probably never will be. But the chapel is down the hall and to the left..."
The truth is that this will really be aimed at China and North Korea because their locations make it really hard for the US to project any force in the region. The Middle East isn't a problem because we can base our weapons in friendly nations, and Russia isn't a problem because we have Poland and Turkey and those countries. The China/NK problem will only get worse as these countries develop anti-access weapons such as rockets and ballistic missiles. In China's case, the J-20 stealth fighter is probably going to be a strike fighter that is stealth only from the front; if you have a base nearby, China will flood your defenses with J-20s, then bomb it to pieces.
The new generation of bombers will be stealth enough to penetrate deep into enemy territory, big enough to carry munitions that can destroy bunkers (which cruise missiles can't do), and can be unmanned so they can be made cheaper and deployed more readily than the B-2.
Right now, the B-2 only has a two-man crew. Even if you refuel all the time, eventually the crew gets tired and has to sleep and the mission has to end. But with a drone, you can conceivably have the mission go on indefinitely if you can figure out how to refuel in flight. You can have extended loiter capabilities in enemy territory, which can be killer. The first wave of stealth goes in and bombs the known enemy air defenses. They carry bombs in reserve and loiter. The second wave comes in and when anyone opens their radar, the loiter drones pop them from behind. You can get pretty creative when you can fly a drone for days in a row.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/