Slashdot Mirror
Pentagon Picks Northrop Grumman For Next Gen Bomber (theatlantic.com)
retroworks writes: The B-52s currently in use have been flown by three generations of American Air Force pilots. B1s and B-2 Bombers are also long in the tooth. The Pentagon has been looking for a new model to replace them, and Northrop Grumman has won for the next half-century with a major new order for state-of-the-art bomber aircraft. The bomber will be capable of carrying nuclear weapons, and the contract is worth almost $60 billion. The Atlantic reports, "While the current fleet remains useful, the Air Force wants a bomber that can evade the advancing air defenses of Russia and China—if ever the need arises. The long-range bomber would act as a deterrent against actions designed to keep U.S. forces out of a designated area—what the military calls 'anti-access aerial denial.'"
Here we have 100 bombers delivered under contract for the cost of developing the F-35 with no aircraft delivered. I wonder if it will actually happen tho...
....is just another version of the F-35 for bombing. Genius!
I'd say it was easily doable if it was a B-52 style 'bomb truck', perhaps even being supersonic like the B-1.
But if it has to survive against modern air defenses that means stealth AND speed. I'm thinking of something like a supersized F-22 or 35.
As such, I'm with Richard - 100 craft delivered for less than the cost of F-35 development? Even if it's just scaling up a F-35, I don't see it happening.
I don't read AC A human right
Various sources around the net speculate that this thing is already flying for some years now. Developed as a black program, this announcement would serve only to declassify it. One wonders how many $$$ already went into it ...
she used to be the bomb.
... if Russia and China announced new attack planes that were designed with the specific purpose that they couldn't be kept out of American airspace...
China and Russia are developing equal capacities - if ever the need arises.
Your priorities suck.
If you eliminate hunger first, you'll eliminate the need for much healthcare. Same goes for drinking water. Reading before those? May as well spend on another war, for all the intelligence you possess.
this should be fun!
Hey, wanna guess what's necessary for keeping a country from being invaded so you can safely work on all those priorities outside of a war zone?
We've already got two bombers vastly more advanced than the B-52, both specifically designed to easily nuke Russia. First the (supersonic) B-1B from the 1980s, and also the (stealth) B-2 from the 1990s. But they just keep using those old dammed B-52s everywhere...
If anyone has a dammed good reason those two are pieces of crap, and a new bomber is necessary, I'd love to hear it.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
No, to eliminate most healthcare, you have to eliminate ageing. Cancer is not a hunger related disease, nor is Alzheimers. Only somewhat cardiac. It is alleged that 50% of health spending is in the last six months of life. Hunger is a major problem, and hunger has health consequences. But it is not the major driver for healthcare demand.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Instead of building fighter planes, we spend that money on feeding the poor, educating people with no options for education, and providing infrastructure to help those who lack even running water, let alone electricity, internet, or other amenities of modern life?
What? This is the USA! Want infrastructure? Get a job and pay for it yourself, ya damned socialist!
I thik it's NorthrOp not NorthrUp.
La culpa no es del chancho...
We'd love to. Unfortunately, Europe and Asia are politically so immature that they can't be left to their own devices, as the 20th century has shown, otherwise world wars and genocides happen. That's why the US spends trillions on its military.
Now, personally I'd say let Europeans kill each other again if they want to, but presumably, another fascist or communist takeover in Europe or Japan just wouldn't be good for our economy.
As for the US infrastructure and wealth, don't worry your little head over it, the US is doing quite well. http://tinyurl.com/p9locwe
Europeans don't worry about defending themselves; they just let the US do it for them and then pretend that they are pacifist and don't have to worry about such things. They take the money they save and use it to subsidize education, health care, and corporations (not that it seems to do them much good).
given the rising threat of China and Russia. B-3 bombers freely roaming their heavily defended airspace and dropping massive ordinance is a reassuring thought.
Actually there are. You don't have to leave the USA to find many pockets of 3rd world country living.
What paranoia. You are the useful idiot every politician and power-monger dreams about before going to sleep.
The B-52s are cheep to operate and maintain. They are also paid for.
Both the B1B and the B2 went way over budget.
They were also under construction in that weird period where the needs had shifted.
The b1b. Was being built at a time where speed was loosing it's edge over missiles. And the B2 during the collapse of the Soviet Union and was designed for a war that was less and less likely to happen.
Only half the B2s are capable of flight at any time due to heavy maintenance. We only have what 22 of them
Scale it up to a bomber? It barely scales up to a fighter!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
So instead of dropping bombs we should make our senior citizens be some sort of airborne suicide bombers, as soon as the prognosis isn't good give them a vest and a parachute and send them to whatever current conflict we are "advising".
You are dumb. If people are malnourished they never get old enough to age, or get caner, or alzheimers, or cardiac disease. Do you know what the cancer rate is in the poorest parts of Africa? Zero, because the average life span is 45.
That's what you think. Us Europeans have some stuff under the table that you Americans haven't even dreamed about.
You don't really think that we give you access to everything we come up with do you ?
For all war industry projects.
We don't need a next gen bomber, we have murdering human beings down pat. There is no need for improvement on that front anymore.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
tell you what, why don't YOU educate yourself, why don't YOU sort your water out, why don't YOU get off your ass and get a job and feed yourself?
Without defense, we'll be overrun by the COMMUNISTS. And no, under communism you won't have all those things. I know, I've been there.
--
roman_mir
"Northrop" Grumman, not "Northrup."
I read some time ago about a Chinese program requiring a device in every consumer product that uses radio waves. The product emits (or absorbs, I forget which) radio waves at a certain frequency. China has detectors (or emitters, I forget) that can use the emissions from all these devices to detect anything in Chinese airspace from the gap in emissions. Not from reflected data, from the space radio waves can't get through. A space that's not permitting radio has something in it. A space radio waves don't go through the size of an airplane going as fast as an airplane is thereby seen.
as a base and work from there keeping the cost and ease of maintenance a priority so you can get as many of those out the door and flying as you can.
BS. Education transforms lives and enables the poor to become producers within society. In fact, the reason for most poverty is the lack of education I. The first place. Furthermore, there should be no starvation or death by curable disease in the richest country on earth. Certain things should be provided to all when are basking in abundance.
I kind of assumed the GGP is not a sociopath. Stop projecting your deficiencies on others.
The problem isn't with educational spending, it has more to do with kids not being challenged and parents not caring.
If the state feeds and educates the poor, they just become more demanding, and expect a greater amount from the state, leading to a welfare cost spiral. Feeding and educating the poor does not magically create good jobs for them in their communities, so the few that manage to transcend the low aspirations of their community and do well in education don't stay in their communities, they leave at the first opportunity. Thus no matter how much money you pump in, poor and deprived communities just stay that way. At least if you spend the money on bombers, you have something tangible to show at the end of it.
Even if the bombers are needed to bomb said communities.
That doesn't increase profits for multinational corporations, nor does it help us maintain control over resources in other countries.
Ever notice that the US always supports dictators over democracy? That's because dictators deal with our companies on our terms and keep their people in line. If a dictator decides to not play ball by, say, selling oil in a currency other than the dollar, all of the sudden his people need 'liberating'.
Democracies in resource rich nations are not favored either because the people might decide that their resources should benefit them and not big megacorps. You can't 'liberate' a democracy with a straight face, so that's when we send in people to engineer a right wing coup and install, say, a Shah in Iran back in the 1950s. That went well, huh?
That is why the US spends all the money it does on a strong military and why in a world full of plenty, so many people have so little.
The bomber will be capable of carrying nuclear weapons
You mean like virtually every bomber manufactured after we stopped using wood and cloth for airframes?? You don't say! ;)
I checked the links and there isn't even an artist's rendering of a proposed design!
"Without defense, we'll be overrun by the COMMUNISTS"
If I believed that spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a new strategic bomber was necessary to deter a foreign invasion or would in any way diminish the threat of communism taking hold in the USA, I'd be inclined to support it.
The only people overrunning the USA are immigrants and the government won't even deploy a few infantry divisions to stop that invasion. The greatest danger of communism taking hold comes from misguided leftists who are already in this country.
Meanwhile, the US just uses its defence budget as a means to subsidise corporations, defence jobs for masses of uneducated people as a substitute for education and economic espionage through illegal wiretapping as a substitute for efficient production and actual R&D.
Europe may need to spend more on defence and rely less on foreign protection, but the US is far from a shining example of what they should be doing.
Just weld some bomb releases on that badboy and let it do it. It will be cost efficient having only one airplane model
It's also a bomber. A suicide bomber.
Copyright (c) 1990 - 2014 Dice. All rights reserved. Use of this comment is subject to certain Terms and Conditions.
Fortunately, there are almost no people like that in the US, despite fabricated horror stories by people with selfish political and economic motives
Do you live in a small town? Or do you live in a city and just never go outside? Or have you actually become blind to homeless people or the parts of cities in shambles?
East Coast, West Coast, all cities have parts that are either in dilapidated housing or have no housing at all. Even Minneapolis and St. Paul up north in MN have huge homeless populations as well as those without adequate housing amenities.
The headline is certainly prescient: This may indeed be the plane that will bomb the next generation
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
What could they want that an "evolution" B2 couldn't be? The other option is something like what the US almost built 45 years ago—the XB-70. The B1 was always a boondoggle and only has a very narrow effective mission profile (terrain-hugging approaches). The B2 wasn't used in a number of battles because it was so expensive and there were so few that it wasn't worth the risk of losing one. Nope, attacking with a large number of cheap drones—not necessarily remotely piloted—is the method that will work in the future. Overwhelm defenses, not fight them on their terms.
60,000,000,000 could buy you a LOT of drones. So what if they aren't all that stealthy or fast or whatever. Send 10,000 of them.
Rather than have one bomber carrying lots of bombs, that might get taken down by AA measures, have MANY bombers, with a few bombs, overwhelming defenses. Make 'em cheap. Lose a bunch, who cares, no pilots to die. Also makes the enemy use up their ariel weaponry for the next wave etc...
there are almost no people like that in the US, despite fabricated horror stories
Drive through downtown & suburbs of Detroit some time.
If the state feeds and educates the poor, they just become more demanding
This is the flip side of trickle down economics.
Which also never were true.
Well, we've already dropped bombs purposely on other countries' hospitals.
We'd eliminate a lot of health care costs if we bombed all of our own!
The Long Range Strike Bomber has domestic applications in the field of urban blight removal and urban renewal.
Great. The Germans are building a high tech military without the world knowing about it. That ended so well the first time.
Nota bene: on-topic references to the German military do not trigger Godwin's Law.
Education transforms lives and enables the poor to become producers within society
Not if they're from a culture that doesn't value education, or treats education as yet another means to hustle and scam.
There is no "that money"; we are running a huge deficit, and this is just placing a burden on future generations.
Don't worry, eventually we won't be able to make the minimum payments on the national credit card, and then the party will be over. Then the big corps will move on to some other country to rape and the U.S will turn into a 3rd-world country.
The party won't last forever, people. Eventually the credit will run out and the bills will come due. Let's see how long our great military power lasts when our noble soldiers and the contractors who supply them start getting paid in dollars that are worthless.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
WWII mentality. We have a bunch grown kids up at the defense department playing soldier. Unfortunately China and Russia seem to have the same problem.
The number of people without running water or electricity in the USA is incredibly small. Internet, we're working on.
Oh, you meant in other countries? Why not lobby those governments to provide these vital services for their citizens?
I'm sorry... I thought you were asking us to stop acting like the policemen-- or bullies-- of the world, by shrinking our army and ending our interventionist policies. So it turns out that you still want our money. Well, my tax money goes to provide for the general welfare of the USA. To do otherwise is interventionist, and also against our fundamental principle of no taxation without representation. If we don't get to demand that the corrupt dictators of failed states change their policies and act according to the needs and will of their people, then no government assistance will be given them.
The people of the United States are not a wallet. If you want to perform charity work, donate time and money to a charity organization.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
"Northrop Grumman" just has that perfect sound, I can see why they went with the name.
"we are running a huge deficit"
by choice. We could easily balance the budget, like we did in the 90's, through prudent tax increases.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Somebody gets it!
We already have well-funded social programs for those issues. They date back to the 1930s. More money isn't the answer.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
So those cities have no governments? And the states in which they reside have no governments? And there are no charities like Habitat for Humanity?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
From a HUD report:
"In January 2014, 362,163 people experienced
homelessness as individuals "
"here were 216,261 homeless people in families
on a single night in January 2014, accounting
for 37 percent of all homeless people"
approx. 500k homeless total, 30% unsheltered. see https://www.hudexchange.info/r...
approximately 7.8 pct of households have unsafe drinking water. From http://www2.census.gov/program...
I am ashamed and so should you.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Part of the problem is parents working 2-3 jobs at min wage to make ends meet, so they don't have time to raise the kid (they are doing their best to keep food on the table and a roof over the head.) Because there isn't any guidance at home, outsiders think the parents don't care... but they cannot be two places at once.
Education is important; arguably the one most important thing the US needs. However, it is ignored, but the results are like farmers who sell their seed corn (or just don't buy it), then wonder why their harvest is miniscule to nothing. Farmers are not that stupid... but our politicians are, for the most part.
Those are almost all homeless due to the combination of mental illness and drug abuse. Throwing money at them has made their problems worse. Further, most of the "homeless" you see begging are not homeless. Throw them some jingle, because they're asking instead of stealing.
The mission of this aircraft is idiotic. If we use this thing to bomb Russia or China we get nuclear war. Period. As such, the mission of any long range stealth bomber's can be achieved equally well by our simply nuking ourselves. Since we already can do that now, let's cut the USAF budget by $60B and declare "Mission Accomplished".
Remember that when it is your turn.
So why are there still so many poor people living in squalor? Let me guess, they're lazy and if they just worked hard like you they would live in the ugly-ass gated track-home community as well? Douche.
We have a huge homeless population in San Francisco, I can attest to that. They have shelters here, but apparently those are a horror show in and of themselves. A lot of the homeless refuse to use them.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
The median hourly compensation has fallen in the last 40 years while productivity has more than doubled.
The rich have doubled their ownership, CEO pay has tripled or more.
A basic education is now out of reach for many, and globalization and rampant immigration have mostly annihilated upwards mobility.
You're right, the safety nets established 80 years ago are now ineffective. Time for something much more disruptive.
Right, because the history of countries which ignore their defense has been so positive.
Sounds like a minuscule problem, there are 300m people in the US. The question is, why are they homeless. When you look into that you might find that it is mental illness and/or drug addiction. No matter what you do for those people, they will remain homeless. Unless you are advocating for institutionalizing people against their will, which is essentially the opposite of freedom.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
The United States never was credibly at threat of an actual invasion during WWI or WWII, unless you mean small Alaskan Islands or maybe Hawaii. That didn't prevent us from needing bombers.
If it gets to the point where someone can actually threaten to invade the US, we're already in an incredibly dire position. You'd have to have bases to launch a campaign from which probably means either Canada or Mexico. To get to that point, the world order would have had to have changed enough so that you could actually get an enemy into either of those two countries.
The point is, do not make every program be justified by the need to repel an invasion defensively. We're more likely to be defeated by cutting us off from world trade than we would be from an actual attack on the mainland. To prevent that scenario, we need to maintain our interests overseas. If you don't understand that, your strategic thinking is stuck somewhere in the mid 19th Century.
The flower children have been in charge for 8 years. It doesn't work. Time for a more muscular foreign policy.
truth mixed with communist shit. africa and arabia suffer from excessive population growth. no amount of your commie propaganda in germanic lands can change that.
America doesn't need a new strategic bomber.
Re-elect no one.
Why that's 76% of the Food Stamps budget! What will we do!? Funny how a bomber gets attention, but an annual dole gets none.
Providing available mental health care would be a real good start.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The B-2 program was cut to ~20 planes, back in ~1990. We've only had those 20 planes sitting around, in case something had to be bombed, in Iraq, Russia, North Korea, or China for the last 25 years. The B-52 fleet has been mostly ground up. And if the F-35A, C turn out to be failures, there is still the F-22, F-15, and F-18.
Considering that an F-16 is "capable of carrying nuclear weapons", that's not all that impressive in a bomber.
sic transit gloria mundi
"While the current fleet remains useful, the Air Force wants a bomber that can evade the advancing air defenses of Russia and China—if ever the need arises"
Since the end of the cold war, the US military industrial complex have been desperately in search of a new bogeyman to scare the American people and justify its huge budget.
The Federal Govt already spends over $700B a year on 120+ different anti-poverty programs. If someone doesn't have running water or electricity, it is due to them living in a very rural area and them not putting in a well, a septic system and solar panels yet. Education is more of a problem of people rejecting or not bothering to take advantage of the educational opportunities provided to them.
The median hourly compensation has fallen in the last 40 years while productivity has more than doubled.
rampant immigration have mostly annihilated upwards mobility
these two points are related. For example, jobs in the meatpacking industry are paying 1/2 of what they did in the 1980's due to workers who are here illegally. The situation is similar in construction and several other labor intensive industries.
Is lack of running water a significant problem in the U.S.? Where? How much?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
approximately 7.8 pct of households have unsafe drinking water. From http://www2.census.gov/program...
Is this before or after the EPA's incompetence polluted a river with toxic chemicals leached from the rock in an old mine?
The definition of poor in the US is an absolute joke. There is a good reason why so many illegal immigrants sneak across the border, US poor is much better living then 3rd world poor.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
You Spelled Northrop Grumman Wrong!! OMG....ROFL
Its Northrop not Northrup
There is literally not an amount of taxation that Congress cannot overspend. Give them 2 trillion, and they'll spend 3. Give them 3 and they'll spend 4. Give them the entire GDP of the United States, and they'll figure out how spend that, plus Mexico and Canada. They have to stop coming up with fantastic new uses for the treasury (and admit that we can probably do without a few of the old ones) before we'll be able to make any progress on the deficit.
Many people are homeless because there are no free apartments near the parts of town they want to live at. They want the activity or drug that they can only get there. Drag them outside of town and place them in a nice apartment and by morning they will be gone, back into the city. Now sure, you could build those apartments in the back alleys they prefer but that is very expensive real estate.
We had a surplus in 2001. Before Bush's tax cuts and stupid war in Iraq.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Instead of building fighter planes, we spend that money on feeding the poor, educating people with no options for education, and providing infrastructure to help those who lack even running water, let alone electricity, internet, or other amenities of modern life?
The rest of the world has been shown how to have prosperity for over a century now.
If they're too stupid to emulate almost any country in Europe, then fuck them because they're fucking retards.
maybe, jsut maybe, the reason $700B is spent on 120 different anti-poverty programs is to convince idiots that somethign meaningful is actually being done when in fact money can't solve anything that the non-existence of an economic system/money would solve.
Makin' it rain!
If you don't understand that I was responding only to the quoted passage at the beginning of my comment your English skills are woefully deficient.