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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...
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 ...
... 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...
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?
Firstly, the B-1B only has supersonic dash capability at low Mach - it lost the ability for sustained high Mach flight during its redesign between Carter and Reagan (specifically, it no longer has variable intakes so high Mach airflows are out of the question). Its a fine platform, but its also devilishly expensive to operate, having more than twice the per-flight-hour cost of the B-52.
The B-2 is also a fine platform, but its also very very expensive, and incredibly maintenance heavy. It requires specialist hangars and maintenance routines due to the age of its stealth technology, while more modern techniques means aircraft such as the F-22 and F-35 require much less preventative and ongoing maintenance solely for its stealth capabilities.
When it comes to dropping bombs, the B-52 is still the most cost effective, and has the lowest per-flight-hour cost of any heavy bomber currently in the USAF capability range - the point of the LRS-B contract is to produce a much more cost effective aircraft to replace both the B-2 and B-1B, bringing costs much more in line with those of the B-52.
I thik it's NorthrOp not NorthrUp.
La culpa no es del chancho...
Actually there are. You don't have to leave the USA to find many pockets of 3rd world country living.
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."
The B52 has loiter capablities and sheer mass of bombs other platforms cant match - the B52 is one hell of a cruise missle launch vehicle and holds far more missles per sortie... the B1 and B2 just cant launch / drop the sheer amount of FUCK YOU a B52 can. Oh and a B52 can be used for say a biiiiig FAE bomb for that extra fuck you.
So basically, if you want flatten the fuck out of something without a nuke, you want a B52. Hell, the B52 is perfectly good at big fucking nukes too.
Yes, we do. Bombers get old. And we no longer have the capability of building B-52's. The assembly line is long since gone to wherever old assembly lines go when they stop making something.
Since the B-52 is pre-interwebs and mostly pre-computer, recreating the ability to manufacture B-52's is likely to be even more expensive than designing a new bomber from scratch, even ignoring that we want stealth and other fun things in a new bomber.
Note that the B-1 and B-2 suffer some of the same problems - not making them anymore means recreating the ability to make them with modern machine tools may be as hard as or harder than starting a new bomber from scratch.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I guess you could detect a radar shadow of cm waves coming from a satellite.
There are potentially techniques to fight this though. There are the metamaterial invisibility "cloaks", also with lots of phased arrays on the bottom of the plane you might be able to detect the incoming radiation on top and relay it to the bottom.
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.
Just weld some bomb releases on that badboy and let it do it. It will be cost efficient having only one airplane model
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.
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...
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.
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.
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?
It's not for bombing Russia or China, it's for bombing some country with Russian or Chinese air defences as a proxy for bombing Russia or China.