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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.'"
The current understanding of the contract within the military aviation industry and community is that the bomber is not supersonic, doesn't even have supersonic dash capabilities, and is intended to have better stealth characteristics than anything currently developed - looks like they are going for mainly stealth as a defensive measure, with a good dose of active and passive ECM capabilities to make up the difference.
Actually, its not just speculation - the program is already fairly mature as all competitors have flown demonstrator scale versions and developed their entries to a higher level than normally required to. As an example, both the F-22 and F-35 programs were awarded based off of non-representative demonstrators, and the actual production examples were then developed from scratch after the contracts were awarded - in this case, the competitors were required to fly demonstrators based on the production examples, and were fully funded to that goal. The winner now gets to continue development on to full scale.
Why the change in approach? Because its run by a different office than normal acquisitions - the LRS-B contract competition was run by the Rapid Capabilities Office, which also handled such programs as the X-37 and thus isn't bound to the normal acquisition rulebook.
They padded it out with a bunch of paperwork just so everyone could save face; but I'm told that the actual bidding process was "We need a new bomber. Which one of our military aircraft oligopolies isn't responsible for the F-35? Ok, them then."
Even with older stealth technologies in the F-117 and the B-2, the tactics involved in deploying them recognised they did not eliminate chances of detection but rather reduced the effectiveness of fixed position radar installations to the point where their coverage no longer overlapped, so the entry route into the denied area was planned around those gaps between radar sites which weren't supposed to be there. It wasn't a case of the B-2 could simply fly straight at the defenders radar grid without detection, as there is always a point where the radar energy is enough that you will get a detectable return off of the aircraft regardless, even if its only a few miles out.
So the problem you are describing is not new, and has always been part of the cat and mouse game that is stealth and radar.
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"
We need new military hardware that won't be used? Who are we going to fight, Russia? Please. Not only is the public getting fleeced repeatedly with these useless weapons systems, some of the public apparently enjoy being ripped off and getting nothing for it. How about some repaired bridges?, how about a smart, renewable electric grid? How about funding our public schools? How about tuition free community colleges? How about Medicare for all? How about doing something more productive like going back to the moon, and then to Mars with some of those tax dollars? At least we'd get some good pics, videos and rock samples from that. You get nothing from an unneeded, unused, duplicate weapon systems.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.