Historic Air Force Plant 42 ramping up to build the B-21 Raider!

[Skroe]

You may have not noticed recently, but Earth's pretty big, and the United States is rather removed away from the action in North America. In order for the word's largest economy and most powerful country to remain it's lead role in global affairs throughout the 21st century, the US needs next generation power projection. This comes in many forms, but one of the key ones through the 2070s will be our forthcoming new bomber, the B-21 Raider.

Recently Northrop Grumman, the lead contractor, began hiring and expanding facilities for the B-21 at the historic Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California, where the Space Shuttle, B-1B Lancer, B-2 Spirit, XB-70 Valkyrie, SR-71, F-117, U-2 and X-47B were all built.

Production of the first 20 will commence in the next couple of years after the new mass production facilities are complete

http://www.latimes.com/local/califor...htmlstory.html

A top secret desert assembly plant starts ramping up to build Northrop's B-21 bomber
November 10th

A once-empty parking lot at Northrop Grumman Corp.’s top secret aircraft plant in Palmdale is now jammed with cars that pour in during the predawn hours.

More than a thousand new employees are working for the time being in rows of temporary trailers, a dozen tan-colored tents and a vast assembly hangar at the desert site near the edge of urban Los Angeles County.

It is here that Northrop is building the Air Force’s new B-21 bomber, a stealthy bat-winged jet that is being designed to slip behind any adversary’s air defense system and deliver devastating airstrikes for decades to come. The Pentagon is aiming to buy 100 of the bombers by the mid-2030s for at least $80 billion, though the exact amount is classified.



Northrop won the bomber contract in 2015, but the pace of activity is ramping up sharply under an Air Force budget that has reached $2 billion for this fiscal year.

Construction crews are getting ready to add 1 million square feet to the plant, a 50% increase over what is already a huge facility that is protected by razor wire-topped fences, electronic sensors and military air space surveillance, according to interviews and government documents.



The project marks a sharp turnaround in the fortunes of the Southern California aerospace industry, which has been atrophying since the end of the Cold War. It was widely assumed that the region would never again be home to a large aircraft manufacturing program and now it has one of the largest in modern history. The program is breathing new life into an industry that once defined the Southern California economy.

The bomber — dubbed the “Raider” — is expected to become Northrop’s largest cash cow, which could run for two decades if it does not encounter technical or political setbacks. But it will be competing with other nuclear and nonnuclear modernization programs for limited defense funds — a cutthroat political contest.

Northrop has 3,000 employees at the Palmdale plant and is still hiring at a rapid clip. By late 2019, the operation will have 5,200 employees at the site, Kevin Mitchell, deputy vice president of global operations, recently told a Lancaster Chamber of Commerce meeting.

The facility also produces Northrop’s high-altitude surveillance drones, the Global Hawk for the Air Force and the closely related Triton for the Navy, as well as the center fuselage for Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Company officials declined to be interviewed on the B-21, citing Defense Department restrictions.

The Palmdale factory is part of the Air Force’s massive Plant 42 operation, where some of the nation’s most secret warplanes have been built, including Northrop’s flying wing B-2 bomber.

The B-21 program is not just secret but “special access,” setting a much higher bar on who can get a clearance and how data are stored, among much else. An executive conference room at the plant is actually a high security windowless vault, where a massive conference table is surrounded by three dozen leather chairs and the walls are adorned with large photographs of the company’s long line of weapons. No cellphones are allowed in the room.

Heavy bombers, particularly those capable of carrying nuclear weapons, have been among the most controversial military projects in U.S. history. When the B-1 bomber was rolled out, pacifists attempted to throw themselves under its wheels. The Northrop B-2 stealth bomber gave Congress sticker shock with its $1-billion-per-plane manufacturing cost.



By contrast, the B-21 so far is slamming through the political system with few obstacles with a projected cost of $550 million per plane, translating to production costs alone of $55 billion, according to staff at the House Armed Services Committee. The dollar amount for research and development is highly classified, Under Secretary of the Air Force Matthew Donovan said in an in interview.

The service is committed to releasing that cost information as soon as possible, Donovan said, “but we have to balance that with protecting the capabilities of our aircraft against potential adversaries.”

Even more highly classified are the technical details of the future bomber.

A crude drawing of the plane released by the Air Force seems to resemble the company’s B-2 bomber, but Donovan and others say the new plane is not a derivative but a “clean sheet” design. It is supposed to carry nuclear weapons, though the Air Force does not plan to certify it for such missions until two years after it first becomes operational, a cost-saving decision that the House Armed Services Committee criticized in a 2013 report.

Evading more capable future radar systems is a singular requirement. When the B-2 was built, some experts claimed it looked no bigger than a hummingbird on a radar screen. The B-21 would have to be even stealthier. The preliminary design of the bomber’s stealth characteristics was “investigated in detail against current and anticipated threats,” according to a Congressional Research Service report released in June.

The plane will be operated either by an onboard crew or autonomously, the report said. Without a crew, the bomber could linger much longer over targets, requiring fewer sorties and holding an enemy hostage much longer. Unlike the B-2, it is planned as part of a “family of systems,” implying that it would fly with other aircraft or weapons systems, though government officials declined to say anything about it.

The B-21 will benefit from much more sophisticated, faster and cheaper computer systems, as well as software, said Don Hicks, who was Northrop’s senior vice president for research during the B-2 era and later served as the Pentagon’s research and engineering chief. He said Northrop developed crucial technology in its X-47B drone, an experimental jet that made history in 2013 with the first autonomous landing on an aircraft carrier.

“The B-21 is much better than the B-2,” Hicks said. “It has a lot of capability built into it that the B-2 doesn’t have.”

The B-21 is being marketed as a replacement for the Air Force’s aging bomber fleet, which dates back to the 1960s for the B-52 and the 1980s for the B-1. The Air Force says potential adversaries are improving their air defense systems and it has to find new capabilities to ensure it can hold them at risk. Even if the Air Force gets all 100 bombers now planned, it will end up with a smaller fleet than it has now.

The Pentagon fears a repeat of the B-2 bomber program, in which the nation invested $20 billion in research and development with a plan to buy 132 airplanes. The plan’s cost ballooned and the Cold War ended just before production began, leaving even the Defense Department questioning why it was needed. In the end, the Air Force got only 21 aircraft, which forced it to keep using the older bombers.

The B-21 also faces a tough road ahead because of competing programs. The Pentagon has plans to update every leg of the nuclear weapons complex, including warheads, missiles and submarines, at an estimated cost of $1.2 trillion, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate released Oct. 31.



Unlike many strategic weapons systems, such as submarines or intercontinental ballistic missiles, bombers are in use daily on missions in the Middle East. More than a decade of war in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria have made clear that bombers play a big role in limited conventional war.

The ultimate success of the program will depend on continued government support and cost controls. The Air Force considers the bomber one of its top three priorities, along with the F-35 and a new aerial refueling tanker.

So far, the program has received all the money that President Obama and President Trump have requested. Last year, two dozen members of the House — a colorful political mix of conservatives and liberals — sent a letter to appropriation committee leaders asking them to maintain funding for the bomber.

The only grumbling has surfaced from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who has pressed for more disclosure about the cost of research and development. The Air Force has resisted, arguing it would disclose the scope of the technology development underway.

To help keep Northrop on schedule, the Air Force is managing the B-21 through its Washington, D.C.-based Rapid Capabilities Office, which is intended to cut red tape, said Donovan, the undersecretary. The Air Force is requiring that any design changes, which often slow progress and increase costs, be approved at a higher level than is typical.

Building bombers under the black budget is not unprecedented. The U.S. government didn't lift the veil on the B-2 program until a decade after it had begun, revealing one of the largest weapons development efforts since the Manhattan Project produced the atomic bomb in the 1940s.

The Air Force and Northrop went to great lengths to conceal even the smallest detail of the B-2 program. Many suppliers had no idea they were making parts for the bomber. The government created dummy companies that ordered the parts, which were often picked up in the middle of the night by unmarked trucks.

Northrop made a bold decision a decade ago when it decided against teaming up with either Lockheed Martin Corp. or Boeing Co., going it alone. That led to Boeing and Lockheed, the nation’s two largest defense contractors, teaming up against Northrop. When they lost that competition, it left Northrop with 100% of the prime contract profits, not having to share it with a partner.

“I said we don’t need either of them,” said a person who was involved.

In addition to the major work in Palmdale, parts of all sizes will pour from factories in California and across the nation. The bomber, like other big-ticket aircraft programs before it, will probably spur new housing and commercial development. Mitchell, Northrop’s vice president, told the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce that the company is working with local leaders to make sure employees have access to services and amenities they want.



The company, for example, is working with Antelope Valley College, which recently developed an eight-week training program for aircraft fabrication and assembly, said Liz Diachun, a college spokeswoman. The vast majority of the college’s aircraft fabrication graduates go to Northrop. The college even has a bachelor’s degree program with a course on the theory of “low observable” technologies.

Northrop’s website has 272 jobs posted for Palmdale, including flight test engineers, machinists, aircraft electricians, composite technicians and low-observables mechanics. Many postings have multiple openings.

But the B-21 will probably not have the economic power of past defense programs. The industry is more efficient now, with production using more robots and other automated machinery. In 1992 when Northrop’s B-2 bomber was near its peak, the company had 9,000 workers at a now-shuttered plant in Pico Rivera and an additional 3,000 in Palmdale. The entire B-2 program employed 40,000 across the nation.

The mix is also changing. In the B-21, Palmdale already has as many workers as the B-2 and is headed higher, suggesting that its role will include not only final assembly but a significant amount of parts or process work. Although the plane is being assembled at Palmdale, the Northrop program office is located at another major company aircraft facility in Melbourne, Fla.

Manufacturing engineering work is being planned in Palmdale, while Melbourne serves as a design center. A longtime aerospace industry veteran said Northrop has also opened a modest B-21 engineering office at its plant in El Segundo, because it is challenged to find all the engineers it needs in Florida.

Mike Blades, a securities analyst with Frost & Sullivan, said he believes that about 30% to 50% of the Air Force’s $2-billion bomber budget for fiscal 2018 is flowing through Northrop.

“By far, it is going to be the largest source of their funding,” Blades said. “It is going to be a big deal for a long time. You are talking $2 billion and they are just in research and development.”

Investors have taken close note. Since the company was awarded the contract in October 2015, Northrop shares have nearly doubled, outpacing industry rivals over the same period.

Northrop Chief Financial Officer Kenneth Bedingfield earlier this year told securities analysts that the company’s restricted activities, which refer to secret contracts such as the B-21, made up more than 20% of sales last year.

“I will tell you that it is a nicely growing part of our business,” he said.

Good stuff huh? If you've made it there far and aren't up on things, you may be wondering what the B-21 Raider is.

The best way to describe that is to describe what it isn't first, and this is going to involve some history. Although originally touted as "B-2.1", or in other words, the B-2, 2016 Edition... it is not the B-2. It is both more and less ambitious in different ways.

The History of the B-2

It's fairly common political knowledge that in the 1980 Presidetial campaigns, Ronald Reagan hit Jimmy Carter hard over the cancellation of the B-1A Bomber (a bomber that Reagan would revive and transform into the B-1B lancer, the backbone of the US bomber force, a few years later). The reason Carter cancelled it was because as President he knew the Air Force was working on a quantum leap ahead in the form of the B-2 Program (then known as the Advanced Technology Bomber), approved in 1979. There would be no point for the US to procure the B-1A as a strategic bomber, only to replace it with the B-2 a few years later, or so he thought. So carter killed the B-1 program prublically, without a public replacement. To the country, it looked like the US would rely on B-52s and F-111s, which of course, was not the case. This had echos of the "Cruiser Gap" and "Missile Gap" of presidential campaigns prior.

Northrop won the Advanced Technology Bomber program, that produced many different designs. Below is the 'Final' 1988 B-2 design, and Lockheed's Senior Peg proposal, which if you look carefully, has features much like the Lockheed Martin F-117 (except bigger and wider).

The below image is the most relevant to this historic discussion (which will return to the B-21 shortly).



The "Final" B-2 design was decided t be the High Altitude Penetrator design marked there, which looks very much like the B-2, with different intakes and a different aft design. But that was not to be.

While the ATB program was focused on a high altitude strategic bomber, around the same time the Air Force was ALSO working on a seperate Low Altitude Penetrator Bomber. Whereas the ATB would fly at 60,000+ feet, the LAP Bomber would go under enemy radar and defense (particularly SAMs designed for high altitude strategic bombers) and fly as low as 300 feet. To do this is a completely different technical challenge.

In the mid 1980s, the LAP Bomber was canceled and in the biggest mistake of the entire ATB program, it's requirement merged into the ATB. And thus, the "High Altitude Penetrator Bomber" received a very late redesign that changed intakes, surfaces and added the sawtooth edge that produced the B-2 that we know. This design was a compromise of mismatched requirements. The B-2 cannot fly as high as the HAP design, nor as efficiently (less range). While it can (could, feature was since removed) fly as low as 300 feet to perform the Low Altitude Penetrator mission, it was slower and far less stealthy in doing this than the LAP Bomber design. The entire final design, while still far more stealthy than the F-117 or any other aircraft to that point, was less stealthy than the HAP.

Other requirements also snuck in. Most outrageously, the Air Force decided that improved Soviet Air defenses meant that the US might one day need the B-2 to be capable of toss bombing. What's toss bombing?




Yes. And now your B-2 Stealth bomber, originally a high altitude stealthy strategic bomber, now must be capable of air-show quality acrobatics at 300 feet. The result though is that the B-2 is a staggeringly manueverable aircraft (a feature helped by it's flying wing design).

The ATB program was one of the largest US Defense Industrial programs since the Manhattan project and on the scale of Project Apollo. The US set up hundreds of dummy corporations and bought from suppliers parts that the suppliers had no idea what they were for. But feature creep ultimately doomed it to just 20 Aircraft.

The B-21 is designed excplitly to not be that. The B-21, while a large program, is designed explicitly NOT to be a technology breakthrough / moonshot program. It is designed to leverage already developed technologies on a modern platform. It is evolutionary, not revolutionary. That means, in contrast to the B-2 program's historic scope (again, comparable to the Manhattan project), this is "just" a decent sized Air Force military-industrial program.

What is the B-21
The B-2 will be the last aircraft replaced by the B-21 (and probably late model, "Advanced" Block B-21s). The real purpose of the B-21 is the fact that the B-1B Lancer fleet, the workhourse of American airpower during the War on Terror and Iraq Wars, will need to start retiring in the late 2020s due to age and wear on their complex frames.

This "hidden" cost of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that every airframe family lost about a third of it's projected life time. And it should be of no secret as to why. The B-1B was designed for war with Russia and the occasional police action. Despite being very good at it, it was not designed for orbiting cities to do close air support, for 8 hours a day, for 15 years on end. An airplane is not different than any car in this respect. No matter how well you take care of it, excess use leads to wear and tear that can't be fixed.

Because it takes so long to get aerospace programs off the ground, the US started discussing replacing the B-1 a decade ago.

But simply restarting the B-2 production line, i.e as "B-2.1", was also a non-started. Put aside the feature creep issues that increased costs enormously, the B-2 has some seriously dated features that aren't even apparent.

First and foremost, it's enormous. When the B-2 (and B-1B) were produced, precision guided munitions were in their infancy, so enormous bomb loads... "carpet bombing" was still the order of the day. But today? The B-1B, B-52 and B-2 never fly with anything remotely approaching their full capacity, because doing so would hinder their endurance on a tank of fuel, and precision bombs have made the entire idea of dropping 20 bombs to hit one thing obsolete.

Secondly it's a four engine aircraft. That means for a single B-2 to fly, all four engines have to be in working order. It also means in order to buy it, you're buying four times the expensive engines as number of aircraft, plus spares of probably around 25% of the entire fleet.

Thirdly, it is a product of the 1980s and 1990s, just like the F-22 (and notably, very UNLIKE the F-35). That means there is no modularity, no open arctecture, and are difficult to upgrade. The B-2s were largely gutted except for their mechanics and airframes, over the last 10 years, as their computer systems were replaced with modern ones, but it is not an aircraft designed from the outset to be upgraded, or software driven.


So what is the B-21 likely to be to answer all of these?
-> It will be smaller than the B-2. Probably 1/2 to 2/3rds the size. This is a good thing, because it'll make them cheaper to buy than the B-2 (aircraft cost is a function of size), and because the lost payload mass is wasteful this day in age.

-> It will have two engines instead of four. The engines will likely be non-afterburning variants of the F135 engine from the F-35. Two engines is critically important to the program as it will hugely drive down procurement costs while increasing readiness rates of the B-21 once delivered. With a fleet of 100 B-21s, the air force will need to buy 200 engines + about 50 spares. If it were instead a 4 engine aircraft, it would need to buy 400 engines + 100 spares. This makes the program far more economical. Furthermore the F135 engine itself, a technological marvel, is at the upper end of the thrust of what a two-engine aircraft with a pair would be capable of, and it has far fewer parts than the F118 design of the B-2, which will make it easier to maintain.

-> In its bombing role it is being designed soley as a High Altitude Penetration Bomber (which is why its design is nearly identical to the HAP design from the B-2 program), with none of the weird tacked on requirements the B-2. This will make it stealthier, and have significantly increased endurance compared to the B-2. It will also operate at a maximum altitude of least 10,000 feet higher.

-> It is going to be way, way more than just a bomber. There is a lot more on this link here, but the bombing role is almost secondary to the B-21's role as a super stealthy sensor, intelligence gathering, and battlespace control hub.

http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone...s?iid=sr-link2

"It also means the B-21 will be able to loiter above the tactical aircraft air combat environment below. As such it could act as a communications and data link connectivity node, sucking up information from the F-35's, F-22's, and one unmanned combat air vehicle's proprietary and stealthy data links. It can then connect these aircraft below by rebroadcasting updates of a "fused" common battlefield picture on each of their individual waveforms.

They could also convey the battlefield information from stealthy assets below up to satellites above where it can be pushed around the theater and beyond for real time exploitation. In essence, this will allow the B-21 to act in a similar role as a Battlefield Airborne Communications Node (BACN) for stealthy assets whose sensor information will be among the most critical as these assets will be deployed the farthest forward over the battlefield.

This concept, which has been cryptically touted in multiple organizational concept charts in recent years, solves a number of problems and fits in with two high priority USAF initiatives. Those include focusing on networks and information sharing, as well as morphing from a platform-centric fires and intelligence gathering strategy to a "distributed" one."

It's hard to understate how important this is, especially for a system that is planned to fly into the 2070s or 2080s, and is without a doubt the one "must have" feature that justifies this program more than anything else.

Missiles are getting better. Sensors are getting better. How many B-2s did the US use against Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003? Something like two of them. And it was 2 during the Kosovo War in 1999. Putting all your eggs in one basket - like say a huge bomber with a big bomb load - introduces too single point of failures that the Pentagon, upon advisement from think tanks, is rapidly moving away from. The idea is that everything is a sensor, and everything has a missile, so if one fighter or one bomber get shot down, the ability to strike is barely diminished. In one scenario, a B-21 might not even be carrying the bomb, and instead task a drone to do i. Instead of 1 bomber with 40 bombs, more likely you'll see 10 drones with 4 bombs. That's the idea.

This is important because the US ALSO, seperately, needs to replace a host of Command and Control Aircraft build on Boeing 708 Jetliner platforms, like the E-8 JointSTARS and the E-6 Mercury. The Pentagon has played with over the years, successors based on 757 and 767 jetliner platforms, as well as Gulstream Business jets, but now has settled it seems, on using the B-21 + drones in tandem, again, to reduce a single-point-of-failure scenario. While the B-21 might not do all that a legitimate E-8 successor could do, it in tandem with specialized drone, with data fused, could do the job and then some.

-> Consistent with this, the B-21 will be "optionally manned". Drone Mode is the biggest question of the program, because it could seriously increase costs, but it is believed Northrop double dipped on the X-47B program (below) with intent of applying lessons learned to the B-21. But why do drone mode at all? Because the B-21 is being built as an open architecture platform, and as advancements in AI come to pass in decades ahead, it may be the case that the B-21 becomes permanently unmanned, and retrofitted B-21s become drone strategic bombers. If the US didn't design this in from the start, it would be very difficult to add it on say, after 2045 or so, when the B-21 fleet will have another 30 or 40 years of life left to it. More likely the US would have to do a new bomber program.




The B-21 Raider has a long, long way to go before it. The facilities to make it won't even be done before 2019. The first flight probably won't be until 2022 or so. The first 20 won't be delivered until 2025. And then the US will take ownership of ~20 per year thereafter. And the buy of 100 is preliminary. It is likely the US will need to replace all 66 in service B-1B lancers, eventually all 76 B-52s, and at the very end, 20 B-2 Spirits. That is 161 bombers to replace. Furthermore the centrist Center for a New American Security, in their study of US strategic, found the following:

https://scout.com/military/warrior/A...bers-101459780

Based on the need to fill out 10 squadrons of 12 aircraft each for 10 Air Expeditionary Force wings, the Air Force would need a total of 120 combat-coded B-21 bombers.

“While each AEF comprises an assortment of tactical, strategic, and logistical aircraft, the current Air Force force structure is unable to meet the requirement to supply each AEF with one bomber squadron made up of a minimum of 10 and optimally 12 bombers,” the authors wrote.

“Should one deploying squadron rob another of its aircraft to meet requirements, the robbed aircraft will not be available for scheduled maintenance and training evolutions of the home-based AEF. Such conditions also create the accelerated demise of the force as the smaller numbers of aircraft are used at ever-increasing rates. Therefore, it is important to establish a baseline of 12 combat-coded bombers per squadron, and 10 squadrons to fill out the 10 AEFs, resulting in a minimum requirement of 120 combat-coded bombers.”

But even 120 combat-coded bombers would get the United States part way to a force that could conduct a full-scale air war against the Russian Federation.

“An air campaign against Russia is projected to last 180 days at a minimum and would require nearly 260 bombers,” the authors wrote.

The CNAS study more or less directly mirrors earlier Congressional testimony from senior Air Force leaders. Testifying before the House Armed Services Committee on May 25, Lt. Gen. Arnold [4] W. Bunch Jr., military deputy, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, said that 100 B-21 bombers is the floor of the Air Force requirement.

“It’s not just a hundred to go do missions,” Bunch told the House Armed Services Committee on May 25 [5].

“It’s at least a hundred to do all the training, to do the depot maintenance.”

The Air Force also agreed that the service might need as many as 258 B-21 bombers in the nightmare scenario of a war with the Russian Federation.

“Those numbers aren’t incorrect,” Lt. Gen. Jerry D. Harris, Air Force deputy chief of staff for strategic plans and requirements, told the Congress.

“We do agree that probably 165 bombers is what we need to have.”

So the US is aiming to build more. A lot more. Good thing then, it or its demonstrator probably has already been flying for a few years.




Very interesting project. It's going to be very interesting how this competes in the budget environment a decade down the line.

Happy Thanksgiving, friends.

[Independent voter]

There's nothing out there that can compete with the B2 bomber wise. Why make a new bomber, why not make more B2's?

Aren't bombers big, less maneuverable when it comes to avoiding anti-air stuff?

[Azadina]

So, when the AK wielders already weren't any match for earlier equipment, now new equipment is needed because.....So the AK wielders in deserts aren't match for the new equipment either?

Great logic

[Valerean]

There's nothing out there that can compete with the B2 bomber wise. Why make a new bomber, why not make more B2's?

Aren't bombers big, less maneuverable when it comes to avoiding anti-air stuff?

Because you don’t maintain a lead by sitting still. While Russia / China are still struggling to develop rudimentary low observable tech, the US is now on its fourth generation of stealth aircraft. It’s all about maintaining strategic advantage.

And yes they are less manoeuvrable, but they won’t have to manoeuvre if their adversary can’t see or obtain a targeting solution on them.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Azadina]

You think they make these things to bomb AK wielders in desert?

Nope. Mostly they sit in hangars. Or are flown around for the sake of using them. The AK wielder bombing is the rare exception they seem to get, but also the most "dangerous" mission for them.

[Valerean]

Nope. Mostly they sit in hangars. Or are flown around for the sake of using them. The AK wielder bombing is the rare exception they seem to get, but also the most "dangerous" mission for them.

Considering that their original intended purpose was to fly deep penetration missions into the USSR and hunt down road mobile ICBMs, we should probably be grateful that they are currently limited to bombing jihadis.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Azadina]

Considering that their original intended purpose was to fly deep penetration missions into the USSR and hunt down road mobile ICBMs, we should probably be grateful that they are currently limited to bombing jihadis.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

So you tell me, why is there need for more of them, when even last ones remained unused? The jihadis can be bombed with WW2 era gear, and that's where the limit of use has seemed to be for many decades, and some more to come.

[Skroe]

There's nothing out there that can compete with the B2 bomber wise. Why make a new bomber, why not make more B2's?

Aren't bombers big, less maneuverable when it comes to avoiding anti-air stuff?

I actually answered that directly. :| In two places.

The B-2 will be the last aircraft replaced by the B-21 (and probably late model, "Advanced" Block B-21s). The real purpose of the B-21 is the fact that the B-1B Lancer fleet, the workhourse of American airpower during the War on Terror and Iraq Wars, will need to start retiring in the late 2020s due to age and wear on their complex frames.

This "hidden" cost of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that every airframe family lost about a third of it's projected life time. And it should be of no secret as to why. The B-1B was designed for war with Russia and the occasional police action. Despite being very good at it, it was not designed for orbiting cities to do close air support, for 8 hours a day, for 15 years on end. An airplane is not different than any car in this respect. No matter how well you take care of it, excess use leads to wear and tear that can't be fixed.

Because it takes so long to get aerospace programs off the ground, the US started discussing replacing the B-1 a decade ago.

The bomber this will be replacing in full before any other is the B-1B lLancer. Hell the Air Force is about to re-engine the B-52. But if the B-1B is going to be cycled out starting after 2025, a replacement needs to be in production by then.

Also

""It also means the B-21 will be able to loiter above the tactical aircraft air combat environment below. As such it could act as a communications and data link connectivity node, sucking up information from the F-35's, F-22's, and one unmanned combat air vehicle's proprietary and stealthy data links. It can then connect these aircraft below by rebroadcasting updates of a "fused" common battlefield picture on each of their individual waveforms.

They could also convey the battlefield information from stealthy assets below up to satellites above where it can be pushed around the theater and beyond for real time exploitation. In essence, this will allow the B-21 to act in a similar role as a Battlefield Airborne Communications Node (BACN) for stealthy assets whose sensor information will be among the most critical as these assets will be deployed the farthest forward over the battlefield.

This concept, which has been cryptically touted in multiple organizational concept charts in recent years, solves a number of problems and fits in with two high priority USAF initiatives. Those include focusing on networks and information sharing, as well as morphing from a platform-centric fires and intelligence gathering strategy to a "distributed" one.""

With

It's hard to understate how important this is, especially for a system that is planned to fly into the 2070s or 2080s, and is without a doubt the one "must have" feature that justifies this program more than anything else.

Missiles are getting better. Sensors are getting better. How many B-2s did the US use against Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003? Something like two of them. And it was 2 during the Kosovo War in 1999. Putting all your eggs in one basket - like say a huge bomber with a big bomb load - introduces too single point of failures that the Pentagon, upon advisement from think tanks, is rapidly moving away from. The idea is that everything is a sensor, and everything has a missile, so if one fighter or one bomber get shot down, the ability to strike is barely diminished. In one scenario, a B-21 might not even be carrying the bomb, and instead task a drone to do i. Instead of 1 bomber with 40 bombs, more likely you'll see 10 drones with 4 bombs. That's the idea.

This is important because the US ALSO, seperately, needs to replace a host of Command and Control Aircraft build on Boeing 708 Jetliner platforms, like the E-8 JointSTARS and the E-6 Mercury. The Pentagon has played with over the years, successors based on 757 and 767 jetliner platforms, as well as Gulstream Business jets, but now has settled it seems, on using the B-21 + drones in tandem, again, to reduce a single-point-of-failure scenario. While the B-21 might not do all that a legitimate E-8 successor could do, it in tandem with specialized drone, with data fused, could do the job and then some.

The B-2 cannot do that.

Lastly, in 2017, flying wings are not exotic to Western Aerospace manufactures. They're easy. The basic design has enormous aerodynamic advantages over more "conventional" looking aircraft. This is why Boeing has been studying a flying wing jetliner for 15 years and will probably pull the trigger on one before too long.

- - - Updated - - -

So, when the AK wielders already weren't any match for earlier equipment, now new equipment is needed because.....So the AK wielders in deserts aren't match for the new equipment either?

Great logic

This is for use princiapally against China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.

But that being said, it's been the B-1B Lancer that is the economical workhorse of bombing "AK Wielders". It is the B-1B Lancer that will be the first to retire. So yes, if we are bombing Ak Wielders in 2045, it'll be this doing it. Because this is designed to be the workhorse.

For the real "Breakthrough" B-2 successor, go check the hypersonics threat. That would be what was once called the "2037 bomber" (now more like the 2047 bomber). The B-21 is the Quantity program. That future hypersonic bomber, the replacement for the B-2 (which this is not, at least not for decades) will be the quality bomber.

Legitimately half the post was dedicated to explaining why this isn't just "B-2.1".

[Valerean]

So you tell me, why is there need for more of them, when even last ones remained unused? The jihadis can be bombed with WW2 era gear, and that's where the limit of use has seemed to be for many decades, and some more to come.

Jihadis pose zero strategic threat to the United States. McDonalds kills more Americans than Islamic Whatever does. China and Russia do however.

The US is designing an aircraft to combat near-peer adversaries (China / Russia) with advanced A2AD capabilities - if the Pentagon prioritised bombing jihadis more economically over defeating actual strategic threats, they’d buy a load of Super Tucanos or something.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Skroe]

Aren't bombers big, less maneuverable when it comes to avoiding anti-air stuff?

Man this was answered directly too. Did you bother reading? Or even looking at the pictures?

THe B-2 is extraordinarily maneuverable, but in any event the B-21 will be between half to 2/3rds the size of the B-2, and carry about half the bomb load. The enormous bomb load of the B-2 is a relic of a pre-precision weapon age and not needed. Furthermore making it up to 2/3rds the size allows the B-21 to be a two engine bomber, powered by dual F135 engines (from the F-35 program), rather than a four engine bomber like the B-2. This will dramatically cut costs (have to buy half the number of engines) and increase combat readiness (two engines need to be maintained, rather than four).

So smaller, with powerful F135 engines, and because it s a flying wing, very maneuverable.

Air doesn't really care how big you are and how something flies through it is a function of the relative thrust. This is why sub-scale models are used for prototypes. Yes, the B-2 is big, but because it has powerful engines and a flying wing, its been described as handling like a fighter. The B-21 should be similar.

[Azadina]

This is for use princiapally against China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.

But that being said, it's been the B-1B Lancer that is the economical workhorse of bombing "AK Wielders". It is the B-1B Lancer that will be the first to retire. So yes, if we are bombing Ak Wielders in 2045, it'll be this doing it. Because this is designed to be the workhorse.

For the real "Breakthrough" B-2 successor, go check the hypersonics threat. That would be what was once called the "2037 bomber" (now more like the 2047 bomber). The B-21 is the Quantity program. That future hypersonic bomber, the replacement for the B-2 (which this is not, at least not for decades) will be the quality bomber.

Legitimately half the post was dedicated to explaining why this isn't just "B-2.1".

If it's been successful in bombing those Ak wielders, and let me assume it has, since they got nothing really, then why the need for new one? Why not buy more of the ones that already did the job, and probably would do the job into 2100's, when looking at the Ak wielder technological advancements, or more like, lack of.

[Skroe]

Nope. Mostly they sit in hangars. Or are flown around for the sake of using them. The AK wielder bombing is the rare exception they seem to get, but also the most "dangerous" mission for them.

Factually untrue. The B-1B lancer fleet has been aged to shit thanks to being the Workhorses of the War on Terror.

I ACTUALLY answered this.

The B-2 will be the last aircraft replaced by the B-21 (and probably late model, "Advanced" Block B-21s). The real purpose of the B-21 is the fact that the B-1B Lancer fleet, the workhourse of American airpower during the War on Terror and Iraq Wars, will need to start retiring in the late 2020s due to age and wear on their complex frames.

This "hidden" cost of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that every airframe family lost about a third of it's projected life time. And it should be of no secret as to why. The B-1B was designed for war with Russia and the occasional police action. Despite being very good at it, it was not designed for orbiting cities to do close air support, for 8 hours a day, for 15 years on end. An airplane is not different than any car in this respect. No matter how well you take care of it, excess use leads to wear and tear that can't be fixed.

Because it takes so long to get aerospace programs off the ground, the US started discussing replacing the B-1 a decade ago.

Let me give you another example. The US's air superiority fighter fleet is composed of 125 combat coded F-22s and 220 F-15Cs. Those F-15s were supposed to have been long sinced retired, replaced by an all-F-22 fleet of 400. But that never happened. As a result the F-15C is flying now 10 years passed its projected retirement date. And there is a serious problem. The central fuselage - the part that joins the "cockpit" to the "body" has significant metal fatigue across the entire fleet.

The Air Force has a choice:

-Buy a new fighter program or restart the F-22 program, to replace all 220 F-15Cs. It is not quite doing this yet.

-Maintain and repair the 220 F-15Cs. Problem with this? The central fuselage rebuild for all 220 F-15Cs will cost $70 million PER F-15C, for a total fleet-wide cost of $15.4 billion. Holy shit. Still beats a F-22 restart cost of $30 billion.

So what do you suggest? Don't fly F-15Cs? Have our pilots risk their aircraft breaking up mid-flight? Country has to pick one option.

The B-1B is newer, and in better shape than the F-15C fleet, but it won't be in 2027. And when that year arrives, if the country doesn't have a new bomber in production, it will be cutting the overall number of bombers. That can't happen. We use them too much.

Again, the B-21 is designed to be the workhorse, not the "bleeding edge" bomber. It's evolutionary, not revolutionary. It is more advanced than the B-2 by virtue of being bought in 2017, not 1995.

[Azadina]

Factually untrue. The B-1B lancer fleet has been aged to shit thanks to being the Workhorses of the War on Terror.

I ACTUALLY answered this.

That particular comment of mine was directed at B-2, even tho I didn't specifically mention it. They've just been expensive toys for little to no use, as far as I'm concerned.

The Air Force has a choice:

-Buy a new fighter program or restart the F-22 program, to replace all 220 F-15Cs. It is not quite doing this yet.

-Maintain and repair the 220 F-15Cs. Problem with this? The central fuselage rebuild for all 220 F-15Cs will cost $70 million PER F-15C, for a total fleet-wide cost of $15.4 billion. Holy shit. Still beats a F-22 restart cost of $30 billion.

So what do you suggest? Don't fly F-15Cs? Have our pilots risk their aircraft breaking up mid-flight? Country has to pick one option.

The B-1B is newer, and in better shape than the F-15C fleet, but it won't be in 2027. And when that year arrives, if the country doesn't have a new bomber in production, it will be cutting the overall number of bombers. That can't happen. We use them too much.

Again, the B-21 is designed to be the workhorse, not the "bleeding edge" bomber. It's evolutionary, not revolutionary. It is more advanced than the B-2 by virtue of being bought in 2017, not 1995.

Stop padding private companies profit lines, and the costs would go down. It's nonsensical to pay for x amount of planes, then the company destroys all tools (dunno if they do that still, definitely did for SR71, forcing them to re-create all from scratch when it was re-commissioned for short time again), only to then need more planes later, after which they need to re-create everything again. At your cost, more profit for them.

Or start including in the contracts, that they must keep the production lines operational.

[Skroe]

If it's been successful in bombing those Ak wielders, and let me assume it has, since they got nothing really, then why the need for new one? Why not buy more of the ones that already did the job, and probably would do the job into 2100's, when looking at the Ak wielder technological advancements, or more like, lack of.

The B-1B and B-2B production lines were shut down years ago. The B-1B line in the late 1980s I believe, and the B-2 line in 2002. The suppliers have all moved on to different projects (or been consolidated). Workers have all been retasked, retired and or died. Reconstituting that line would be nearly impossible. Once a program shuts down, suppliers move on, and workers move on, you lose everything from parts to industrial know-how.

The Air Force actually just went through a process like your suggesting. Do you see my F-15C reply up there for you? The Air Force by order of congress on this issue, spent the year evaluating their options as to restarting the F-22 production line. The options were

- Do nothing and repair the F-15Cs until a new F-22/F-15 replacement program starts around 2025.

- Restart the F-22 production line, that produces F-22As identical to the 125 combat coded ones.

- Restart the F-22 production line and integrate technologies from the dramatically more advanced F-35 program into the F-22, to create a "F-22C".


The Air Force found that doing the second or third option would take between 5 and 10 years, and start at around $30 billion, up to about $60 billion. And because the F-22 has some intrinsically dated features compared to the F-35, it might be more worthwhile to simply fork the F-35 and make an air superior variant if they're going to spend that much money. But if they did either, they would have to reverse engineer their existing F-22s because the industrial know-how, the tooling, the plans are all incomplete or lost.

In the end, they decided this summer that the cost of restarting was starting to look like an all-new fighter program.

The same logic is applicable to the restarting the B-1B or B-2 production line. The Pentagon would spend so much, the question is, why not just build and all new bomber.

I think in part, psychology is at play here. People are wow'd by flying wings still. They shouldn't be. The Air Force has been flying them for over 30 years. If you include all the drones and one offs, the US and European Aerospace manufacturers have produced hundreds of flying wing designs.

Flying wings have enormous intrinsic advantages in endurance, payload, maneuverability and construction over more "traditional" tube and wing designs. The cost of it was, for years, complexity in the control systems, but that is a mountain long since climbed.

Or let me put this another way.

If you would take a modern Ford F-150 and send it back in time to 1980, people would look at it and be awestruck at how curvy it is. To them, it looks like the future. But to us, a 2017 Ford F-150 is just what a Ford F-150 made today looks like. It evolved to that point.

It's the same thing with flying wings. We don't see flying wings everyday largely because Boeing has not decided to make a civilian flying wing yet. But in terms of how "advanced" they are, it's a complete mastered type of aircraft design. Boeing not moving in that direction for civilian jetliners is largely a business decision, not a technical one. If the "Boeing 797" was a flying wing and we were flying on them for 20 years, that the Air Force buys another flying wing would invoke a shrug rather than "oh it's like the B-2!".

In 2017, if the country is going to build a bomber, then what does it need? Endurance, payload, economical cost. That means flying wing. So don't be awestruck by that feature. It's as routine as the curvyness on today's cars, compared to the boxy nature of cars from 1980.

- - - Updated - - -

That particular comment of mine was directed at B-2, even tho I didn't specifically mention it. They've just been expensive toys for little to no use, as far as I'm concerned.

We'll you're factually wrong about that. The B-2's fly all the time, and in terms of our nuclear deterrent, The B-2's have a feature no other system in the world has.

Consider this scenario. The US and Russia are playing a game of nuclear brinksmanship. The President orders the B-2s to be orbiting above Germany. Russia will take that as "they can bomb us at any time". The President now has leverage, and can negotiate against the Russians with regards to the withdrawal of the B-2s. Them being there gives us something to trade for a reduction in hostilities. You can't do that with Ballistic Missile Submarines or ICBMs. Furthermore sending them there in the first place demonstrates resolve. If Russia has doubts about the US's willingness to defend Europe, the US will send a message by flying B-2s there to "watch" Russia.

Also Bombers can be called back. If things are really about to go to shit, and the Presidents of the US and Russia find a way out, Bombers in flight to bomb Russia can be told turn turn around and go home. Can't do that with ICBMs.


Lastly the main job of the B-2s (and the B-1Bs) is to hunt for mobile Russian launchers to destroy them before they launch. The B-2's have a direct connection to K-12 Spy Satellites. They are the only known combat aircraft with a "Gods eye view". No other aircraft can fulfill that job.

How do you suppose those missions get filled without these? Or do you just consider them not important?

Stop padding private companies profit lines, and the costs would go down. It's nonsensical to pay for x amount of planes, then the company destroys all tools (dunno if they do that still, definitely did for SR71, forcing them to re-create all from scratch when it was re-commissioned for short time again), only to then need more planes later, after which they need to re-create everything again. At your cost, more profit for them.

Or start including in the contracts, that they must keep the production lines operational.

Who pays for keeping production lines operational?

Taxpayers.

I don't think you quite understand the economics of the industry. If you have wielders lets say, tasked to the B-2 program, and they aren't building the B-2, because the country isn't ordering anymore, then their employer (in this example, Northrop) would be paying them to do nothing, and Northrop would be bleeding money from that (human resources are among the largest expenditures of any procurement program). A line that isn't producing is uneconomical, so in order to keep the line open, the US would have to keep ordering B-2s.

And it's not just the wielders at the final assembly plant. It's the contractor in Ohio that makes like custom fittings. If they aren't producing for the B-2 program, then do they just get paid to exist? How do they keep open? Somebody has to pay them for something? It's chemical companies that produce the materials for the surface coating. Do they just keep their plant hot for 20 years, despite not producing?

Like do you understand what you're asking? You're asking that we have a production line, ready to go, forever, and that nobody pays for it, even when it isn't producing. But how is that possible if it is to keep people employed for decades on end?

The direct analog to this situation is the F/A-18E Super Hornet production line. The Navy had completed it's F/A-18 and E/A-18 buy a couple of years ago. it wans't looking to buy anymore. And Boeing (the contractor) was wrapping up foreign sales. Which meant that the F/A-18E line was going to have to shut down. Congress wasn't pleased about this - one, it would mean a loss of jobs, and two it would mean Boeing would exit the fighter industry, and Lockheed Martin would have a monopoly, and three, they thought the Navy might need more F/A-18s if the F-35 program faltered. So they cut a deal with Boeing - Boeing told them the minimum number of F/A-18s they would need to buy to keep the line open and breakeven, and the US would buy them. The US did that for two years, and now it is looking at big buys of the F/A-18 to recapitalize the fleet. But to keep the line open required buying about 10 F/A-18s per year.

It would have been the same with the B-2 or B-1B. To keep production open, the Air Force would have had to been buying probably a few of each, every year, for the past 20 and 30 years respectively. You may think "well yeah", but consider costs you aren't thinking about: cost of ownership. The Air Force has 66 B-1Bs in the fleet, but another 44 in various states in the Boneyard (some in pretty decent shape, many raided for spare parts). It removed those from the fleet because within it's budget, it figured having 66 B-1Bs is the magic number. 80 would be too costly. 100 would be too costly. Every B-1B it owns it would have to pay for every year, in terms of maintenance and flight hours.

If they had been buying B-1Bs this entire time, they would have well over 100 B-1Bs in the fleet, and proportionately greater cost of ownership.

[Paranoid Android]

You kill me @Skroe. At least when you make a thread you are complete.

I will be short in my words. Military Industrial Complex.

[Zeta333]

So you tell me, why is there need for more of them, when even last ones remained unused? The jihadis can be bombed with WW2 era gear, and that's where the limit of use has seemed to be for many decades, and some more to come.

because they dont tell joe neckbeard on mmochampion the exact missions or wether they have used thier previous ones. You have not a god damn clue in fucking hell if they have been used or not aside from your armchair googling.

[Azadina]

Who pays for keeping production lines operational?

Taxpayers.

I don't think you quite understand the economics of the industry. If you have wielders lets say, tasked to the B-2 program, and they aren't building the B-2, because the country isn't ordering anymore, then their employer (in this example, Northrop) would be paying them to do nothing, and Northrop would be bleeding money from that (human resources are among the largest expenditures of any procurement program). A line that isn't producing is uneconomical, so in order to keep the line open, the US would have to keep ordering B-2s.

And it's not just the wielders at the final assembly plant. It's the contractor in Ohio that makes like custom fittings. If they aren't producing for the B-2 program, then do they just get paid to exist? How do they keep open? Somebody has to pay them for something? It's chemical companies that produce the materials for the surface coating. Do they just keep their plant hot for 20 years, despite not producing?

Like do you understand what you're asking? You're asking that we have a production line, ready to go, forever, and that nobody pays for it, even when it isn't producing. But how is that possible if it is to keep people employed for decades on end?

The direct analog to this situation is the F/A-18E Super Hornet production line. The Navy had completed it's F/A-18 and E/A-18 buy a couple of years ago. it wans't looking to buy anymore. And Boeing (the contractor) was wrapping up foreign sales. Which meant that the F/A-18E line was going to have to shut down. Congress wasn't pleased about this - one, it would mean a loss of jobs, and two it would mean Boeing would exit the fighter industry, and Lockheed Martin would have a monopoly, and three, they thought the Navy might need more F/A-18s if the F-35 program faltered. So they cut a deal with Boeing - Boeing told them the minimum number of F/A-18s they would need to buy to keep the line open and breakeven, and the US would buy them. The US did that for two years, and now it is looking at big buys of the F/A-18 to recapitalize the fleet. But to keep the line open required buying about 10 F/A-18s per year.

It would have been the same with the B-2 or B-1B. To keep production open, the Air Force would have had to been buying probably a few of each, every year, for the past 20 and 30 years respectively. You may think "well yeah", but consider costs you aren't thinking about: cost of ownership. The Air Force has 66 B-1Bs in the fleet, but another 44 in various states in the Boneyard (some in pretty decent shape, many raided for spare parts). It removed those from the fleet because within it's budget, it figured having 66 B-1Bs is the magic number. 80 would be too costly. 100 would be too costly. Every B-1B it owns it would have to pay for every year, in terms of maintenance and flight hours.

If they had been buying B-1Bs this entire time, they would have well over 100 B-1Bs in the fleet, and proportionately greater cost of ownership.

Solution is extremely simple. One you might have overlooked, even tho you did touch upon continuous buying. Guess what it is? Buy continuously, but here comes the very important part: without demanding xxx number planes within first few years. Why do you need production line for 50 planes a year to be open, when you could simply have it for one or two. That's right, minimal crew making one or two planes. You don't need to even gather grew and tools for 50 plane production line to begin with, and then turn it all off because "too costly", or minimal crew after churning them out en masse the first years, because "too costly". Start with the minimal crew. There you have it, production line open for 30 years, with new planes rolling out the whole time. No need for any sort of restarts either that way.

because they dont tell joe neckbeard on mmochampion the exact missions or wether they have used thier previous ones. You have not a god damn clue in fucking hell if they have been used or not aside from your armchair googling.

Pretty sure I know they haven't done raids on Russian or Chinese ICBM sites. Guarantee. You can take your clue and shove it.

[melodramocracy]

Remember when big gov't spending was the perceived source of all our issues?

Good times.

[Skroe]

Solution is extremely simple. One you might have overlooked, even tho you did touch upon continuous buying. Guess what it is? Buy continuously, but here comes the very important part: without demanding xxx number planes within first few years. Why do you need production line for 50 planes a year to be open, when you could simply have it for one or two. That's right, minimal crew making one or two planes. You don't need to even gather grew and tools for 50 plane production line to begin with, and then turn it all off because "too costly", or minimal crew after churning them out en masse the first years, because "too costly". Start with the minimal crew. There you have it, production line open for 30 years, with new planes rolling out the whole time. No need for any sort of restarts either that way.
.

That's just not how it works, in two specific ways. To explain why it isn't, and why it can't change unless we radically change a POLITICAL question, I need to give two specific examples and draw a contrast.

From the point that Congress gives the Navy the go-ahead and allocates the first dollar, to the point at which it deploys on it's first trip across the ocean, it takes about 14 years to put an aircraft carrier to sea. However it comparatively only takes about 5 years to actually build the thing - from first wield to flooding the drydock with water to let it float the first time. The other 9 years, spread on either side, is spent on materials procurement (aircraft carriers are big), integrating systems (pre-build radars, computers, etc), and testing (do the catapults work? Is there leaks? Does anything break?).

Budgetarily though, in the post-Cold War era, the Pentagon buys Aircraft carriers every 5 years, and one at a time. And by "buy" i mean, a new one shows up in the annual budget and authorization. Right now the "buying things" budget has two aircraft carriers in it: the USS John F. Kennedy, which is about 75% complete, and the USS Enterprise, which has been in the budget for two years now. In three years, the fourth Ford-class carrier will show up.

Buying it in this fashion directly contributes to the ~$12 billion cost of the Fords, compared with the $4-$6.5 billion cost of the later Nimitz class carriers, which were on 4 year procurement timelines with around a 10 year end-to-end turn out. With the Nimitz classes, buying it at that rate allowed for early procurement of materials. Critically importantly to my argument against your point, suppliers and subcontractors knew they would have business for 3 new carriers over the next 7 years, so they could sell in bulk, the government could buy in bulkd, and suppliers would not have to take on other projects. This kept costs hugely down. The Navy would buy materials for ships without names, because it was certain it was going to buy it.

That is not the situation now, and it is POLITICAL that this is the case. The 5 year build plan is coupled with a deeply uncertain future commitment to carrier building. Will the US build more Ford classes every 4-5 years after the Enterprise? Yes it will. Is that written in stone, like it with was with the Nimitzs from 1982 to 2007? Not remotely. The Pentagon is NOT ALLOWED to buy for more than one ship at a time (they've asked) and because of that, suppliers charge higher prices and take on other projects because the Pentagon buys too slow and isn't consistent enough.

The way around this - and I'll offer an example below - is multi-year procurement and fixed budgets. What suppliers need now, which they have not had for a decade, is a predictable defense budget.

The US is currently building two Virginia class Submarines per year. It's one of the biggest military-industrial complex successes in decades. The most advanced attack sub in the world, nuclear powered, built on a 36 month build schedule, with a 7 year end-to-end timeline. The Virginia class has seen four major redesigns in it's life time - they've pretty much rebuilt over half the ship from the USS Virginia to the latest one - and despite all that the price, adjusted for inflation, keeps falling. The ships are delivered on schedule and under budget. It's so successful the Navy is looking at increasing the build rate to 3 subs a year in the 2020s, to replace the Los Angeles class attack subs that will be retiring then (the Navy is retiring subs faster than it is producing them).

So how does the Virgina program do it? Block buys. They tell the industry, we're going to buy two this year, and two next year, and two the year after, and we're going to pay for the materials for four of them now, and four more in two years. This has allowed suppliers to keep costs low and lines open, because the flow of tax dollars to them is predictable and economical to their businesses.

So how does this relate to what you post? Your rate of buying is too low. If the line is not economical on an annual basis, suppliers will go bust, or decline to sell. These are private businesses. And I don't mean the big contractors like Lockheed. I mean the subcontractors. The companies you've never heard of. The equivalent of that factory in Ohio that makes specialized fittings that just the B-21 uses.

If the buying rate is that low, suppliers and subcontractors will charge more. Furthermore it will lead to speculation that procurement could be curtailed at any time. They'll think "sure the government will buy this year, and maybe next year. But what about the year after that? Not a sure thing". And they'll have good reason to think that because there could be a change in political power after an election.

You know who identified this problem by the way? Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. He laid out, in 2011, a 10 year budget roadmap that he advocated for (as did Obama, briefly), and Congress considered passing. THe roadmap would have set fixed defense budgets through 2021, to give the entire industrial complex a predictable funding horizon for everything. But after he quit, Obama ignored the entire plan and utlized the insane Budget Control Act (and Sequestration) to lead to defense Cuts. And now the opposite has happened. Because Congress struggles to pass budgets - often doing continuing resolutions, which fund things at the prior years levels in leiu of new authorization and budget bills - the industry has less sense now than ever if the money they can expect in their contracts next year will be the same as this year.

For example, you saw the chart above. The B-21 bomber program is supposed to grow from a few hundred million per year to billions per years in coming years. That must be explicitly authorized in a budget. If there are continuing resolutions, or sequestration, the budget won't increase, which means that Northrop, which expects say, $2 billion in 2019, will only get $400 million. This risk increases costs for them (since they have to pay subcontractors regardless), which they then pass onto the customer, aka the US taxpayer.

So the root of all evil here is not even a military one. It's a policy one. Congress must pass budgets, early, every year, and commit to buys many years in advance. And provided it does that, it has to build at a rate that is economical to the entire supply chain, which your suggestion does not allow for.

----

So that's reason one. Reason two is rather straightforward: It is far more expensive to operate two types of vehicles at once.

When there is only like, three B-21s in the fleet, they'll cost nothing. But what happens when there are 20? What happens when there are 40? It's not just planes in a hangar. There is entire support system behind it. Thousands of maintainers, specialized facilties, training teams, squadrons. It is VASTLY more expensive to have two of those in parallel, doing the same job, than to have one.

A decade ago, the US had 45 F-117s flying around, as it had since the late 1980s. They were in terriffic shape. Their stealth wasn't as effective as it once was, but it was till a very capable aircraft with some capabilities that only the F-35 is just now replacing. But the F-117 was retired, sumarily, in one year. Why? Because the Air Force needed to repurpose the entire F-117 support infrastructure (from people, to facilities, to machinery) to support the F-22 Raptor, that was entering the service at a rate of about 20 a year at that point. Continuing to operate both in parallel would have required the Air Force to build new facilities and employ thousands more airmen and civilian workers, when the F-22 had better stealth and though it could not carry as large a bomb, could do most of the jobs the F-117 could. So they made the decision to rapidly retire the F-117 and retask everyone.

Another example is with the introduction of Arleigh Burke class Destroyer in the late 1990s. The US had Spruance Class Destroyers from the 1980s. They were in great shape, but they were not build with the Burke's more advanced design (Burke was a true leap forward). But they were fine ships that could have been perfect for the fleet for 20+ more years. What happened? As soon as the Burke rapidly entered service (now at 70 ships), the Navy rapidly retired the Spurance, some having served barely 15 years and in excellent shape. It did so because economically, on it's year-to -year bugets, it would have to hire more people, build more faiclities and sustain more infrastructure to have two parallel classes of destroyers, than to support one. And to just drive the point home, and avoid another "Reagan", whose 600 ship fleet plan saddled the navy with up-modded antiques it didn't want, the Navy rapidly sank or dismantled the Spurances, so they didn't get a second chance.

Now the Air Force could continued to have keep the F-117 fleet flying to the present, and kept the Spurances until 2020, but that would require more airman, more sailors and more money. Money Congress made the political decision to CHOOSE not to allocate.

It comes down to this. With the B-21, it will be more expensive to slow drip it in the fleet and have the air force pay for 4 air frames at one time, than to rapidly procure 20 per year for 10 years, and equally rapidly scrap the B-1B, the B-52, then the B-2 in that order, so that by 2040-ish, the Air Force is flying EXACTLY one bomber, and by virtue of that, enjoying the efficiencies of having monolithic training and support infrastructure

- - - Updated - - -

You kill me @Skroe. At least when you make a thread you are complete.

I will be short in my words. Military Industrial Complex.

I was hoping for a bit more nuance from people then "Military Industrial Complex" ><

Please read the post I just made above. It's a weird intermix of industrial, economic and defense policy that people should be better informed about so they know where their tax dollars go.

It may be counter intuitive to people less inclined to spend tax dollars on guns over butter, for the Pentagon to buy a bunch of bombers really quickly, and retire the legacy bomber force equally quickly, but it is, surprisingly, by far the cheaper route than doing a slow introduction that sees tax dollars spread across 4 airframes for many years, rather than 4 for a short period of time, 3 for a short period, two briefly, then finally just one.

And it is probably counter-intuitive to think that buying three aircraft carriers at once is cheaper than buying one at a time, if the country intends to buy three in the first place.

[Azadina]

So how does the Virgina program do it? Block buys. They tell the industry, we're going to buy two this year, and two next year, and two the year after, and we're going to pay for the materials for four of them now, and four more in two years. This has allowed suppliers to keep costs low and lines open, because the flow of tax dollars to them is predictable and economical to their businesses.

So how does this relate to what you post? Your rate of buying is too low. If the line is not economical on an annual basis, suppliers will go bust, or decline to sell. These are private businesses. And I don't mean the big contractors like Lockheed. I mean the subcontractors. The companies you've never heard of. The equivalent of that factory in Ohio that makes specialized fittings that just the B-21 uses.

If the buying rate is that low, suppliers and subcontractors will charge more. Furthermore it will lead to speculation that procurement could be curtailed at any time. They'll think "sure the government will buy this year, and maybe next year. But what about the year after that? Not a sure thing". And they'll have good reason to think that because there could be a change in political power after an election.

Sounds like something transferable to what I suggested. How is the buy rate too low, if for the next 30 years few are bought per year? The bombers aren't very cheap at all I imagine, so 5 let's say, per year, is quite a sum of money. Do that for 20-30 years, and I think we got the predictable part nailed down too.

Politics? Not my problem It's doable, but not done. That's not fault of my suggestion. Also, to address your second point:

You say that's it's cheaper to run one platform, instead of multiple. Fair enough, but until the time you replace the B-2's, you are still running multiple platforms. You say by 2040's. But then you talked of fancy hypersonic bombers to roll out too, as the quality toys, in another post. So you would be yet again running more than one platform simultaneously. Making the one platform = cheap point, while accurate maybe, ultimately irrelevant.

Also, when you say something is cheaper to mass produce, then dump the production capability, I do hope you are counting in that calculation the eventual restart costs, or since restart cost being high, having to build always new and newer version, at again high costs. Add those in, and see if the model is still cheaper. I doubt it is.