US Air Force Unveils New B-21 Bomber

[Kellhound]

But are they enough of an improvement to justify the cost?

Short term very much so, as soon as stealth is defeated universally it will still be better but not greatly more than the Super Hornet.

[SodiumChloride]

Yes and here it is. Sort of. This is the Demonstrator. The "YF-22" of the program. Mitsubishi X-2 Shinshin

...

Wonder what the design goals of the plane are.

Quick and cheap to develop and deploy stop gap measure? As you said, it's an F15 with stealth and thrust vectoring glued on.

Wonder if they are still going to buy F-35s (which from what I heard China cloned it via industrial espionage) and how it stacks up against it.

[Astronom]

The F-22 is a late 90s/early 2000s aircraft. the F-35 is a late 2000s-mid 2010s aircraft.

I get the general impression the F-35 is a worse aircraft in many ways than the F-22, and that cutting F-22 production short so they could sink more resources into the F-35 was a mistake.

The F-35 design appears to be fundamentally flawed by trying to make it fit into too many roles at once, which has compromised its design. It is a capable aircraft, but for the incredible amount of money that has been sunk into its development it should be far more capable. But having invested so much in it, the US is now stuck with it.

[Kellhound]

I get the general impression the F-35 is a worse aircraft in many ways than the F-22, and that cutting F-22 production short so they could sink more resources into the F-35 was a mistake.

The F-35 design appears to be fundamentally flawed by trying to make it fit into too many roles at once, which has compromised its design. It is a capable aircraft, but for the incredible amount of money that has been sunk into its development it should be far more capable. But having invested so much in it, the US is now stuck with it.

The F-22 should be the superior fighter, that is what it was designed for. The F-35 is clearly superior to the F-22 as a strike fighter though.

[Skroe]

I get the general impression the F-35 is a worse aircraft in many ways than the F-22, and that cutting F-22 production short so they could sink more resources into the F-35 was a mistake.

"worse" is too subjective. It's simply different.

The F-22 was designed from the outset to be the ultimate evolved air superiority fighter for the Air Force (and historically maybe the Navy) that capitalized on advances in 1990s stealth, computing and and manufacturing over the F-117 and to a degree the B-2. But it's a program that was envisioned in the 1980s, was developed across the 1990s, and only mass produced in the 2000s and 2010s. It was designed only with the US military in mind.

The Joint Strike Fighter / F-35 was designed to be the F-16 successor program for not just the USAF, but also many allies air forces whose F-16s would be reaching the 20-25 year mark by the time their orders started to be fulfilled (so they would need to buy something new, or new F-16s). The Navy and Marines were a core part of the program as well, with the Marines wanting to replace the Harrier. The air frame certainly is compromised by that requirement.

But they are fundamentally different. The F-35 has many technological advances that - if you put the air frame aside and look at the systems - make it the superior to the F-22 in many ways. There are many technologies in it that the Air Force would like to retrofit to the F-22, but only some of those are possible because the F-35 is a big step ahead of it from the systems viewpoint. However the F-35 also built on engineering lessons of the F-22.

The root problem with the F-35 is the program design was flawed from the get go. A decade ago the DoD was all about buying as the thing was being developed, and as advances are made, upgrading all purchased copies to the current standard. This contrasts with buying a finished product. The thought was that this would be cheaper and get the F-35 into the fleet sooner, but it hasn't worked out that way for F-35, or most other programs that adopted that contracting model (one the B-21 doesn't use).

The F-35 is actually at least two distinct projects technically speaking. There is a the landmark technological program, that is being spun off into other plaforms (the B-21 is heavily leveraging F-35 technologies) that historically mirrors the strategic technological investment with the F-15 decades ago. From the F-35, the country will get an entire host of technologies. On the other hand there is the actual fighter program that is producing an aircraft, reportedly, better performing than anticipated, but well short of what was envisioned (and also way late). Fundamentally, this reflects that the F-35 fighter program perhaps should have been partially decoupled from the technological program, to produce something less sophisticated, but cheaper and a decade earlier.

This is a difficult problem though. The F-35 is slammed regularly for it's short comings, but so was the F-22 for a solid decade, until people turned their attention to the F-35 and the F-22's problems were resolved. The F-35 could easily follow that path, especially if it is re-engined next decade with the ADVENT engine (nearly every American fighter in the last 40 years has debuted with a different engine than the one it's flying with now) for greater range and efficiency. The F-35 could end up saving America the round of fighter procurement, if the design has legs. Or it could not. The F-22 example shows it's worth keeping an open mind.

The F-35 didn't kill the F-22. Rather the Iraq War's costs officially cut the already-cut F-22 order in half in the mid 00s. And in 2011 the Obama Administration killed future procurement. Some highly ironic stuff about it being a Cold War weapon unsuitable for the wars we're likely to fight. Funny that eh? We could use some Cold War style weapons about now. Thankfully that loser only has 8 months left.

What you'll see in coming years is attention shift away from the F-35 as it's problems get worked out, and probably shift to the B-21. Fundamentally, it's political. Some people (like David Axe) won't be happy until the USAF is flying nothing but AirLand Scorpions and doing nothing but fighting terrorists.

The F-35 design appears to be fundamentally flawed by trying to make it fit into too many roles at once, which has compromised its design. It is a capable aircraft, but for the incredible amount of money that has been sunk into its development it should be far more capable. But having invested so much in it, the US is now stuck with it.

It's still probably cheaper than three independent fighter programs. It's really a matter of perspective. There's so many roads not taken, it's still unclear if any of them are better.

For example, perhaps the Marines could have built a true Harrier successor in some kind of joint program with the British, rather than have their requirements taint the F-35. However the F-35B offers superior capability on paper to ANY Harrier or Harrier-like jump jet. It allows the Amphibious Assault Ships to truly act like medium sized carriers. So with the F-35B, you can say, clearly, that once the problems get worked out, the Marines get something hugely better than what they had (which isn't saying much), and probably better than all the alternatives, but at what cost?

The F-35A, in many ways, resembles the F-16C as it was used, rather than as it was bought. When the Lightweight Fighter program began, it was purposed entirely around a cheap, expendable fighter. Export wasn't really envisioned. But the F-16 became mostly used as an attack aircraft, and it became the marquee US military aircraft export (with few F-15 buyers comparatively). The F-35A is in many ways, exactly that - a stealthed up, modernized F-16C with better sensors. Free of the Marines's constraints, it would be more maneuverable, and maybe could carry more internally, but it wouldn't be too different. The engine choice, for example, was driven by the Air Force, which had to convince the Navy to put a single-engine aircraft on a carrier.

I think this last point is critical in evaluating the F-35. Free of the Marines, the F-35 would probably be a higher, F-16 style performer in a clean configuration.

I think the F-35 is missing a marquee "buying rationale" and that challenges it. The F-22, for example, was designed to be the ultimate air superiority fighter. The F-35 has a lot of amazing advancements in terms of sensors, systems designs, artificial intelligence, human computer interaction. But the attempted story behind it - that the reason the Air Force and Navy are so excited about it is because it's ability to be this amazing all in one sensor/electronic warfare/flying router thing (on paper of course) is a story that is pretty profound if you follow this stuff, but makes for a less exciting description compared to the F-22.

I wouldn't be too eager to dismiss the F-35. A lot of the folks out there - David Axe, John McCain, Ash Carter to name a few - that went after the F-22 have magically forgotten their years long campaign against a program that was experiencing natural growing pains. A few years from now, when those same folks are going after the B-21 because how dare the US spend billions of dollars on something big, for all we know the F-35 could be in tip top shape.

- - - Updated - - -

Wonder what the design goals of the plane are.

Quick and cheap to develop and deploy stop gap measure? As you said, it's an F15 with stealth and thrust vectoring glued on.

Wonder if they are still going to buy F-35s (which from what I heard China cloned it via industrial espionage) and how it stacks up against it.

From the design? It's completely an air superiority fighter. Everything in it is designed around super maneuverability. It would compliment the F-35 well, because the F-35 is a mid-performance strike air craft.

And China ripped off some basic air frame design for the F-35 in their J-31, but reportedly, it mostly just looks the part. The Chinese can't make the computers, can't build the software, and most of all, can't build engines to save their lives.

[SodiumChloride]

From the design? It's completely an air superiority fighter. Everything in it is designed around super maneuverability. It would compliment the F-35 well, because the F-35 is a mid-performance strike air craft.

And China ripped off some basic air frame design for the F-35 in their J-31, but reportedly, it mostly just looks the part. The Chinese can't make the computers, can't build the software, and most of all, can't build engines to save their lives.

That's a relief.

A good many countries will be relying on the F-35 including the US to contained China.

[caervek]

Wonder what the design goals of the plane are.

Quick and cheap to develop and deploy stop gap measure? As you said, it's an F15 with stealth and thrust vectoring glued on.

The X-2 is to the F-15 what the Su-35S is to the Su-27, essentially the ultimate evolution of the design/concept. While neither is going to be going toe to toe with the F-22 both will be capable of doing so with almost anything else.

[xuros]

Aside from the engines, looks nearly the same as the B-2:



What woudl be the advantages of this plane? Do we need a long range strike bomber in a world increasingly dominated by cruise missiles and drones?

"STEALTH" Bombers. They mostly fly night OPs where its hard to see with the eye and even harder to pick up on any kind of radar. Very cool planes.

[ringpriest]

I'll spare you the effort. But I do want to say you came into this thread with that post i responded to salty. I regret and apologize for calling your a liar, but neither was your response to my post about the aims of the EMALS warranted. In fact you did it again. Right here:


Everything I have said about the _why_ with regards to EMALS is Navy justification as to why. My opinion may be different. But in the first post you responded to, I listed the basic goals for EMALS - reachable or not they are the program goals - that for some reason you mistook for advocacy on them? My being for or againstg EMALS doesn't change the fact that those reasons are the ones the navy justifies itself for.

And then then the follow up post, with your response here, you do it again. I'm going to illustrate how.

It is a fact that the Navy has twice evolved the already evolved Nimitz the design in the past decade, first with the USS Ronald Reagan, and then again with the USS George H.W. Bush. Both are quite different from each other, and even more different from the Harry S Truman, which was the last of the early 80s post-Carter Nimitz restart (Truman was delivered in 1996).

It is a fact that the Nimitz design was effectively maxed out in the form of the Bush. The next step was going to be a carrier with a new nuclear power plant in order to provide more energy for ever more electrified systems, and to reduce crew size. But if you're going to do that, you might as well build a new carrier family, which is what the Navy ended up doing. It is a fundamental redesign.

It is also a fact that for the past decade and a half the Navy has been planning for the Navy of the future. Some of those initiatives have fallen far far short - the DDG-1000 program for example. Others, like the Virginia attack sub program, have been huge successes. But the image is one of an electric navy, armed with advanced weaponry - especially rail guns and lasers - in large part to finally defeat the decades of "Tyranny of the Missile" problem. This vision, is a fundamental break from the net-energy negative warships of the 1980s that had to switch off systems because the ship doesn't produce enough power.

It is also a fact that the Navy is sensitive to the operating costs and fleet-compatible capability of it's ships. Many times in the past 20 years have ships been retired a decade or more early because they were expensive to run (the USS John F Kennedy) or had been made obsolete by new technologies (the non-VLS nuclear cruisers, any non VLS destroyers).

So here's the Navy's problem. This is their argument, but this is how I see it as well. They could in a different world, instead of building the leap-ahead but unfinished and costly pay-as-you-go Ford class, could have built another one or two George H.W. Bush clones. With the same comparative limitations. Now those limitations may not matter now. But this is a ship that the Navy will have for 50+years. There is a good chance, given prior history, that the Reagan and Bush will serve comparably shorter lives than the retired Enterprise, the Constellation, or the Nimitz. Because when they're in their mid to late fourth decade, they'll be the last of the non-Ford carrier family and be of limited capability compared to their evolved-Ford counterparts. And what do you want to bet, that just as the Navy prematurely retired all those perfectly good ships without VLS or without Aegis years early, they will do the same to the last of the Nimitzes, when they're the last energy-neutral or energy-negative ships in a mid 21st century all-electric fleet? And they'll probably do it in the name of speeding up the successor class of carrier.

So you see the problem? If they built more Bushes, they'd be saddled with something more useful now, but something increasingly obsolete as decades roll on. By contrast, making a big investment in the Ford now can mature an entire family of technologies that "futureproof" the basic Ford carrier so it can be ready for an evolved variant in 20 years, by which point it'll have electromagnetic catapults, and most of all, that much more powerful nuclear core, already integrated into it. This is actually, no different than the argument between building the fastest, best sailing ship you can, or forging ahead with the first militarized steam ships.

Maybe if carriers had 30 year lifecycles instead of 50, this would be different, but even with destroyers, which do have 30 year life cycles, we're seeing the Navy retrofit them to be net-energy producers in preparation for deployment next decade of these exotic weapons. Better for them to have the power plant now as to be armed with such weapons tomorrow, than to do both at once, basically.

Look, we've discussed this before, and I'm certain you've read my anti-contractor, anti-lockheed rants (which makes your line about me parroting contractors all the more bizarre). And certainly the F-35, LCS, DDG-1000 and Ford programs have been contracting faiasco. But the fact remains that the B-21 model of a "matured technlogies" for the sake of a numbers-driven program is not always the right solution. It certainly is with the B-21, because the bomber fleet is aging and the B-2 fleet is so limited. But consider if history had worked out differently, and B-1B was cut and 80 B-2s were prodcured. The situation would be different. Furthermore consider what happens when in ten years or so, the Air Force decides to invest big in the 2037 Bomber program that will be a B-2 scale megaproject. Are all breakthrough programs automatically a mistake? Frankly, if our allies opinion means anything, those are the most important kind of programs. The head of the Royal Netherlands Air Force, for example, criticized the Army's Future Vertical Lift program (that will replace the Blackhawk family first) as being "not ambitious enough". Sure, one contender is a tiltrotor like the V-22 and the other is a compound rotor with a rear propeller, and both are significantly faster than any other mass produced helicopter in the world, but in the words of that General:



So you can do a kind of point by point if you want, but I don't see the point. This is my general response. Don't mistake me for being apologetic for the Ford Class' problems. Far from it actually. However at the same time, technological stagnation only gets you a military like Russia's. There are time for mature technology buy programs - the F-35 / JSF program should have been that. But there are also time for breakthrough programs. I think given it's huge cost and lifecycle, that's appropriate for a carrier

Otherwise what? We spent billions now to get 40 years instead of 50-55 out of more Bush-subclass carriers?

EMALS has been a joke for a long, long time, one that's finally come home to roost in the last year - I just have a really, really hard time believing that anyone who has been paying the slightest attention can take the program seriously at this point, no matter what the Navy and GA are claiming. It's as though, instead of building a ship that could support a laser, or railgun, the Navy were to start production on a class that required a laser or railgun, even though there wasn't one operational. EMALS was never ready for production, and it was shocking when the Navy decided to install it on the Ford-class - there's been a mixture of despair and schadenfreude as the program crashed and burned.

The Navy has wanted electromagnetic launch in some form for forever and a day. When EMALS was announced for the Ford, there was a great deal of skepticism. But they managed to get it working at a base level (i.e. launching aircraft) well over five years ago (which some had doubted it could ever do). But that's where the real problems started. It's not enough to just be able to launch aircraft sometimes, with a lot of work, just like its not enough to own a car that starts sometimes, with a lot of work. Three years ago, EMALS was supposed to start improving reliability, reducing Mean Time Between Failures - it didn't; instead, other problems cropped up. And the Navy, GA and Newport News went ahead "full steam" anyway, confident that the mission-killing bugs would be worked out along the way. And they kept charging blithely ahead until the big demo last summer when it when went over like a lead balloon.

And since then they've been stuck, despite endless rounds of testing there's been zero progress - to all appearances EMALS cannot progress beyond "doesn't work well enough for operations" and that reality has been slowly filtering up the chain to Congress, which is in the process of demanding the accounting that has not been forthcoming. (And the corresponding new, high-tech arrest system, AAG, from the same contractor, is in even worse shape.)

It's like the Tarawa-class, only far worse - if it had been approached rationally, EMALS would have been installed as one catapult (I'd guess on the waist). While that would have resulted in a single ship that was something of a kludge design, it would have still worked even if EMALS failed, as it appears to be doing. (And no, the failures are not all software related - there are multiple physical problems, including failing components that should never fail and require cutting massive holes in the hull to remove and replace. That's hardly an impossibility, but neither is it any sort of good sign.)

Instead, we've got an entire carrier class that's at risk, because the Navy and its contractors decided to be penny-wise and pound-foolish, they built a production carrier as a technology testbed. If the Ford fails shock testing next year or EMALS and AAG can't be forced to work, the whole program is going to explode and the carrier build schedule along with it. Or to put in another way, the Navy is about to accept delivery, "declare operational" and put in commisison, an aircraft carrier that cannot conduct air operations (but don't worry, it'll be able to fly aircraft "real soon"). /headdesk /headdesk /headdesk

Well first of all, they're connect and you shouldn't try and draw circles around them. Wing size, wing numbers, they're all just artificial constructs. Either a Navy has the planes or it doesn't have the planes.

I mean consider this. How many Carriers does the Navy has? 11? 10? 5? or 3? How many Cruisers does it have? 20? 16? 15? or 8? How many M1 tanks does the ARmy have? 3500? 5500? 8000?

In all cases, it depends how you count, and the driving factor behind it is saving money.

There is likely to be one reduced wing, that will be stood up again in a few years. Air wings get reduced now, as the F/A-18C which has seen the wings flown off of it, is retired, and the F-35 phased in. Between F-35 buys and the huge number of Super Hornet and Growlers being forced on the Navy, there is certainly no shortage of planes.

So why not put 90 on a carrier right now? To save money. If things started heating up with China, you'd see your 90 carrier air wing. But do the planes exist (right now as F-18Cs, on day as F-35s)? Absolutely. They're just shore based or reorganized.

The Army example with it's tanks, is the best example. With it's 10 Armored Brigades, the Army strictly speaking has around 3000-3500 M1A2 and M1A2 SEP tanks (the M1A1s are being upgraded to SEP). Sounds small? It also has an additional 5000+ M1A1s propositioned in storage around the world. Except those 5000 aren't attached to any brigade right now. But in a crisis, if the Army stood up more Armored brigades, they would be.

This is exactly the same debate, mind you, that Congress is freaking out about now, in having the Army size cut to 450,000. It would take something like two years give or take, to stand it up to 520,000 again, as happened in the Iraq War, which given the US Sea and Air based strategy at the moment, is perfectly acceptable. But everything to do that enlargement already exists. It's just a matter of standing it up.

There is an old and very true aphorism: "train how you fight, fight how you train". While I have no doubt that somewhere there is someone (or someones) who thinks that, in case of war, the Navy can simply double carrier wing size (or even worse, double squadron size), with no loss in performance, they are wrong - it would lead to a clusterfail of epic proportions. Could we get the logistic and organizational bugs worked out? Absolutely - but it would take longer than any war we'd ever want to fight.

Of course, that also begs the question - where are these extra aircraft (and pilots, and aircrews) going to come from? Will we raid other air wings (which as you mentioned are themselves being slowly cut), leaving other carriers useless and unable to surge because they lack aircraft? Loot the Fleet Replacement Squadron, leaving us zero margin for operational and combat losses? Will a magic wand be waved over air wings that are recovering from recent deployments, so that they can be instantly thrown back into the field at full efficiency?

This ties back into something I've seen you do here on MMO-Champion multiple times, but it's by no means a unique failing - you're just reflecting a attitude prevalent in policymakers, talking heads, and, sadly, far too many officers: having grown used to fighting opponents we completely outclass, and being able to pick our fights, the military (and much of its civilian oversight) fails to grok that we will not always be able to dictate the time and place of conflict, or necessarily control the pace of combat. (We've also become slow to react, with glacial, bureaucracy-bound OODA loops.) There's an institutional unwillingness to realize that you fight with the military you have, not the military you want.

Which brings us back to EMALS, and AAG (and DBR and then we're going to do the whole song and dance routine on the Kennedy with EASR).

I'm not opposed to the military going bleeding edge (and beyond) high-tech - it almost has to, given our national commitments and the fact that we've come to depend on technical dominance (sometimes at the expense of actual personnel quality - but that's a discussion for another day). But at the same time, as we're seeing with many programs, from the Ford-class to the F-35, to the LCS and the new anti-ship missile and countless other boondoggles going all the way back to the early 90s, there's a difference between high-tech and repeatedly rolling the dice by building systems around technologies that don't even exist, or are not anywhere near mature, when the project is greenlit.

The problem you (and the Navy, and much of DoD) are glossing over is that while the bugs are being worked out of the Ford (and the LCS, and the F-35, and so so) you're making two potentially fatal mistakes - first, it's a trade off of present capability for (presumed/hoped-for) future capability; and secondly, it's a crap-shoot, where a cheaper, possibly earlier high-tech payoff is risked against massive loss of capability. Consider what happens if the F-35 and Ford-class gambles (and gambles is exactly what they are) don't pay off with usable system in the end - then the US is down three carriers (because the whole production schedule will be fucked) and our "committed to high-tech" military will be stuck with last-generation aircraft. Oops. And the approved "fix" by some in the defense industry will be to, like any gambling addict, double-down again.

And that's the better of the two worst case scenarios - a much worse one is what happens if war breaks out with China in the next year or three. Exactly who gets to go tell the PLA, "Hey, we need to to postpone this whole shooting vessels in the Spratly's, seizing the Senkaku's, bombing Taiwan thing for 5-10 years - we'll let you know when we're ready, okay?"

And there is really no serious way to claim the F-35C is less capable than the F/A-18Cs they'd be replacing.

Availability and maintenance - logistics isn't sexy, but it wins and loses wars. An F/A-18 in the air beats an F-35C sitting in the hangar deck every single time.

To go back to DOT&E, from the F-35 report for FY 2015:

Operational suitability of all variants continues to be less than desired by the Services, and relies heavily on contractor support and workarounds that would be difficult to employ in a combat environment. Almost all measures of performance have improved over the past year, but most continue to be below their interim goals to achieve acceptable suitability by the time the fleet accrues 200,000 flight hours, the benchmark set by the program and defined in the Operational Requirements Document (ORD) for the aircraft to meet reliability and maintainability requirements. This level of maturity is further stipulated as 75,000 fl ight hours for the F-35A, 75,000 flight hours for the F-35B, and 50,000 flight hours for the F-35C.
- Aircraft fleet-wide availability averaged 51 percent for 12 months ending October 2015, compared to a goal of 60 percent.
- Availability had been in mid-30s to low-40s percent for the 2-year period ending September 2014. Monthly availability jumped 12 percent to 51 percent by the end of October 2014, one of the largest month-to-month spikes in program history, and then peaked at 56 percent in December 2014. Since then it has remained relatively flat, centering around 50 percent, although it achieved 56 percent again in September 2015.

F-35 aircraft spent 21 percent more time than intended down for maintenance, and waited for parts from supply for 51 percent longer than the program targeted. At any given time, from 1-in-10 to 1-in-5 aircraft were in a depot facility or depot status for major re-work or planned upgrades, and of the fleet that remained in the field, on average, only half were able to fly all missions of even a limited capability set.

You can be as high-tech as you want, but if you can't get sortie rates high enough, if you don't have a good enough ratio of flight hours to maintaince hours, if your reliability isn't high enough then an opponent can simply throw technically obsolete (but cheap and reliable) aircraft into the fight until they win. Hell, they can just abandon the air altogether until you run out of aircraft to drop ordnance from, as everything either eventually crashes or gets grounded for maintenance, and you choke on logistics. The F-35 can win every single confrontation, and still lose the war because its stuck on the ground - something that the smaller squadron size in only going to exacerbate. Pretending otherwise is magical thinking of the kind that helped doom the IJN in WWII, which famously gamed out the war with the assumption that supply wouldn't be an issue.

[Kellhound]

EMALS has been a joke for a long, long time, one that's finally come home to roost in the last year - I just have a really, really hard time believing that anyone who has been paying the slightest attention can take the program seriously at this point, no matter what the Navy and GA are claiming. It's as though, instead of building a ship that could support a laser, or railgun, the Navy were to start production on a class that required a laser or railgun, even though there wasn't one operational. EMALS was never ready for production, and it was shocking when the Navy decided to install it on the Ford-class - there's been a mixture of despair and schadenfreude as the program crashed and burned.

The Navy has wanted electromagnetic launch in some form for forever and a day. When EMALS was announced for the Ford, there was a great deal of skepticism. But they managed to get it working at a base level (i.e. launching aircraft) well over five years ago (which some had doubted it could ever do). But that's where the real problems started. It's not enough to just be able to launch aircraft sometimes, with a lot of work, just like its not enough to own a car that starts sometimes, with a lot of work. Three years ago, EMALS was supposed to start improving reliability, reducing Mean Time Between Failures - it didn't; instead, other problems cropped up. And the Navy, GA and Newport News went ahead "full steam" anyway, confident that the mission-killing bugs would be worked out along the way. And they kept charging blithely ahead until the big demo last summer when it when went over like a lead balloon.

And since then they've been stuck, despite endless rounds of testing there's been zero progress - to all appearances EMALS cannot progress beyond "doesn't work well enough for operations" and that reality has been slowly filtering up the chain to Congress, which is in the process of demanding the accounting that has not been forthcoming. (And the corresponding new, high-tech arrest system, AAG, from the same contractor, is in even worse shape.)

It's like the Tarawa-class, only far worse - if it had been approached rationally, EMALS would have been installed as one catapult (I'd guess on the waist). While that would have resulted in a single ship that was something of a kludge design, it would have still worked even if EMALS failed, as it appears to be doing. (And no, the failures are not all software related - there are multiple physical problems, including failing components that should never fail and require cutting massive holes in the hull to remove and replace. That's hardly an impossibility, but neither is it any sort of good sign.)

Instead, we've got an entire carrier class that's at risk, because the Navy and its contractors decided to be penny-wise and pound-foolish, they built a production carrier as a technology testbed. If the Ford fails shock testing next year or EMALS and AAG can't be forced to work, the whole program is going to explode and the carrier build schedule along with it. Or to put in another way, the Navy is about to accept delivery, "declare operational" and put in commisison, an aircraft carrier that cannot conduct air operations (but don't worry, it'll be able to fly aircraft "real soon"). /headdesk /headdesk /headdesk




There is an old and very true aphorism: "train how you fight, fight how you train". While I have no doubt that somewhere there is someone (or someones) who thinks that, in case of war, the Navy can simply double carrier wing size (or even worse, double squadron size), with no loss in performance, they are wrong - it would lead to a clusterfail of epic proportions. Could we get the logistic and organizational bugs worked out? Absolutely - but it would take longer than any war we'd ever want to fight.

Of course, that also begs the question - where are these extra aircraft (and pilots, and aircrews) going to come from? Will we raid other air wings (which as you mentioned are themselves being slowly cut), leaving other carriers useless and unable to surge because they lack aircraft? Loot the Fleet Replacement Squadron, leaving us zero margin for operational and combat losses? Will a magic wand be waved over air wings that are recovering from recent deployments, so that they can be instantly thrown back into the field at full efficiency?

This ties back into something I've seen you do here on MMO-Champion multiple times, but it's by no means a unique failing - you're just reflecting a attitude prevalent in policymakers, talking heads, and, sadly, far too many officers: having grown used to fighting opponents we completely outclass, and being able to pick our fights, the military (and much of its civilian oversight) fails to grok that we will not always be able to dictate the time and place of conflict, or necessarily control the pace of combat. (We've also become slow to react, with glacial, bureaucracy-bound OODA loops.) There's an institutional unwillingness to realize that you fight with the military you have, not the military you want.

Which brings us back to EMALS, and AAG (and DBR and then we're going to do the whole song and dance routine on the Kennedy with EASR).

I'm not opposed to the military going bleeding edge (and beyond) high-tech - it almost has to, given our national commitments and the fact that we've come to depend on technical dominance (sometimes at the expense of actual personnel quality - but that's a discussion for another day). But at the same time, as we're seeing with many programs, from the Ford-class to the F-35, to the LCS and the new anti-ship missile and countless other boondoggles going all the way back to the early 90s, there's a difference between high-tech and repeatedly rolling the dice by building systems around technologies that don't even exist, or are not anywhere near mature, when the project is greenlit.

The problem you (and the Navy, and much of DoD) are glossing over is that while the bugs are being worked out of the Ford (and the LCS, and the F-35, and so so) you're making two potentially fatal mistakes - first, it's a trade off of present capability for (presumed/hoped-for) future capability; and secondly, it's a crap-shoot, where a cheaper, possibly earlier high-tech payoff is risked against massive loss of capability. Consider what happens if the F-35 and Ford-class gambles (and gambles is exactly what they are) don't pay off with usable system in the end - then the US is down three carriers (because the whole production schedule will be fucked) and our "committed to high-tech" military will be stuck with last-generation aircraft. Oops. And the approved "fix" by some in the defense industry will be to, like any gambling addict, double-down again.

And that's the better of the two worst case scenarios - a much worse one is what happens if war breaks out with China in the next year or three. Exactly who gets to go tell the PLA, "Hey, we need to to postpone this whole shooting vessels in the Spratly's, seizing the Senkaku's, bombing Taiwan thing for 5-10 years - we'll let you know when we're ready, okay?"




Availability and maintenance - logistics isn't sexy, but it wins and loses wars. An F/A-18 in the air beats an F-35C sitting in the hangar deck every single time.

To go back to DOT&E, from the F-35 report for FY 2015:



You can be as high-tech as you want, but if you can't get sortie rates high enough, if you don't have a good enough ratio of flight hours to maintaince hours, if your reliability isn't high enough then an opponent can simply throw technically obsolete (but cheap and reliable) aircraft into the fight until they win. Hell, they can just abandon the air altogether until you run out of aircraft to drop ordnance from, as everything either eventually crashes or gets grounded for maintenance, and you choke on logistics. The F-35 can win every single confrontation, and still lose the war because its stuck on the ground - something that the smaller squadron size in only going to exacerbate. Pretending otherwise is magical thinking of the kind that helped doom the IJN in WWII, which famously gamed out the war with the assumption that supply wouldn't be an issue.

If it really comes to it, the Navy can rebuild a Nimitz a second time. It is far from ideal, but still superior to any other carrier in service.

50% availability of the F-35C greatly exceeds the utility of 80% availability of the F-18C because the Legacy Hornet sucks and always has. It was the greatest travesty ever put on the deck of a super carrier. It wasnt until the Super Hornet that the Navy got the plane they needed to replace the F-4 and A-7. They have still failed to replace the F-14 and A-6 (Which really should have been continued procurement of the F-14D and actually buying the A-6F).

As for increasing the size of an airwing in a crisis, it wouldnt be as bad as you think because of the modular nature of the wings and the larger commonality of parts of most squadrons these days.

[SodiumChloride]

@ringpriest

Regarding EMALS, it's something they will need to get working sooner or later. Being able to launch drones is a big step up for the Navy. The risk is worth the reward IMHO - no need for forward bases to launch drones. Multiple failures are to be expected. Quite sure just about every new tech the US military has ever created - from fighters to drones - failed hardcore the first few times.

If it really comes to it, the Navy can rebuild a Nimitz a second time. It is far from ideal, but still superior to any other carrier in service.

I believe the only problem with the current fleet of Nimitzs is that they are just old.

If the Ford program falls through, they can just keep pumping out Nimitzs with some of the new tech back ported into it as it will fit.

[Kellhound]

@ringpriest

Regarding EMALS, it's something they will need to get working sooner or later. Being able to launch drones is a big step up for the Navy. The risk is worth the reward IMHO - no need for forward bases to launch drones. Multiple failures are to be expected. Quite sure just about every new tech the US military has ever created - from fighters to drones - failed hardcore the first few times.



I believe the only problem with the current fleet of Nimitzs is that they are just old.

If the Ford program falls through, they can just keep pumping out Nimitzs with some of the new tech back ported into it as it will fit.

The hulls are fully capable of being rebuilt a 2nd time.

[Skroe]

So some new developments:

It's almost certain now that the F-35's F-135 engine will be used on the B-21, and this should translate into cost savings for the F-35 program as well.
http://www.defensenews.com/story/def...gine/81637306/

The USAf named a bunch of subcontractors. Pretty much they are putting the B-2 squad back together again (or their successors)
http://www.janes.com/article/58635/u...s-engine-maker


A comparison with the B-2
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the...h-bomber-15352

With the U.S. Air Force revealing concept art and a designation for its shadowy Northrop Grumman B-21 Long Range Strike-Bomber (LRS-B) last week, there are many details that we can now glean about the new warplane.

First and foremost, the new B-21 looks very similar to its B-2 Spirit predecessor. In fact, the new aircraft look startlingly similar to the original Advanced Strategic Penetration Aircraft (ASPA) and the later Advanced Technology Bomber concept from the 1980s that ultimately resulted in the B-2. But the Spirit was redesigned late in the game to operate at low altitudes after Dr. Paul Kaminski’s—current chairman of the Defense Science Board—Red Team cautioned that the B-2 might have to resort to low-level penetration as the Soviets built new, more capable radars—as legendary Aviation Week journalist Bill Sweetman points out in his book “Inside the Stealth Bomber.” The redesign caused a decrease in range and payload, as well as a larger radar cross-section.

If the current B-21 design is truly representative of the direction the Air Force is taking, the new aircraft will take the B-2’s all-aspect stealth design to the next level. Particularly, the B-21’s low observable design will be more effective against low frequency radars operating in the UHF and VHF bands, which are increasingly coming into vogue as a means to counter stealth aircraft. Indeed, as then Air Force chief of staff Gen. Norton Schwartz told the House Armed Services Committee in 2012, even the B-2 is starting to lose its ability penetrate hostile airspace. “The technology on which they were designed with respect to signature management . . . is ‘80s vintage,” Schwartz told the committee, adding, “the reality is that the B-2 over time is going to become less survivable in contested airspace.”

With the U.S. Air Force revealing concept art and a designation for its shadowy Northrop Grumman B-21 Long Range Strike-Bomber (LRS-B) last week, there are many details that we can now glean about the new warplane.

First and foremost, the new B-21 looks very similar to its B-2 Spirit predecessor. In fact, the new aircraft look startlingly similar to the original Advanced Strategic Penetration Aircraft (ASPA) and the later Advanced Technology Bomber concept from the 1980s that ultimately resulted in the B-2. But the Spirit was redesigned late in the game to operate at low altitudes after Dr. Paul Kaminski’s—current chairman of the Defense Science Board—Red Team cautioned that the B-2 might have to resort to low-level penetration as the Soviets built new, more capable radars—as legendary Aviation Week journalist Bill Sweetman points out in his book “Inside the Stealth Bomber.” The redesign caused a decrease in range and payload, as well as a larger radar cross-section.

If the current B-21 design is truly representative of the direction the Air Force is taking, the new aircraft will take the B-2’s all-aspect stealth design to the next level. Particularly, the B-21’s low observable design will be more effective against low frequency radars operating in the UHF and VHF bands, which are increasingly coming into vogue as a means to counter stealth aircraft. Indeed, as then Air Force chief of staff Gen. Norton Schwartz told the House Armed Services Committee in 2012, even the B-2 is starting to lose its ability penetrate hostile airspace. “The technology on which they were designed with respect to signature management . . . is ‘80s vintage,” Schwartz told the committee, adding, “the reality is that the B-2 over time is going to become less survivable in contested airspace.”

That would almost certainly rule out a commercial airliner engine derivative with a large bypass—such an engine would have an extremely large diameter even if it is highly efficient.

A more likely choice is a derivative of an existing military engine that is already in production. Possible choices could include unaugmented derivatives of the F-15 and F-16’s Pratt & Whitney F100 or General Electric F110. The F110, though an aged design, would give the LRS-B commonality with the Rockwell International B-1 Lancer and Northrop B-2 Spirit, both of which use engines from the same lineage. The B-1’s F101 was derived into the F110, which in turn was derived into the B-2’s F118 motors.

An F110 derivative does have its advantages, but the most likely candidate to power the LRS-B is an unaugmented version of the Pratt & Whitney F135, which in its current state offers roughly 28,000lbs of dry thrust. With some tweaks, such as an increased bypass ratio, a version of the F135 could probably produce more than 30,000lbs of thrust while potentially increasing fuel efficiency. With two such engines, an LRS-B would have less than the roughly 70,000lbs of thrust available to the B-2, but there are indications that the B-21 is smaller than the Spirit.

While the LRS-B might be provisioned to accommodate whatever engine ultimately comes to fruition from the Air Force’s adaptive-cycle engine program—variously called ADVENT, AETD and AETP—if the service is serious about an initial operational capability date around 2025, the new bomber will necessarily use an existing propulsion plant. It takes a long time and large sums of money to develop a new turbine engine. It’s also not an endeavor without risk—look no further than China’s frustrated efforts to develop an indigenous jet engine.

If one accepts the premise that the B-21 will be powered by twin unaugmented F135 engines, one can then assume that the new bomber will be larger than a Boeing F-15E Strike Eagle or General Dynamics F-111 but smaller than the B-1 or B-2. Given the types of threats from low frequency radars that are projected to be out there in the future and the limitations of current low observables materials, B-21’s subsonic flying wing design will be large enough to counter low frequency radars.

A tactical fighter-sized stealth aircraft must be optimized to defeat higher-frequency bands such the C, X and Ku bands as a simple matter of physics, but a strategic bomber like the B-2 or LRS-B can be larger to counter lower frequency radars. There is a “step change” in a stealth aircraft’s signature once the frequency wavelength exceeds a certain threshold and causes a resonant effect. Typically, that resonance occurs when a feature on an aircraft—such as a tail-fin—is less than eight times the size of a particular frequency wavelength. That means a bomber like the B-21 has to have allowances for two feet or more of radar absorbent material coatings on every surface or the designers are forced to make trades as to which frequency bands they optimize the aircraft to operate in. As such, to defeat low frequency radars operating in the L, UHF and potentially the VHF bands (this is easier said than done—and could in fact be impossible), a flying wing design is in effect, mandatory.

There are also indications that the Air Force is planning on building significant electronic attack capability into the B-21 airframe (and the LRS family). Electronic attack capability is necessary to counter low frequency radars operating in the VHF band, which are nearly impossible to defeat with airframe shape and low observable materials alone. The fact is that despite the Air Force’s public narrative that aircraft like the F-35 can go into a high threat zone alone and unafraid, the service’s own experts at the Air Force Warfare Center recognize the value of jamming. Stealth and electronic attack always have a synergistic relationship because detection is about the signal to noise ratio. Low observables reduce the signal, while electronic attack increases the noise.

“An improvement would be to include that presumably these platforms would be used in coordination with other platforms and weaponry so as to increase the noise from which to hide within,” one Air Force official with stealth aircraft experience told me. “Who wants to sort through a pile of hay for a needle when there are plenty of obvious needles that one should concern themselves with outside of the haystack?”

If the LRS-B is somewhat smaller than the B-2, the designers have to pick between range and payload. Former Air Combat Command commander Gen. William Fraser, a former B-52 pilot, told me few years ago when the program was in its infancy that “a combat radius of between 2,000 and 2,500 nautical miles is sufficient, which equals a 4,000-5,000 nautical mile range. All points on earth are within about 1,800 nautical miles from the closest body of water.” Thus, one can assume that the LRS-B will have at least that much range with whatever space leftover being dedicated to its payload. The LRS-B doesn’t necessarily need to carry the same amount of weaponry as the B-2, it just needs to carry the biggest available weapon—maybe just one GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) instead of two.

In terms of avionics, the Air Force appears to be doing something smart. The aircraft will apparently use an open architecture computer system, which means that the LRS-B won’t be hamstrung with antiquated avionics and ponderous processes to integrate new weapons and hardware—like what happened with the Lockheed Martin F-22, for example. The aircraft will also be nuclear-capable from the get go, though it won’t be certified to perform that mission until later. That’s not surprising—and had been reported as early as 2011 during Gen. Norton Schwartz’s tenure as Air Force chief of staff. The service also plans for the LRS-B to be optionally manned, however the chances of operating a $550 million aircraft without a pilot onboard are laughably small.

The bottom line is that the LRS-B is shaping up to be exactly what it was expected it to be.

So the three take-aways since this was first announced.

- The B-21 is definitely going to be about a quarter to third smaller than the B-2, and that's a very good thing, especially if you want to see 100+ of these built. The B-2's size is a relic of an earlier pre-Precision bomb age anyway.

- It's going to have significant sensor and electronic attack capability.

- It's being optimized against the kind of radar and sensor technology Russia and China have and are developing.

- Because it's using the F135 engine from the F-35, it'll likely use just two engines instead of 4 as speculated earlier (which will massively slash production / program costs, because your entire program needs to buy half the engines), and it'll be very fast. Subsonic, but very, very high subsonic.

The biggest problem right now is the contracting. The B-21 is split in half: a cost-plus contract for the engineering / design phase (about 30% of the program) and a fixed price contract for production. John McCain is fighting hard for the entire program to be fixed price. He's right to do this in my opinion, and the pro-cost-plus argument is highly disingenuous in this case.

http://www.airforcetimes.com/story/m...-pit/81319112/