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

[Vertigo X]

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.

This is probably going to come off as contemptuous but... people can be shot and killed with muskets. Does that mean we stop developing weapons technology?

[Azadina]

This is probably going to come off as contemptuous but... people can be shot and killed with muskets. Does that mean we stop developing weapons technology?

Good question. So when better weapons technology exists, why aren't the troops wielding the best and latest? They are still thrown mildly improved Vietnam era weapons; outdated M-16's and M4's. Much with iron sights.

[Vertigo X]

Good question. So when better weapons technology exists, why aren't the troops wielding the best and latest? They are still thrown mildly improved Vietnam era weapons; outdated M-16's and M4's. Much with iron sights.

Despite sounding snarky it really was a legitimate question... as is your response. I genuinely don't know.

[Azadina]

Despite sounding snarky it really was a legitimate question... as is your response. I genuinely don't know.

It's not just weapons, it's ammunition too. 5.56 is completely outdated, and there are better variants out there. But much like the light arms, they aren't wielded either. So, why keep developing more and more new fancy toys, when most of your army runs around with legacy crap weapons with iron sights, and outdated ammo, despite better being available. Maybe update the infantry weapons more than once every half a century, if indeed keeping technology gap is important. Not doing so, in my opinion seems to run completely counter to the idea.

It's like wanting new gloves every winter, despite earlier ones being fine, all the while the soles of your only boots had worn off 5 years ago.

[Gaexion Ramza Beoulve]

So that's where my 15$ went.

[Easo]

Linadra, do you honestly believe USA could keep B-2's forever and that no one would ever surpass them and thus any building of new plane models is pointless?

[Vertigo X]

It's like wanting new gloves every winter, despite earlier ones being fine, all the while the soles of your only boots had worn off 5 years ago.

You had me til this. I work on B-52s. I used to work on C-130j's (one of the newest planes in the AF comparatively). B-52 is junk and a pain in the ass. We just haven't made anything that can do what it does while integrating new tech.

Its more like having the same gloves for 70 years but not being able to find new ones that fit.

[Tennis]

Roughly 40-50 million Americans live below the poverty line yet we are wasting taxpayers dollars on projects like this. It really is a travesty.

[Zelk]

Who pays you to make these posts Skroe? Does it ever wear you down knowing what you're doing?

[Wiyld]

new stuff is cool

hope we can get our mileage out of em as cheaply as possible.

[Skroe]

Roughly 40-50 million Americans live below the poverty line yet we are wasting taxpayers dollars on projects like this. It really is a travesty.

What's this "we" shit. You're Canadian.

And there being poverty is no excuse not to do certain things. Budgets are about balacing priorities. The B-21 program is getting its fair share. Entitlements get more than their fair share.

I mean really. We spend 2.8 of our 3 trillion annual budget on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, and you're going to grief a few hundred million on the B-21.

Absolute. Garbage.

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Who pays you to make these posts Skroe? Does it ever wear you down knowing what you're doing?

Because the forums need more threads about...

-Pets
-Relationship nonsense (who cares?)
-Illegal Immigrations
-Sweden apparently turning into a Mad Max-level post-apocalyptic hellscape where dark skined invaders are ruining everything for the 6'3" blonde hair, blue eye'd human incarnation of perfection + Ikea (again, give me fucking break).
-Trump
-More Trump
-Body image garbage


You'll take the solarty thread about the intersection of aerospace technology, industrial policy, history, and budgeting, and you'll like it. If it's too far above your head, here's the thread for you.

Every game needs a beginner mode.

[Theinquisition]

Hmmmm, might have to see if they are hiring anymore A&P mechanics

[Zelk]

-Pets
-Relationship nonsense (who cares?)
-Illegal Immigrations
-Sweden apparently turning into a Mad Max-level post-apocalyptic hellscape where dark skined invaders are ruining everything for white folk (again, give me fucking break).
-Trump
-Body image garbage


You'll take the solarty thread about the intersection of aerospace technology, industrial policy, history, and budgeting, and you'll like it. If it's too far above your head, here's the thread for you.

Every game needs a beginner mode.

One day you'll realise you're a cheerleader for the mass murder of anyone who stands in the way of racist, exploitative American imperialism and just maybe you'll feel a bit of shame.

[Deleted]

It's not just weapons, it's ammunition too. 5.56 is completely outdated, and there are better variants out there. But much like the light arms, they aren't wielded either. So, why keep developing more and more new fancy toys, when most of your army runs around with legacy crap weapons with iron sights, and outdated ammo, despite better being available. Maybe update the infantry weapons more than once every half a century, if indeed keeping technology gap is important. Not doing so, in my opinion seems to run completely counter to the idea.

It's like wanting new gloves every winter, despite earlier ones being fine, all the while the soles of your only boots had worn off 5 years ago.

We have actually hit a plateau when it comes to small arms, we can make weapons a little lighter and maybe improve the ergonomics by a smidge but that is about it. We are making great strides in optics but humans have their limits so what else can we do?

[Skroe]

You had me til this. I work on B-52s. I used to work on C-130j's (one of the newest planes in the AF comparatively). B-52 is junk and a pain in the ass. We just haven't made anything that can do what it does while integrating new tech.

Its more like having the same gloves for 70 years but not being able to find new ones that fit.

Well at least it looks like it's going to be re-engined at last, either with four F138 (CF6) or, more likely, eight PW1000Gs.

Should have been done 20 years ago.

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One day you'll realise you're a cheerleader for the mass murder of anyone who stands in the way of racist, exploitative American imperialism and just maybe you'll feel a bit of shame.

hhuuuuuuuuuuuuugggggghhhhhh I rather doubt it amigo, because your warped worldview is as much a fantasy as World of Warcraft.

[Mafic]

The B1b needs to be replaced as it is old and the B2 is too costly to upgrade or lose. Similar reasons why the SR71 was retired.

Interesting enough the SR71 is the only plane that has been retired that no one has surpassed even today.

[Skroe]

new stuff is cool

hope we can get our mileage out of em as cheaply as possible.

The probable smaller size (again 1/2 to 2/3rds the size of the B-2) and likely use of twin F135 engines (variants) used on the F-35, rather than four engines will keep the price comparatively low.

Aside from hauling the Massive Ordnance Penetrator bunker buster, the B-2's payload is hugely excessive in the age of highly accurate precision weapons. Whereas the B-2 has two bomb bays, the B-21 is likely to have one.

All this of course is speculation out there, but it's driven by the public price tag crossed with comments made by the Pentagon about what engine their buying. The price-tag drives a twin engine stealth bomber, and the hugely powerful F135 engine is pretty much the only one that could fly anything approaching a bomber that could carry a decent sized bomb load, when paired togther. If the Air Force were to use the GE F118 engine that is already in the B-2 (and U-2) or make a new variant of the F110 from which its sourced, it would just add to the cost.

The program is expected to integrate a huge amount of F-35 program technology anyway (like most aerospace programs the next 20 years), so adopting the engine is very logical. This is exactly what happened with the F-15 and F-16. That technology and those fighters engines became the basis of pretty much the last forty years of civilian and US military aerospace to one degree or another.

It's worth repeating that the F-35 program was one half new fighter program, and one half breakthrough technology development program.

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The B1b needs to be replaced as it is old and the B2 is too costly to upgrade or lose. Similar reasons why the SR71 was retired.

Interesting enough the SR71 is the only plane that has been retired that no one has surpassed even today.

Without verging too far into "conspiracy theory" territory, many defense industry journalists like the Tyler Rogoway (Foxtrot Alpha, the Warzone) and Bill Sweetman (Aviation Week) believe the US has been operating an SR-71 successor since the mid 1990s. The belief is that the HTV Falcon, and the forthcoming "SR-72" program from Lockheed Martin is really just a cover to move a set of technologies that's been in service for over 20 years into the non-classified world, in order to cycle up preparing a successor program. Per the hypersonic thread, there is some evidence the SR-72, or a prototype, is already flying.

But the US operates many aircraft that w'll never have seen.

One that almost certainly exists is the F-117's sister aircraft, sometimes called the TR-3B (but that's been used for a lot of conspiracy crap). The TR-3B is believed to be a stealth reconnaissance and targeting aircraft. Basically before the F-117 (or B-2) drops its payload, the TR-3B would fly ahead and mark targets.



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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.

5 is probably not enough to keep an aircraft of this size economical to the suppliers. Or let me put it this way. A 747 is about 60% of the cost of a B-21. The economical annual production rate for the 747 is 1 per month (12 per year). The line is being shut down because it's being operated at 0.5 per month (6 per year). And that is an aircraft considerably simplier and cheaper than the B-21.

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.

The Air Force would like to operate two bombers. A high-low mix, Two is economical. Three is only sustained because there are so few B-2s. One is probably not the right number. Four is way too many.

Your suggestion would see 4 operated on for along period of time, rather than just a few years. If in the late 2020s the delivery rate for the B-21 is 20 a year, as projected, the Air Force can retire the entire B-1B fleet in three years, and retask everyone involved. It could furthermore start saving money as soon as 2022 by retiring aircraft early and cancelling upgrades.

There is even some doubt to keeping the B-2 in the mix. I listed it at the last to be retired. It may be the first. Why? Because under the NewSTART treaty, the US is allocated 700 launchers, and it has around 700 launchers. A bomber counts as "one launcher" (no matter how many bombs it carries). The current launcher count is the 20 B-2s plus some subset of the B-52H fleet.

The B-21 is intended to be nuclearized as some point, if not at the start. This means as it enters the fleet in order to stay under the caps of NewSTART, the US will have to denuclearize a B-52 or retire a B-2. The B-1B was already denuclearized under the terms of NewSTART, so that wouldn't work. It may make the most economic sense to just rapidly scrap all the B-2s with the first round of 20 B-21s, and make them nuclear bombers, and have the follow up order of 20 start replacing the B-1B. The other option is to start cutting ballistic missiles, which the US will not do, period.

The downside of "retire the B-2 firs" approach is that the later blocks of B-2s are likely to be more advanced (withe arlier blocks relegated to training, like most aircraft buys) and have the longest life, and the B-2 as the youngest, most advanced active bomber, has the longest life ahead of it still in terms of airframe health. Furthermore shifting a newly-off-the-line stealth bomber to a critical role like nuclear deterrence immediately is probably a bad idea. Though the B-2 entered service in 1992, it wasn't until 2003 it was declared fully operational.


Your way would simply cost a lot more money than I think you are thinking.

[Beazy]

Interesting. I noticed that Lockheed Martin is also hiring 500 new people in Dec here in Dallas/FtWorth TX for the F35 production.

Were building some crazy murder weapons here in the USA, may god have mercy on the next dip shit country that tries to attack us.

[Azadina]

We have actually hit a plateau when it comes to small arms, we can make weapons a little lighter and maybe improve the ergonomics by a smidge but that is about it. We are making great strides in optics but humans have their limits so what else can we do?

As I understand, for example, HK416 is functionally superior to the M16/M4 that are used. What more you can do? Optics, attachments, different ammunition, etc. Instead of throwing most some iron sighted base model junk, that was more or less outdated by first Iraq war.

After upgrading I might agree, that there's little more to be done. But the upgrading that could be done, has not been done.

I mean, what would you expect? Improving small arms isn't meant to be something revolutionary right away, like turning them into "plasma rifle in the 40 wat range". Replacing one stealth bomber with new stealth bomber doesn't seem like revolutionary steps either, it's more for the same thing. The new one isn't Battlestar Galactica level leap.

[Skroe]

Interesting. I noticed that Lockheed Martin is also hiring 500 new people in Dec here in Dallas/FtWorth TX for the F35 production.

Were building some crazy murder weapons here in the USA, may god have mercy on the next dip shit country that tries to attack us.

The other big program of record is the Boeing KC-46 Pegasus Air Refueling Tanker, that will replace the 707-derived KC-135 from the 1950s with a modernized 767. It's being build in Kansas.

The KC-46, the F-35 and the B-21 are the three big USAF aerospace programs at the present. There are other, smaller, but critical programs to begin replacing the E-6 and E-8, also based on the 707.


Also per your last line, the KC-46 is our next tanker being Boeing lost the KC-X competition to Airbus's KC-45 via a lazy bid that was crap compared to the KC-45. They had the competition re-ran and political pressure had Boeing win over Airbus.

Boeing deserved to lose for the original bid. And the Airbus KC-45 would have been built in the US anyway. In any event, the KC-46 certainly is a big upgrade over what it is replacing, but the KC-45 was the better choice.