Northrop Grumman unveils B-21 bomber
reuters.com
reuters.com
Additional PR from Northrop: https://www.northropgrumman.com/what-we-do/air/b-21-raider/1...
I have to admit that the 6th gen classification sounds a bit weak. Data links are hardly new and fighters have been integrating every weapon under the sun for decades.
But the Open Architecture stuff (and more generally how tech is shared between projects) appears to have started serving America well.
I stopped there. We're fucked.
Probably a structural/ground test victim. That NG said “you won’t see it again until it flies” says we won’t see much more.
Lots of wing washout, more than the B-2. It’s porky, so they didn’t go with two or three engines (unless there’s a top inlet) so four P&Ws, draggy, lots of fuel needed. But I bet the payload is more than 2/3 the B-2.
It makes the B-2 look svelte.
If I remember correctly, it used lasers to measure the change in the refractive index of air, which changes based on density, and used that to calculate dynamic and static air pressure.
The Air Force planned to buy at least 100 of the planes and begin to replace B-1 and B-2 bombers.”
75 Billion or what? 10% of all defense spending on these planes?!
Fucking hell war is expensive.
What's expensive is pathetic dong measuring contests by sad old men.
The big cost is "stealth" in these things. You only need that if you intend to enact a war intentionally. Cheaper old style bombers are fine for the majority of day to day deterrence operations. In fact they are probably better since they can optimize for cargo loads.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit#Op...
A b21 can be used everyday too?
Then again, perhaps maintenance of a stealth bomber really is horrendous enough that it wouldn't be able to fly sorties "every day".
But basically I read GP cooment as an apples to oranges comparison (since you traditionally wouldn't drop bombs using a cargo aircraft, and wouldn't airlift cargo with a bomber.)
The USS Zumwalt is an even bigger joke if you look it up. 20+ billion and basically a mistake.
Then just think about what China can build all this for in terms of speed and cost. It is game, set, match on a 100 year time frame.
It could maneuver and operate in conditions a ride along pilot could not survive.
As several others have pointed out the promo shots seems to leave out ejection facilities and other nifty things for humans to survive.
If this thing ever gets to see action a lot of lives will be lost.
Whether these smooth shapes were achievable in the 60s is a difficult question. They had parametric curves back then, but probably less idea how these contours influence aerodynamics and radar cross section, and even much less what the optimal shapes would be.
Appeasing Russia will never work, they have appeased for decades and it just leads to more conflict. The only thing Russia will respond to is being physically rebuffed, luckily this is happening in Ukraine.
Russia was never provoked into invading Ukraine, they merely used their own propaganda machine to invent excuses for the invasion.
Ukraine offered to stay out of NATO to prevent war, guess what, it didn't prevent it.
Nothing we can do will stop Russia except defeating them.
This isn't about NATO too, gas was found in Crimea that could replace Russian gas.
Time to kick him out of Ukraine, the hard way.
He's lost a similar number of his own people, and he couldn't care less about that, either.
But yeah, let's appease him, and see how that goes in the long run. Maybe it'll work this time. Maybe this time is different.
Whatever your own beliefs, they won't fare as well in a world where the West has abandoned the upper hand in defense technology.
Ah yes, superior Russian technology, as demonstrated in Ukraine.
Just say that you like to plunder.
Conspiracist: I guess they’ve finally started to figure out how the flying saucers that crashed in the 50s worked and are incorporating them slowly into designs to hide the alien influence.
The realist interpretation seems more sane but it wouldn’t surprise me if the conspiratorial interpretation is bouncing around corners of the internet.