A new B-52
- Thread starter Pangur
- Start date
The problem with blimps is they are not fast.
In todays conflicts you need fast reaction times.
Any jet plane is considerably faster than a blimp and can get to a new target in a shorter time.
Another problem with blimps is survivability. You would have to go up against zero enemy resistance, any other enviroment is too dangerous for such a fat, slow weapons carrying platform.
Thus, the only place for a blimp would be IMHO the role of a stand-off weapons platform. The only problem here is: Do you need a blimp for that, or can't this role be covered by the Navy for example?
Factor of ten
The cheapest JDAM is close to 40 000$. A top of the line Nav for a new car, the kind that calls 911 and chooses a restaurant for you, will never cost you more than 1000$ if you tick the option box and the dealer is making a profit. Like you said, you can just buy a handheld one for much less. The JSF was meant to be a cheap F16 replacement, Now it's getting close to F22 prices.
Phones are getting better and cheaper. Military hardware is getting more expensive at a rate that will leave us with high tech forces too small to get the job done. The same design thinking that gave us 400$ laptops should apply to military hardware. Air forces must bring flight hour costs to airline levels, or we'll be defeated financially rather than militarily. Boeing can make a cost effective people carrier. Force them to make a cost effective bomb carrier.
Or just buy the latest H6...
The cheapest JDAM is close to 40 000$. A top of the line Nav for a new car, the kind that calls 911 and chooses a restaurant for you, will never cost you more than 1000$ if you tick the option box and the dealer is making a profit. Like you said, you can just buy a handheld one for much less. The JSF was meant to be a cheap F16 replacement, Now it's getting close to F22 prices.
Phones are getting better and cheaper. Military hardware is getting more expensive at a rate that will leave us with high tech forces too small to get the job done. The same design thinking that gave us 400$ laptops should apply to military hardware. Air forces must bring flight hour costs to airline levels, or we'll be defeated financially rather than militarily. Boeing can make a cost effective people carrier. Force them to make a cost effective bomb carrier.
Or just buy the latest H6...
North American XB-70 Valkyrie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_XB-70_Valkyrie
the Valkyrie was a large six-engined aircraft able to fly Mach 3+ at an altitude of 70,000
the Valkyrie was a large six-engined aircraft able to fly Mach 3+ at an altitude of 70,000
One of the ways commercial airlines are cost effective is that they carry so many people. For a bomber to be similarly cost effective it needs to carry a the largest payload possible. Here the B-52 has the advantage over smaller, more stealthy aircraft.
I agree that a lot of the technological upgrades are getting rediculously expensive compared to civilian prices. THe JSF should just be scrapped as unnecessary (or sold to other countries stupid enought to buy it).
The Valkyrie could carry 65,000 pounds of weaponry, either conventional or nuclear in its belly or on four underwing hardpoints. I don't think anybody took the idea of hanging conventional bombs on it seriously though. The B-52 the way it was finally built was designed as a nuclear bomber pure and simple. That's why its bomb bay was so much smaller than that of a B-36. When we wanted it to drop large quantities of conventional bombs, we modified B-52Ds for the job. They're all gone now.
Not as much as legend would have you believe. If the full run of 350 B-70s and 60 RS-70s had been built, the unit cost was supposed to be $18 million each ($127 million in todays money). That's a bit more than three times the cost of a B-52E (twice the cost of a B-52H) and 50 percent more than the cost of a B-58A. (Figures from United States Strategic Bombers 1945 - 2012 published by Defense Lion Publications). The two that were built were very expensive because all the R&D costs were loaded on to two airframes.
On AAA. Over Vietnam radar guided AAA was effective up to around 25,000 feet. After we started losing RF-101Cs to 57mms at 15,000, the MOA was increased to 25,000 and Voodoos were still coming back with holes in them. 30,000 is safe.
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The Valkyrie is the wrong aircraft for todays threat enviroment. It's sole advantage would be its speed, so that it would get fast to new/arising targets and drop its payload.
However it would utterly fail in the roles B52s and B1s are used nowadays, for example as a loitering JDAM carrier waiting for new targets and dropping on them.
Don't get me wrong, I truly believe that there is a place and need for a weapons platform, capable of hitting accurately targets worldwide very fast. It could be a very fast bomber like the XB-70, a high-stratospheric operating aircraft/space vehicle, a conventionally armed ICBM or a laser weapon on a satellite.
What the USAF will need however when the B52 is phased out is a global operating, cheap workhorse bomber, that will be able to fulfill all the roles the B52 was called to fulfill in the past 50 years.
However it would utterly fail in the roles B52s and B1s are used nowadays, for example as a loitering JDAM carrier waiting for new targets and dropping on them.
Don't get me wrong, I truly believe that there is a place and need for a weapons platform, capable of hitting accurately targets worldwide very fast. It could be a very fast bomber like the XB-70, a high-stratospheric operating aircraft/space vehicle, a conventionally armed ICBM or a laser weapon on a satellite.
What the USAF will need however when the B52 is phased out is a global operating, cheap workhorse bomber, that will be able to fulfill all the roles the B52 was called to fulfill in the past 50 years.
Your car gps doesnt steer the car. A jdam is gps, fins and actuators. Could they be cheaper? Im sure they could. Could they be anything as chezp as a car gps? No way.
You're right, the prices quoted are for a kit that converts a standard bomb into a laser-guided one. The thing that kicks the price up is that the system has to have the highest possible resistance to failure. It's the old story.
90 percent reliable costs X,
99 percent reliable costs 10 * X,
99.9 percent reliable costs 100 * X.
Laser-guided bombs are worth every cent we pay for them but they don't come cheap. We saw what happens when they go wrong in Baghdad where a laser-guided 2,000 pounder failed on the way down and landed in a crowded market. You see, everybody was so used to those bombs hitting the target, nobody bothered to take cover when they weren't in a target area.
To be honest, the Air Force has no successor planned for the loitering carrier role. They should have; no argument there, but they don't. The LRS-B is seen as a B-2 successor for penetration and dropping of munitions on strategic targets. This is what they have in mind
At the moment this is the 2034 plan. To quote General Jumper, "Speed and altitude are the new stealth". The conventionally-loaded ICBM is extremely controversial since nobody will know it is conventially loaded until it goes off. Lasers on a satellite maybe; there's a lot of problems to overcome there.
A lot of people are saying that. There's a political problem; once we start to build it, SAC is back and the Air Force will beat you with canes if you even mention that possibility. But, as we lose foreign bases, the long range bomb truck is getting to look more attractive. The leading possibility is taking the wings and tail of a C-17 and giving it a new fuselage.
Sorry for changing the subject, but why is the return of SAC seen in such a negative light? In fact, if it's not SAC who controls the B-1, B-2 and B-52, then who is it?!?
...one of the reasons that the B-70 was cancelled was that missile technology was advancing fast enough that you couldn't build planes that could go fast enough and high enough to avoid missiles, and he's trying to say that the situation is somehow better nowadays? What is he, high? Unless the Air Force has huge hypersonics breakthroughs stashed up their ass*, there's no way you're building a bomber that can go high enough and fast enough to avoid missiles, especially not if it has people in it. This is besides the other problems of being fast and high, namely that you can't hit anything, can't see anything, and under some conditions look like a ballistic missile launch. Which I suppose is okay if you're a purely strategic bomber, but the last purely strategic bomber the US deployed was...um...actually, of the deployed bombers, all of them have been used conventionally. So yeah, I'll believe in a purely strategic bomber...never.
Hypersonics is incredibly difficult, and there's a reason people have been working at it for 60 years and are only a little bit ahead of where they were at the beginning. The advances that have been made are significant*, but they're nowhere near where people expected to be in the 1950s, and like I said there's a reason for that. I doubt the future will be much different.
*Like the SABRE precooled jets that the Skylon people recently demoed. That sort of tech has been dreamed about for more than 50 years!
Global Strike Command isn't basically SAC? One runs all the AF nukes, the other...runs all the AF nukes. I fail to see the difference. If the Air Force is going to beat me with canes for mentioning the possibility, they'd better be coming over blue and black all over...
RamscoopRaider
Donor
FYI the B-58, B-47 and B-36 were never used conventionally, all were pure strategic bombers
NothingNow
Banned
The B-47 and B-36 were used also for reconnaissance work (which should really count as Conventional use IMO.)
All probably would have seen conventional bombing roles if SAC hadn't been so set against using their aircraft for anything less than delivering atomic devastation.
Not quite; one of the reasons was that the projected development of air defense missiles would advance fast enough so that planes couldn't fly fast and high enough. In fact, those projected developments never took place and Mach 3+ and 85,000 feet plus are still enough to put an aircraft into the safe zone. Look at the SR-71. Nobody has ever come close to hitting one despite the efforts made to do so. There's another factor as well; up that high, it takes a long time for missiles to climb to be a threat. That gives a long time to jam them. EW is the big defense against missiles; the one that really works. It's much easier to package jamming equipment into an aircraft than anti-jam into a missile.
Air Force Chief of Staff. There's only one person higher in the food chain and he lives in the White House.
I have no knowledge of any such breakthroughs. But, they're not necessary. High/fast still defeats the SAMs that are around today. Low down, its different. That's why aircraft stick above 15,000 feet but up high, the physics work for the aircraft, not the missile. That was a big surprise.
As pointed out, the B-36, B-47, B-50 and B-58 were never used for conventional bombing. However, the see-nothing hit-nothing stuff isn't entirely accurate. Mapping radars solved the seeing problem way back in the late 1960s and the adoption of GPS guidance solved the hitting problem. Now, from mach 3, accuracies are measured in feet.
You'd better not be caught saying so. It's not logical I know but this is politics. Basically TAC was under SAC's thumb for over forty years until SAC stood down and was absorbed by Air Combat Command - which was SAC. Now, the top brass, all of whom come from TAC are scared stiff the changing environment will bring the bombers back and the bomber generals will take over again. So, talking about SAC coming back is a career ender. They won't really beat you with canes - that;s just an expression. But, how would you like a tour of duty at Shemya?
B-47 was a real swine to fly and snaked around. Also, its conventional bomb load was less than an F-105. There were never enough B-36s to use for conventional bombing. B-58s were capable of carrying conventional bombloads and tests were made on sending them to Vietnam but it was the same problem as the B-36. Not enough airframes and the loss of a few would have taken the whole fleet down.
The RB-36 and RB-47 missions were definately strategic; the primary objective was to take radar pictures of targets in hostile territory for the bombers.
NothingNow
Banned
Except the XB-70 kinda has the radar signature of a Barn, and an even larger IR signature. It's kinda hard to use jamming to hide something that big, even if you're using active canceling.
Only from the side and rear. It's head-on signature was pretty low and the use of the same RAM that was used on Oxcart and the SR-71 would have cut it still further
To put this into perspective, the side-on RCS is about ten times that of the B-52; the nose on RCS is 40 square meters as opposed to 100 square meters on a B-52. Against a Mach 3 target, side-on is virtually meaningless. Also, the culprit on the XB-70 was the flat sides of the engine nacelles; angling them would have also reduced RCS dramatically. Thermal isn't really important in this context since its a relatively short-range issue. Again, the SR-71 had thermal signatures and they didn't endanger the aircraft. Another thing; the EWO game is to deceive the FCS radars giving a false idea of sourse and speed. Even the gear on the SR-71 was more than capable of beating everything thrown at it and B-70 would have had the next generation. Even so, the way radar tracking works, a big signature can help the EWO spoof the radar. This isn't an easy answer question.
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