Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
A national leader in systems engineering, who I know, said in a recent presentation that “We have learned from the B-2 experience not to over-design an aircraft.” Evidently not.
So that explains the overweight F-35B and the non-CV capable, carrier-based F-35C…
w/r, SJS
Reminds me of a clip I saw somewhere where the boss is saying, “I want THIS and THAT! And MORE of this and LESS of that! And I want it NOW!“
And I would like a winter home in Maui, a summer place on Cape Cod on the water and an endless supply of $$$ to spend at will….But the likelihood of those things appearing are as unlikely as the ability of our country approving this newest “wishlist” item.
We need to adopt the “leaner, meaner, cheaper, better” mindset if we expect to take on future threats. The days of $500 Million dollar planes is at an end. The $$$ just isn’t there for this type of delivery system.
Do ya think that they can find someone in Brasil to make it?
Hard. Very hard. Though any cost bogie of that sort tends to be low-balled by 50%.
It might just be feasible if the program were conducted outside the normal acquisition cycle. An ACTD-like process will give good results, but you need the nerve to go through with it.
“Though any cost bogie of that sort tends to be low-balled by 50%.”
Were I a congresscritter, the first thing I’d say to them is “Being that you haven’t met a cost target since the F-16, tell me why I should believe a word you’re saying?”
They don’t.
This is all Cost Kabuki Theater. You figure out what you are actually willing to pay, then tell tne vendors to target about two-thirds of that.
Once you downselect to a single vendor, you’re at his mercy. You buy whatever he sells you, delivered when he finishes, at the price he sets. You try to mitigate this by micromanaging the vendor…which has costs of its own.
The OLD Navy way was to carry two vendors through to inital production. Much easier to manage, as they counterbalanced each other. We got some outstanding aircraft that way.
Time to send the drug dogs on a sweep of the USAF bomber program management requirements shop. Aim high does not mean list requirements while high.
in other words they want a B-1A coated in the skin materials of the B-2A…
There, your new bomber is ready
And use the engines from the F-22 and avionics from the F-35. J.T. we should work in the Pentagon!
Hey USAF! Put. The brownies. Down.
(and turn off the grow lights on your way out).
Funny, just this morning the boys asked if I knew if the XB-70 was real (they’d flown one in a game). Dunno, says I, let’s look it up.
Valkyrie. Completely forgot about it. Early sixties; canx’d after two prototypes.
Found these words, which struck a chord when lined up within today’s context: “President Eisenhower responded that the reconnaissance and strike mission was “crazy” since the nuclear mission was to attack known production and military complexes, and emphasized he saw no need for the B-70 since the ICBM is “a cheaper, more effective way of doing the same thing”. Eisenhower also identified that the B-70 would not be in manufacturing until “eight to ten years from now” and “said he thought we were talking about bows and arrows at a time of gunpowder when we spoke of bombers in the missile age.”
Sure, there’s some apples and oranges here, but USAF wants “Long Range Strike-Bomber (LRS-B), to have supersonic dash capability, all-aspect stealth, electronic intelligence gathering and attack capability – including cyber warfare. It wants the manned platform to be a networked part of the sensor grid, and is evaluating various non-kinetic attack options, including microwave emitters and lasers. It will be designed with an ordnance payload of 40,000 pounds.”
And unicorns & rainbows, sprinkled with magic ACQ/PM dust.
The LRS-B is what they want for Iran today (sorry, can’t be done), and China tomorrow (meaning 15-20 years to IOC), where counter systems will have continued to evolved, marginalizing much of the gee-whiz fielded behind the curve at great cost.
No lessons learned along the way at all.
People in Hell want ice water. They ain’t gettin’ that either.
Mike
Well, the gold-plated high tech syndrome strikes again.
Were it me, I’d dust off the XB-70 blueprints and update the design with modern engines, RAM, and avionics.
The USAF wants 80-200? Eesh. Here’s the deal, USAF. 150 of these but cancel the F-35 to pay for them. That will mean a front line fleet of perhaps 9 8-plane squadrons plus the 170 or so F-22′s. Keep the B-2′s and the B-1′s. If the USAF replaces the rest of the tacair birds with a few hundred Hornet E/F’s that should leave a force of maybe or so 600 aircraft.
And yes, to echo Blackeagle603, put. The. Brownies. Down. Or send them to us.
“Were it me, I’d dust off the XB-70 blueprints”.
Were it me, I’d go back to the converted airliner idea Boeing was pitching in the 70′s… a multi-purpose aircraft that had some bomb bays, but also did recon, electronic warfare, and sea control patrol duties. A 757 or 767 would be perfect for this. Hang some fuel tanks, and the 737 could even do it.
USAF will never have a cutting edge bomber again. The best they can hope for is an affordable all-purpose combat big bird. You’re more likely to see bombs on an AC-130 than you are to see this pie-in-the-sky bird the Air Force wants.
I don’t think they’re thinking B-1 or XB-70 in size. B-1 can carry 75,000 lb internally. F-111 could carry 31,000, so probably more like a super F-111 than a B-1.
Figuring out the unit cost for something like that is way beyond me.
I’d be more than thrilled if they would start with just a re-engine program for the ones they already have.
Imagine how much money we’d save by 2040 by putting new turbofans on B-52s. Or how much effectiveness we’d gain by giving B-1s the B-1R makeover–nobody wants to admit it, but that would at least give China something to think about, that we could threaten entire regiments of Flankers at a time…
The major problem with mose defense acquisition programs, beyond being on the bleeding edge when they start, is the lack of a frozen spec list BEFORE they let a contract, and continual changes, as they lard the program with nice to have stuff, AFTER they let the contract.
They need to get the thing designed and bugs worked out before they start evolving the thing. The Generals, however, find it hard to do that and want all the bells and whistles now, and engage in food fights to get it. DAIWA did not solve the basic problem in DoD when it comes to acquisition. making a senior project office answerable only to someone above everyone else’s head is the only answer. Make it cost a career or two and that buffoonery would end.
Not much chance of that, though. Engineers are just around to take orders, not to solve problems.
Holy Cow, It’s shocking to think that came from a professional source. The software testing alone would be 550 million wouldn’t it?
Why not go for the whole taco and ask for a combination space and air travel capability with a force field so as to not worry about ‘space debris’. Maybe somebody would cough it up.
A funnier thing to say to them would be “Is that all your’e asking for? Why not throw shields, transporters, and photon torpedos in while you’re at it?”
Would they like fries with that little lot?
With all that, think they could stick a 3 hole golf course and the 19th hole in it? I mean, it is an Air Farce bird…
I loved the Valkyrie! Still do. What a beautiful machine!
Hollywood is on line 1
w/r, SJS
I know that they only bought two, and crashed one, but the Valkyrie was the coolest thing the USAF ever bought.
“Plasma pulse rifle in the 40 KW range?”
“Just what you see, pal.”
– Terminator
Ok, we buy Blackjack airframes from the Russians, then we bid the avionics…
Saw the remaining XB-70 at the Air Force museum. Awesome. That was a pure research airframe – I think the “B” in XB-70 was for funding, hey those were the cold war years… It would be interesting to follow up on the whole compression lift thing, though.
Oh, no. They were QUITE serious about replacing B-52s with B-70s. A damned hard target…the kinematics of engaging a Mach 3 target at FL700 are daunting.
When MacNamara killed the Valkyrie LeMay was livid. The basic problems had already been worked out. If they had produced the thing, it would probably still be flying as the BUFF is. The B-1 probably would not have been built either.
Ivan built the Mig-25 to intercept the thing. Like most things Ivan did, it was a petty much a brute force solution to the problem and not all that good.
They were serious (initially) about the B-70 as a Mach 3 bomber, but the program was cancelled before it got off the drawing board. The two XB-70′s were built as research aircraft and never had any weapons capability.
Unit cost of a 747-8F is 320 Million. Militarize it. Add in 150 tons of smart bombs, and you have a platform that can reign death all day long.
You just have to make sure that you already own the skies.
Experience suggests when USAF asks for an aircraft to come in at $550 million each, flyaway cost will be 1 to 1.5 billion and cost per airframe including development will be $4-8 billion.
I don’t think we have enough Monopoly money for that, sadly.
Are these zoomies insane? There is no way this plane sees the light of day. I thought they wanted a subsonic airframe for the next gen bomber.
Maybe they can build one of these. Death blossom, baby! From what I’ve read of their requirement list, as stated earlier, will be tweaked and tweaked and tweaked again.
http://www.kitsune.addr.com/SF-Conversions/Rifts-Other-Vehicles/Last_Starfighter_Gunstar_Starfighter.htm
Do they not realize the debt crisis is threatening to swallow the budget in a sea of red ink? This ain’t the Cold War, friends. The gravy train has run dry forever.
Here’s my solution: SLEP the B-1s and/or build some new ones with new engines and new avionics. It does most of what they want this new bomber to do. Or shoot, bring the F-111s out of mothballs, slap new engines in them and roll. Now those were some really great interdictors. We had one fly into Mobile before they retired and the entire complement of the ATC was out lusting over it. What a bird.
Yet, I can remember the controversy surroung the Aardvark. When it got to SE Asia, the Pilots, from what I read in Stars and Stripes in Germany, loved it. The Navy, not so much, but it simply was not suitable for their purposes. Maybe the F-35 will make it.
I once thought about writing a joke article for the USNI Proceedings proposing a Reprocured Sopwith Camel.
But I think it would be taken seriously.
Something about “all aspect stealth” coupled with “networked part of sensor grid” doesn’t compute for me. I mean, to be networked you need to emit radiation and that radiation needs to be strong enough to be sensed from a great distance. Even with radio silence near a target there’s a lot of vulnerability there.
….all those parts sold by the lowest bidder?
Gives a whole new meaning to Flight Test(ie. each flight)?