“...designed and built in a different technological reality...”
B-52s still seem to be flying through the same atmosphere and EM waves.
Who knew that allowing the death of American industry would mean that you can no longer build weapons systems? Our garbage ruling class certainly didn’t.
Drones are doing a lot, and will be doing a lot more going forward. But its probably going to be awhile before we take the man out of the nuclear weapon deliver loop.
I think they will still build the B-21. Reason: though the USAF won’t admit it, the B-52, B-1 and in a way the B-2 are getting up there in age and they can only do so much to upgrade these planes. A 150-170 plane final production run will allow the older bombers to be retired, especially since with 150-170 planes built, the production cost per plane will ber much lower.
i’m thinking F-35
Did Defense contractors design it to work? Or design it to have lots of very expensive upgrades and repairs?
By the time the Air force has drones doing the job of manned aircraft, the drones will cost as much as the manned aircraft.
One major reason for all the struggles is the US defense budget is only 4% of GDP ans Biden wants to cut further. There are others of course.
The B-21 can be flown remotely and also can control drones. Remote links to satellites would be the first to go in a shooting war in the Pacific.
It seems unlikely that the Congressmen voting on this expensive project can have any confidence that by the time it is fielded (and all of our projects are painfully slow to develop and field), it will be functionally stealthy against the most modern adversary air defenses. It’s a lot of money to make that bet on. To me, the technological trend is towards ever greater transparency of the sky and water surface, and therefore hypersonic seems a better bet, perhaps combined with glide bombs released at a long distance.
The defense industry went woke just like the military leadership. White engineers with experience got replaced by DEI hires. They know pronouns better than applied physics.
If the plane was worth it, it would have a subdued rollout if one at all.
ping