A B-32 looks like this
Posted on 07/20/2006 5:16:22 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher
THE US Air Force will earmark billions of dollars in its next five year budget plan to help meet the Pentagon's goal to develop a new long-range bomber by 2018.
The timetable was aggressive but achievable, given the new bomber would be likely to include technologies already under development by the Pentagon's Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency and the US aerospace and defence industry, an official said today.
"Substantial resources will be dedicated across the future years defence plan from 2008-2013 to get there," the official said.< "It will be billions."
Defence analyst Loren Thompson of the Virginia-based Lexington Institute said it would cost around $US20 billion ($26.7 billion) to develop and build a new bomber, unless it was based on an existing aircraft such as the Lockheed F-22 fighter jet.
The air force began a formal analysis of the alternatives for long range strike last October that could help shape the requirements for a future bomber competition.
Officials now plan to split the analysis into separate sections addressing the need for new long-range missiles, which could hit targets within a few hours, and the requirements for a next-generation bomber, which would be able to loiter over a given area for a longer time.
Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman have already expressed interest in the bomber competition.
The idea of developing an F-22 bomber variant, first championed by former Air Force Secretary James Roche, was still being considered, Mr Thompson said.
The aircraft's radar-evading characteristics and its supersonic speed could be attractive features for a new bomber.
He predicted that the new bomber would be manned, despite increasing speculation about an unmanned aircraft that could be remotely piloted like the Predator flying missions over Iraq daily, or fly autonomous like the Northrop Global Hawk, which has also been used extensively in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"No amount of software is going to allow you to cope with all the things that come up in combat. You need a real pilot," Mr Thompson said.
sheesh! :)
I would suspect that these new bombers would have airborne laser systems for air defense and for missile interdiction.
In high altitude flight, they would have a look-up capability, and in low-level flight, I am sure the crews could figure out a way to use the same systems also.
Except that:
1. There are treaties prohibiting the Weaponization of Space
2. I'm not sure about the tenth of a cost part. Do you know how much energy that would take? (Yeah, yeah, i know, solar power would do it)
3. Bombers would have a more powerful psychological effect. People understand those. Space based weapons are out of sight, out of mind.
Note that in the 50s, we really DID have thousands of bombers. Of course, those days are probably gone forever (sniff).
If anti-gravity propulsion gets off the ground (pardon the pun) then size & weight suddenly becomes irrelevant and you can see todays seagoing cargo container ships & international travel drops in cost by 99%.
Colonizing space will become commonplace from that point on. Instead of costing $20,000 per pound to put an object in a 100 mile orbit it become $20 per pound!!
Then with the possibility of placing space based bombs in space then nowhere on earth is safe and warfare has to be re-written all over again!
So what you are saying, is that these would be bombers with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads?
I remember Fat Ted's bloviations that the B1 shouldn't be built, because it was already obsolete.
And here we are, 30 years later, still flying the B-52....
Attach them where you will.
Their purpose is to defend the bomber, defend the air space, take our missiles, take out satellites, take out ground positions or installations.
No take out Chinese.
A B-32 looks like this
Why do we need this bomber when we have missiles that will fly thousands of miles and fly into bathroom windows?
You jest. But a nuclear powered bomber base in low earth orbit that could act as a refueling stop similar to an aircraft carrier would be a very formidable system.
Fly straight up a lá Rutan, get snagged by the electro-magnetic landing dampers, and be ready to deploy again over any trouble spot in the world in less than two hours.
In the meantime, the crew could enjoy the zero-gravity pool.
bump
It's a B-19. Although it never went into production, it inspired a hit song, "B-19" by Slim & Slam (1941).
One never knows......... I've always suspected that we've had some kind of Doomsday last-resort kind of defensive/offensive capability in the works. Who wouldn't, if they had any access at all to captured/recovered alien technology. I believe Roswell actually happened, more or less as described by witnesses and participants, and that deep top secret research into last-resort weaponry has been going on ever since. If it does exist, why put it on display unnecessarily? It would really be cool to have a fleet of *unusual* aircraft/spacecraft to deploy if the balloon really goes up.
On the other hand, all the fumbling and stumbling going on for decades around world crisis points makes me wonder if we really do have anything better than conventional satellites up there keeping an eye on things.
= = = =
My relative, who worked at some super secret site in Nev, insisted convincingly that we have manned and unmanned platforms that can carry people and those that don't--that can go virtually INSTANTANEOUSLY to any spot on the globe under computer control . . . that China was mapped to the inch by the recon model . . . that there are bomb carrying models etc. . . . silently, though instantaneously sort of makes silence a moot point.
We shall see what the puppet masters allow out in the coming conflagration to scare everyone into the global government.
I've been convincingly told that we have
MORE THAN
11 DIFFERENT
weapons systems
more awesome and deadly than nukes.
Reportedly, the space weapons have long been there.
Some have speculated or asserted flatly that ET's are not the only ones with
MOTHERSHIP SIZED CRAFT of a mile or 3 on an edge.
.
If I remember Stanton Friedman's presentation on his own work . . . accompanying the photos of same . . . he asserted that 30+ years or so ago--maybe 40--he was working on a nuke motor about 3-4 feet in diameter
which put out more power than Hoover Dam--successfully.
Easy enough to envision several styles of nuclear motors, all highly radioactive.
Difficult to see how one would make one so small, or exactly how you could couple the energy out of it.
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