Related unrelated question : how come this is public?
F117 was a dark skunk project shown years after being operational. That made sense to me for a super secret project with wildly new technologies and capabilities.
I don't understand the announcements of such projects from the vision stage, with the details of capability, purpose, strategy, photos,etc.
Is it commoditized sufficiently? Is it deterrence? Is there enough misinformation?
Kirk: Bones, did you ever hear of a doomsday machine?
McCoy: No. I'm a doctor, not a mechanic.
Kirk: It's a weapon built primarily as a bluff. It's never meant to be used. So strong, it
could destroy both sides in a war. Something like the old H-Bomb was supposed to be.
That's what I think this is. A doomsday machine that somebody used in a war uncounted
years ago. They don't exist anymore, but the machine is still destroying.
— Star Trek: The Original Series, "The Doomsday Machine"
Dr. Strangelove: Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you keep it
a secret! Why didn't you tell the world, eh?!!
Russian Ambassador Sadesky: It was to be announced at the Party Congress on Monday. As you
know, the Premier loves surprises.
— Dr. Strangelove
The secretary of defense mentioned "deterrence" as part of the reasoning. Maybe not-so-coincidentally, the aircraft (at least as they showed it) skips the old school black paint job for one that looks more like anti-flash white[0].
Part of it is probably also that this is a refinement of an existing aircraft and not anything with drastically different capabilities-- if you're planning on war with the US, you're probably already thinking about B-2s, and if you're worried about B-2s then a B-21 isn't that different.
Looks more like a typical gray color that practically all Western air forces use today, than anti-flash white. I'd speculate the implications of this are:
- They plan on operating it during the day as well as night, so they need better protection against visual observation?
- The B2 was much darker due to the coating technology it used wasn't compatible with lighter grays? And operating only at night it didn't really matter?
I've read some things that suggest the B-21 may not offer radical new capabilities (over say, the B-2) but it will be way way cheaper to build and operate.
There were only 21 B-2s ever built. The Air Force has already ordered 100 B-21s.
From what I've read (which I guess is largely speculation, although by people more familiar with the topic than me), the B-21 doesn't really push the envelope. The only really new thing is the airframe itself, but that largely piggybacks on stealth technology development over the past several decades (RAM coatings, shaping etc.) compared to the B-2, and not some entirely new R&D done only for the purpose of the B-21 program. The engines apparently come from the F-35, but obviously without the afterburners (an entirely sensible choice considering the F-35 is supposed to be manufactured in very large numbers and supported for a long time into the future). Electronics is supposedly stuff already developed. Etc. etc.
If true, then yes, the B-21 has potential to be relatively cheap to build and operate.
I doubt it. The B-2 was cut because the cold war ended and because it was absurdly expensive to maintain thanks to its 1980s stealth tech. The radar-absorbent material used for the B-2 degraded very quickly and it's a large aircraft, so that means absolutely constant work to keep it functioning as intended. The B-2s are based out of Missouri and when they go on a mission they fly all the way to the other side of the wold and then back to the central USA. Why? Because Whiteman Airforce base is the only one which has the massive climate-controlled hangars you need to stick the B-2s in to keep them from falling apart while on the ground. If the US built a fleet of 100+ B-2s in the 1990s we'd have ended up with a fleet of cutting edge bombers which cost more than $100,000 per flight-hour to operate and no one to use them against. A fleet of 100+ B-2s during the 2000s would have been a massive white elephant.
The B-21 is different in two important ways.
First, the B-21s stealth tech is derived from lessons learned from the F-35 program. The F-35 is a tactical fighter which the US and most of its allies are buying in very large numbers. They need to be stationed just about anywhere and can't require ridiculous maintenance to keep their skin from falling off. That would be impractical for a large fleet of aircraft. As such, a lot of work went into making the radar absorbent material used on the F-35 dramatically more durable. The B-21 gets to piggyback off of that and as a result it will be much more feasible to actually have a large fleet of them.
Second, there's a new cold war heating up with China. Anyone whose ever looked at the Pacific ocean might notice that it's kind of large. This makes range a major concern for combat aircraft. A medium stealth bomber with extreme range is essentially perfect for this environment because it can reach anywhere and is very hard to actually find once in flight. If you are a surface warship force, being hunted by a bunch of nearly undetectable aircraft which can be anywhere at anytime and can each carry more than a dozen large anti-ship missiles is going keep you up at night. The B-21 will likely end up being a very important piece in the US naval strategy in the pacific.
I wouldn't be surprised to see significantly more than 100 get built.
Oh, you can use them just as they were used - to do the things B-52, or hell, even B-29 could do. /snark
> being hunted by a bunch of nearly undetectable aircraft which can be anywhere at anytime and can each carry more than a dozen large anti-ship missiles
Now this is a question. My memory was rusty so I consulted Wikipedia and looks like there is not that many options.
SM6 is too weak and doesn't yet have AS capability, LRASM exists with a proper qualities (speed and payload) but is quite big even for B-1. And Tomahawk with no AS cap. and ... not fast.
So there is a question about "a dozen large anti-ship missiles" though it can be mitigated with a sheer numbers, which is probably the way it is designed.
> I wouldn't be surprised to see significantly more than 100 get built.
Depends on what would happen in tjhe world the next 10 years.
The near term anti-ship armament would be LRASMs, which are not actually very large. A B-1 can carry 24 of them internally at one time and the B-2 can carry 16. The B-21 is smaller but still large enough for a good load. 12 or more would not be surprising. No one is air-launching tomahawks or SM-6s (probably). The future is OASuW Increment II (HALO) which is a hypersonic anti-ship missile. The LRASM is basically a stop-gap until that happens. That missile will likely be a similar size to the LRASM given the size limitations of the platforms the navy wants to launch it from.
The security situation in the Pacific is also very unlikely to improve over the next 10 years.
Possibly, or possibly it will follow the same pattern as the F-22 / F-35 where the aircraft that was the true breakthrough (F-22) was expensive and had production slashed but the "cost optimized" version (F-35) is now being produced in large numbers [1].
1. I'm aware the F-35 development program itself was a boondoggle, but there are still building a ton of them right now.
> Related unrelated question : how come this is public?
Because trying to hide the existence of strategic bombers is expensive, ineffective, and not particularly helpful to keeping the actually secret technology they use secret.
> F117 was a dark skunk project shown years after being operational
With the F-117, the shape was part of the secret sauce. The B-21 doesn’t seem to be a big departure that way.
> I don't understand the announcements of such projects from the vision stage,
This wasn't announced in the vision stage, except that a new strategic bomber was being developed. The unveiling was well past vision, and competition, stages.
> Is it commoditized sufficiently? Is it deterrence? Is there enough misinformation?
> With the F-117, the shape was part of the secret sauce. The B-21 doesn’t seem to be a big departure that way.
The world has also changed substantially. When the F-117 was developed, being able to simulate the RF interactions with faceted geometry was ground breaking stuff. Now anyone that can afford an ANSYS license can simulate that with far, far, greater fidelity against much more complex shapes.
The most important benefit of the public announcement is that showing successfully completed projects like this helps the defense industry with recruitment and encourages more students to become aeronautical and mechanical engineers.
There's of course the slightly conspiratorial idea that they made this public because it's obsolete compared to whatever their newest toys are and so revealing this as a show of technological superiority is fine.
it may be its operational capabilities are more important to keep secret. It has an unmanned mode which is very interesting to me. Does it need to be piloted by a guy in an office cube like the Predator drone or is it more autonomous?
F117 was a dark skunk project shown years after being operational. That made sense to me for a super secret project with wildly new technologies and capabilities.
I don't understand the announcements of such projects from the vision stage, with the details of capability, purpose, strategy, photos,etc.
Is it commoditized sufficiently? Is it deterrence? Is there enough misinformation?