Will we actually get a sufficient number of these things or is

>>33860496
I thought they were updating the B-52 though ?

>>33860496
We are going to have to purchase enough of them or we won't have a bomber fleet, and that is strategically unacceptable.

Of course we will, until we don't. All promises are subject to change when it comes to DoD hardware

also,

>Naming your bomber that will bear the weight of 21st century strategic bombing after a botched raid that lost all aircraft involved and is also the name of a shitty NFL team

>>33860664
It achieved 100% of its goals.

>>33860528
The Raider is slated to replace both the B-52s and B-1Bs.

God only knows if that's actually what happens though. My guess is they end up purchasing only half of what they originally claimed they would and end up keeping 50-75 B-1Bs in service until they can fuck up the next bomber procurement.

>>33860496

>Sufficient number

0 would be sufficient.

We will probably get more B-21s than B-2s, but still probably not very many. B-1Bs will be phased out as B-21s come into service, while B-52s continue to be fixed up and kept in service.

Like the F-22, the fleet will likely be severely cut, and USAF capability with it.

depends on how many democrats are elected when its being produced. This is the best and only right answer and has always been.

>>33860496
B-2 was not that expensive to build, the high cost per unit was because we only had 21 built by the time the cold war ended and we agreed to reduce our strategic bomber fleet. Shit we scrapped hundreds of B-52's just to meet the treaty requirements.

>>33860720

Does the B-21 actually have a big enough payload?

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>>33860496
So Congress made it clear there will be a cut and dry spending limit for the b21.

This means they won't be any room for stupid spending and bullshit like we saw with the f35

I'd imagine they will build at least 50 or so to reduce costs.
Especially with it using modified F135 engines.

>>33861118
t. Chang

>>33860664
Raiders are Super Bowl material now, desu.

>>33862542
Nobody knows anything about the B-21's payload, but it's speculated to be more like a 30,000lb payload aircraft. With SDBs, etc though it could probably wipe a shit ton of targets out though.

>>33860496
From my contacts (who I'm liable to believe) the major differences in procurement between the B-21 and the B-2 (the B-21 is essentially the USAF RCO's baby), the likelihood of cost overruns is much, MUCH lower than it was for the B-2.

Given all the airframes that the USAF is looking to replace with this beast (and oh, what a beast she is), I'll be shocked if we end up with any less than 100 of them.

You Califags need to hang around near Palmdale on more clear nights. Word is, the prototype airframe has been racking up a ton of hours lately.

>>33863216
Used to see B2s all the time as a kid. Sonic booms would frequently break windows. You'd ask half the people what they did and the answer would be "can't tell you". Sure it's a similar situation there now.

>>33862815
The reason for that speculation is because it is assumed that surely it will be able to carry 1 MOP.

>>33863687
>B-2
>sonic booms

O.K.

>>33863776
>top speed 1000km/h

Whelp I can add my parent's story to the Santa Clause and Tooth Fairy pile

>>33863767
That and the fact that even with economy of scale it has a somewhat ambitious pricing goal, and there's only so many ways you can achieve that with a stealth bomber (making it smaller being an effective one).

>>33863800
Speed of sound is a bit over 1100km/h

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Screw the B-21, I want to know what else has been flying around for at least 30 years. Pic highly related.

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>tfw in our lifetimes the standard, universal plane profile will die off
>tfw by 2100 everyone, even people on commercial flights, will be on aircraft that grew from the stealth dorito concept
>tfw the entire future looks like this ugly shit
i want off

>>33864848
Under what conditions?

>>33860664
Blew up targets, only lost 3 men to direct enemy action.

>>33865080

The fuck are you on about? The most "revolutionary" design I've seen even experimented with for commercial air is the Aurora D8. We might see a lot odd designs, and flying wings as drones progressively start to dominate more of the military's airspace, but I highly doubt that this will ever happen for transport, and commercial shit.

>>33865129

Are executions really counted as direct enemy action? Isn't it more of a consequence after the fact?

>>33865092
At 30,000ft (standard atmospheric conditions) it's 1092km/h; at 10,000ft it's 1128km/h, at 1,000ft it's 1221km/h.

I would be surprised if they manage to overrun on a B-2 scale. So much new aviation technology was matured on the F-35 program, and the B-2 (a similar design flying wing) will also give a good starting point.

In my opinion, the B-21 should be a low risk program if the DoD don't fuck around with stupid requirements, and Northrop Grumman aren't complete idiots. Though, hey, who knows.

>>33865768

>Northrop
>complete idiots

Does not compute. Also, I want to remind everyone here that Lockheed and Boeing got so butthurt that they picked Northrop over them for this, that they planned on suing the government.

I can't imagine why the fuck you wouldn't have Northrop build this god damn thing.

>>33865792
Protesting competitions is pretty standard affair; if you're the CEO of Boeing or Lockheed and you have the choice of:

A. Do nothing and 100% let your competition get the tens / hundreds of billions of $.

B. Demand a review and have maybe a 5% chance of something causing the contract to be cancelled or awarded to you.

why would you go with A?

>>33865814

Protesting is fine, but threatening to sue all because you didn't get picked? Especially when you're literally the king of crony-capitalism? That's some next level rubbing hands. All Lockheed and Boeing ended up doing is put the project on ice for a few months, which bled the budget slightly. The ability to do this sort of shit needs to stop.

It will cost 10 billion, only 5 will be bought and the Chinese knock-off is going to fly before the B-21 does.

>>33865883
"Threatening to sue" = protesting; it's a legal process that's defined in each competition. If the USAF had picked Northrop for reasons not outlined by the RFI, etc then Lockheed / Boeing would have been legally due reparations.

>>33864845

I think it is supposed to have an engine that shares a lot of parts with the F-35. So the size is likely to be whatever you can fly efficiently with two non-afterburning versions of the F-135.

>>33865990
Yep: http://breakingdefense.com/2016/03/b-21-and-f-35-engines-may-share-tech-pratt-wont-talk/

If they just removed the afterburner (leaving it with 28,000lbf of thrust) then it'll still have 80% as much total thrust as the B-2's 4x F118s.

>>33865080
why would civilian craft be design to be extremely unstable so as to require fly by wire systems to maintain level flight?
idiot

>>33865768
The B-21 has just as much crazy shit for 2017 as the B-2 did in 1988.

The key difference is that this time around, by using the RCO to procure it, they have a far more streamlined development process in terms of identifying and selecting design goals. One that also has far, far fewer cooks in the kitchen.

It's practically a return to how procurement was run in the 40s and 50s. That's why they're nearly at the EMD phase for something as complicated as the B-2 less than two years after the program was awarded. I'll bet the B-21 hits IOC around 2020-2022 or so.

>>33866352
B-21 IOC is planned for 2025, which is still pretty quick though.

>>33866130
Flying / blended wings are more fuel efficient, though I have my doubts about them becoming airliners; to make them worth the expense, you have to have passengers spread across a wide area of the fuselage / wing. What that means is that when the plane banks / rolls, passengers near the ends of the cabin will be having a bad time.

>>33866369
At this rate, from what I've been hearing, I wouldn't be surprised at all if the B-21 comes in ahead of schedule.

Agreed on flying wing airliners never being a thing, though.

That whole "nobody gets windows, nobody at all!" thing means that flying in a BWB airliner will be a hellish rollercoaster-like experience, even IF they give everyone AR headsets so they can look around outside the plane.

The best hope that we have for a civilian BWB or flying will be when the RFP goes out for the C-5 replacement. IF, and it's a big "IF", the resulting design that will almost certainly be a BWB, a wing, or a Lockheed-style hybrid is small enough to fit in the footprint of a DC-10/MD-11/777 and has engine commonality with the A380 or 777, you might see whoever wins that contract offer up a civilianized version to the cargo carriers to replace their 747s and DC-10s.

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>>33860496
As long as politics stays out.

>>33868794
Politics never stays out.

>>33868794

Honestly, I really hope they add in a little extra to develop a tanker variant. A stealth tanker will both extend the reach of the B-21, and help sustain F-35 & F-22 operations in a hostile environment.

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>>33863687
With a subsonic aircraft?

>>33863687
>sonic booms from a subsonic aircraft

lulz

>>33862542
Debatable but with SDBs probably. I'm more concerned with the number of airframes.

>>33866369
>Flying / blended wings are more fuel efficient

Far as I understand thats just a meme

>>33862595
>I'd imagine they will build at least 50 or so to reduce costs
They better build at least four times that amount if the plan is to retire all the bones and buffs.

>>33870681
How would it be a meme?

I'm willing to bet that after the B-21 is procured, the USAF will adopt some sort of modified 767 as a general purple strategic bomber. Easy to maintain and find parts for.

Also, on a related note DARPA is trying to build a two-state-to-orbit spaceplane (XS-1), which might yield something interesting (a fast high altitude plane that can carry another big plane can also carry lots of bombs).

>>33865080

flying wings > twin engine widebodies

more lift, more control (thanks to computerized avionics), and more speed. Embrace the future.

>>33866468

Windows aren't important if free wifi is provided.

>>33868984
That's what the X-47 is working on. Shouldn't be too hard to envision the technology being adapted to add a boom to a similar drone. On the other hand, unmanned boom operation is scary, so who knows?

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>>33868984
Thats what this is for

>>33871522
?
500 bucks says the USAF will never buy another non-stealth combat plane

Micro launch vehicles are just a meme, they have no real market, already exist in the form of ICBM's, and are just stupid

Rockets are much easier to make big than to make small

>>33873337

>500 bucks says the USAF will never buy another non-stealth combat plane

Eventually everything wears out and Boeing needs to keep their production lines moving. They'll be a 777 bomber, 777 tanker, 777 awacs, and of course lots of 777 freighters. This will also make logistics much simplier, as there will be one set of parts for most AF craft.

>Micro launch vehicles are just a meme, they have no real market, already exist in the form of ICBM's, and are just stupid

Micro launch vehicles already exist in the form of every single supersonic aircraft the AF has, but that's not stopping DARPA. An aircraft capable of launching big things into orbit means they don't have to contract launches out to the private industry, and they can keep operations in-house.

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>>33874015

why have 3+ different types of cargo plane when you could have one?

>>33873322
http://aviationweek.com/awin/lockheed-martin-refines-hybrid-wing-body-airlifter-concept

HNNGGGHHH

>>33874067
Because they can only deliver so many at a time, hence why airlines operate many types of aircraft.

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>>33874015
>>33874067

some more fuel to that theory:

>Boeing is proposing to stretch the -9 by four seat rows to accommodate 450 passengers in a 777-10X to compete with the Airbus A380 superjumbo. It has approached several airlines including Emirates, the largest operator of both the 777 and the A380, seating between 489 and 615 passengers.[50] The potential 263 feet (80 m) long airplane (12 ft more) is competing against a hypothetical stretch of the A350-1000 for Singapore Airlines.[51]

http://americanmachinist.com/news/singapore-airlines-books-big-order-boeing-jet-ge-engines

https://www.challenges.fr/entreprise/aeronautique/la-megacommande-de-singapore-airlines-a-boeing-une-douche-froide-pour-airbus_453385

http://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/air-transport/2015-12-02/air-new-zealand-777-makes-first-330-minute-etops-flight

This is more likely to happen as the FAA relaxed transoceanic restrictions for twin engine jets, and because even a fuckhuge 777 would have lower training costs than a quad engine 747 or a380.

>>33862595
>So Congress made it clear there will be a cut and dry spending limit for the b21.
>I'd imagine they will build at least 50 or so to reduce costs
A "cut and dry spending limit" means they're going to make fewer airplanes, not more. Reducing the number of airframes purchased is the only way to lower the cost of a design and acquisition project. Removing features you've already developed is pointless because the money is already spent, and cutting as-yet undeveloped features is DoD unacceptable because at that point you might as well just build more of the old plane, which is congress/contractor unacceptable.

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Why is the US making the B-21? Surely it can't be that different from the B-2 in terms of stealth anyway.

>>33865912
I wish the H-20 would fly soon but there's basically no information about it so I can only assume it'll take ages for that to happen.

>>33874963
>Why is the US making the B-21? Surely it can't be that different from the B-2 in terms of stealth anyway.

USAF bombers in active service:
>B-52H Stratofortress = 77
>B-1B Lancer = 62
>B-2A Spirit = 20

Basically, the older bombers need replacing with around a hundred new aircraft, and the B-2 is too expensive to procure and operate in these kinds of numbers.

Add in the advances in aviation technology like all the 5th gen technology (including radar absorbent materials that are far easier to maintain) matured by the F-35 program, and it makes sense to build a new bomber using the same proven flying wing concept as the B-2, but the technology of the F-35.

we need more flying wing aircraft

>>33860496
Can they perform carpet bombing ?

>>33878282
Probably, but why bother when instead they'll do something like carry 100+ SDBs?