With the B-1B finally looking like it will be replaced by the B-21 Raider, Boeing has proposed extending the life of the Lancer by accentuating it's close support capability with belly guns comparable to the AC-130 gunship.
Northup Grumman had completed its first B-21 Raider prototype and is working on its second (2021). Expectations are that this stealth bomber will replace the B-1B Lancer and B-1 Spirit in the second half of the 2020's. Here's a look at it's anticipate capabilities.
How do you choose between two totally revolutionary fighter planes when one has an advantage here but the other has an advantage there. If you're the United States Air Force that has to pitch a program costing billions and billions of dollars to Congress, you go with the company you trust more.
The F-35 Lightning II was planned to replace five aging aircraft incorporating supersonic speed, vertical take off and landing, stealth and aircraft carrier operations. The F-35 proved all this is indeed possible but not within the programs primary objective, to be cheap. Still, the pilots love it.
Lockheed's F-117 Nighthawk was really an attack aircraft. It had the 'F' rather than 'A' designation to attract hot shot pilots. The only air to air weapon it was capable of deploying was the AIM 9 Sparrow intended ostensibly to attack Soviet AWACS. It had no gun, no radar and poor visibility to engage an enemy fighter. And once it's weapons bay was opened it lost its radar invisibility.
The United States Navy is now (2021) testing its new extended range anti-radiation missile, AARGM-EX, designed to destroy enemy antiaircraft radar. The specification indicates a range of twice the current AAGRM which is 60 to 80 miles making it capable of handling missions normally requiring stealth aircraft.
Until the B1B Lancer entered service the United States was a little low on bombers. So Boeing pitched a plan to arm 747s with 72 air launched cruise missiles, 52 more than Boeing's B-52 can carry. And the price of such a plane would be far less than any existing or planned bomber.
During the cold war the United States and Soviet Union fielded faster and faster aircraft and the general expectation was that would continue especially since the Untied States was well on its way to developing hypersonic aircraft in the 1960s. But aircraft speed topped out with the F-15 Eagle and MiG-25 Foxbat. Here's why.
In 1974 the Soviet Union had gained numerical superiority in in nuclear missiles over the United States. As the SALT talks were schedule to begin in three months, Henry Kisinger felt he needed better leverage. That lead to a crash program to launch an ICBM from a giant cargo plane.
As the United States Navy was considering retiring the F-14 Tomcat, Grumman proposed three enhanced versions of the plane that would have addressed it's ongoing problems and enhanced it in almost every way imaginable, even the basics like thrust, lift, range and capacity.
Sealth is a collection of technologies that give an aircraft low observability to radar, infrared, electromagnetismand sound coupled with air frame design, materials, manufacturing tolerances, electronic warfare devices and mission planning to maximize survivability. All together, its difficult, expensive and requires considerable skill.
AGM-136 Tacit Rainbow was a canceled 1980s loitering anitradiation missile concept. It was intended to support or replace Wild Weasel aircraft that endured heavy loses destroying antiaircraft systems during the Vietnam War. A loitering missile can disable antiaircraft radar either by destroying it or by making it to dangerous to turn it on.
After the US Navy retired the Phoenix missile, NASA had some interesting plans for the left over inventory. They wanted to bump the speed of the mach 4.3 missile up to mach 5.0+ and use if for hypersonic testing.
The Supersonoic Low Altitute Missile, SLAM. was a unfinished doomsday weapon developed under project Pluto. It was conceived as an ultra long range, ramjet, hypersonic, nuclear powered, multiple warhead cruise missile. in addition to delivering nuclear bombs it would, being low altitude, leave a trail of deadly radiation and sonic destruction along it's path.
Russia's and China's new hypersonic missiles have received a lot of publicity and that may be what they are intended to get because, being nuclear and relatively inaccurate, it can easily be argued they don't bring much to the battlefield. China's DF-17 is another matter since it is intended to be and anti-ship weapon but it is questionable if it can score a hit at long range on such a difficult target. However, this is what America's hypersonic program is intended to do with five weapons planned for production by 2030.
Two weeks into Putin's 2022 invasion of the Ukraine, Russia has still failed to establish air dominance. Alex reviews reports from various sources that show it can't. Alex's analysis is that Russia has been investing in development of advanced military technology to maintain its prestige at the expense of maintenance, modernization and training.
Apparently work on America's Next Generation Air Dominance Fighter is going well enough that Air Force Defense Secretary Frank Kendall III wants to begin fielding it by 2030. That prompted Alex to do a bit of brainstorming about what will it be like given that support drones will probably be a major feature.
The biggest threat to the US Navy's aircraft carriers are Chinese missiles. A new longer range attack aircraft is needed to keep aircraft carriers out of harms way during combat.
In March 2022 the first encounter between stealth fighters form hostile nations occurred. Here's a discussion of the tactile situation based on what was learned from this encounter.
The viral news story that the F-35 can't dogfight because it lost to the F-16 viper is ill informed. The F35 that participated in the F-16 exercise had deliberately limited flight controls, avionics and had no stealth coating. The F-35 later proved itself at Red Flag scoring 20+ to 1 kills.
If an enemy is fortunate enough to lock on to an F-35 Lightning II despite its stealth features, it still has to contend with the F-35's four electronic warfare pods that each proved three additional layers of defense.
When you're flying nearly 1000 of the most advanced fighter planes in the world what should you do? Give them a massive upgrade. And that's exactly what's in store for the F-35 Lighning II's.
One mission in a space battle would likely be to capture and disable an enemy's satellite causing it to fall back to Earth. Alex perceives a recent painting by Rick Herter of the US Space Force as depicting such a mission.
The United States hasn't fielded a new nuclear delivery vehicle in decades. Now that China and Russia are releasing innovative new weapons the United States is preparing to do the same.
Since the StarFish Prime nuclear test the US Air Force has been 'hardening' its aircraft against the electromagnetic pulse produced by a nuclear explosions. After all, these aircraft deliver nuclear weapons.
Alex shares the interviews of three pilots telling their stories of flying missions in an AH-64 Apache helicopter, SR-71 Blackbird and F-16 Fighting Falcon.
The early problems of the F-35 Lightning II still dog its reputation. And its Tech Refresh 3 is a year behind schedule. Which raises the question; with 1,000 f-35s now in service with 14 countries, why is it so popular?
An overview of what is currently (2024) publicly known about the corruption scandals and leadership purges in the Chinese Rocket Force. This story is presented amidst the back drop of corruption as part of China's standard business practices.
The F-16 Fighting Falcon was design according to Energy Maneuverability Theory making it an incredibly maneuverable. versatile and prolific multirole fighter that is still (2024) in production fifty years after its first flight.
The proliferation for aerial drones and missiles has generated renewed interest in laser air defenses. The effectiveness of these weapons against missiles remains in question but they look promising against drone swarms.
Initial prototypes on the US Air Force's adaptive cycle engine has provided greater efficiency, range and thermal control than anticipated with translates into increases, ranges, speed and loiter time.
With full deployment of the Sixth Generation Air Dominance Fight still (2024) a decade away the Air Force has an upgrade program underway with new tracking technology for the latest antiaircraft missiles that will make the F-22 Raptor effective against new stealth fighters now in production.
Submerged submarines can't receive radio transmissions at depth they rely on very low frequency communications to receive their attack codes. However, since the US Navy's five VLF transmission stations aren't likely to survive much beyond the first hour of a nuclear war the Navy operates specialized aircraft as backup.
Sergey Lavrov has threatened to treat the deployment of F-16 Fighting Falcons to Ukraine as a nuclear threat. His comments were disingenuous for many reasons.
Does Alex sound considerably more excited than usual as he pays homage to Kelly Johnson, Ben Rich and Lockheed's Skunkworks and compares them to Hermeus' progress toward building the world's first hypersonic airplane?
A history of stealth aircraft beginning with project Gusto, that generated the SR-71 Blackbird, and Boeing's Queit Bird examining the incredible challenge of stealth that China has quite a ways to go to master.
Now that aerial drones have become prolific the Unitied States military has become interested in aquatic drones, particularly submersibles. But with longer mission times in a more hostile environment aquatic drones face challenges with power consumption, reliability and communications.
Instead of individual operators operating individual attack drones the US Air Force is more interested in operator-less drawn swarms allocating targets using distributed artificial intelligence.
New fighter designs have become so much more modular and upgradeable that a single air frame could span multiple generations making the generation designation meaningless.
The US Navy's new aircraft carrier version of the SM-6, apparently tagged AIM-174, should have a range greater than the radar on the F/A-18 SuperHornet that will Lille carry it.
Alex explains that America's military buildup of the 2020's and it shift from fighting region wars to global wars is, indeed, true but with the hope a global world will never occur. In other words, it is an investment in deterrence.
Precision guided bombs, specifically the joint direct attack munition 'jdam', have radically changed the effectiveness of bomber aircraft. Thoughout the twentieth successfully hitting a single target required a flight of bombers dropping hundreds of bombs. In the twenty first century a single bomber can successfully target as may targets as it has bombs.
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