SinoDefence Forum

kyanges

Source: Reuters




I'm not really sure quite what to say about it, other than, I'm surprised at the loss of such an aircraft, and that there will probably not be a lot of details released due to the secretive nature of the bomber...

Obi Wan Russell

The loss of this aircraft will have a huge impact on the USAF bomber force as they only have a handful anyway (now less than twenty) and I wouldn't be surprised if there are now call from congress to reopen the production lines for a second batch, which could be justified in taking pressure off the B-52 force, for which some serious thought should be given to it's replacement anyway.

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crobato

There has been a string of accidents lately, like some big jinx happening. Just sometime earlier in the month, a Prowler from the Nimitz battlegroup crashed 20 miles north of Andersen Air Force base. Fortunately, the crew survived. At the time when they had the successful SM-3 satellite intercept, two F-15Cs collided over New Mexico. This one had more tragic results.

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akihh

I'd really like to see a nice statistics on these accidents. If the curves are going up, USAF/USN have some serious structural problems. The recent loading of live nukes into a bomber was a true red flag - not just so sure if they reacted correctly by firing everyone involved...

Otoh, older and stressed out airframes are more prone to failure regardless of maintenace.

SampanViking

This latest accident really does nothing other than suggest fatigue and overstretch of elderly platforms.

These planes cost $1.2 Billion each when they were built 20 years ago, so you could probably double that price tag for a replacement run today. That means that a new run of similar size to the original would cost at least $50 Billion!!

I think even the US could buy a whole new Air Force with that money!

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Pointblank

Nope, the reason why unit costs for the B-2 is listed as 1.2 billion dollars is that R&D costs are amortized over the number of airframes produced. It actually costs less than 1/3 to build a B-2 at the time they were produced. Any additional purchases of B-2's will only be incremental costs associated with production, and restarting the production line.

Schumacher

But what abt the costs of restarting the production lines ? I think they've been shut for a while now.

Pointblank

The USAF has the tooling stored away in a warehouse (like they do for most of the service aircraft in US service), so it is a question of finding somewhere to move the tooling to, and if they want to make modifications to the design (ie. build a B-2B).

But in order to make this worthwhile, the production line has to be of a good size (minimum of 30 new birds).