Modern Heavy Bomber News, Pictures Thread (Non-Chinese)

kwaigonegin

Colonel
as the Title it's self says this is a Opinion/editorial
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I actually agree with that opinion. Buffs are too old and b2s too few and too precious because of the price tag.
We need a serious bomb truck that's both fast and stealthy and like the article says at least numbering 100 units. The article failed to mentioned the b1s though.
I think Lrs-b should follow the ideas of the b1 for strategic bombing to sufficiently maintain the nattion's nuclear triad.
Still keep uodating the current fleet of buffs for conventional warfare but nukes should Prefebly be carried by big fast movers and b2s.
 

TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
66 B1B remain in service with a replacement targeted for 2030. 58 B52 are active with about the same end of service date. and of course 20 B2.
B1 and B52 have booth filled the conventional strike roll in Afghanistan and Iraq,
The Issues of B1 are first it's swing wing. A fad that faded in the mid 1980's and costs weight, internal volume and radar signature.
Supersonic speed comes at a cost it needs time often adding 10-20 years to development. LRS-B is needed by 2030. that means an initial flight by the end of the decade.
It's also Expensive vs a subsonic. chances are subsonic. there was however at one time a plan for a second follow on bomber with a a projection date in 2037.that was targeted for super sonic speed.
 

Jeff Head

General
Registered Member
TheB-52s are old...but for what they are used for, they are also effective to this day.

They are not only an excellent example of a good design...but in addition, an example of absolutely great (and ingenious) maintenance.

The B-1Bs are still very good aircraft with a large payload, long range, speed, and adequate low signature. The B-2s are in a class by themselves...but we needed 100 of them.

As with the F-22, you will here people complain about their high cost of the B02s...and they are expensive. Originally though, a lot more of them were envisioned and going to be built...which established an adequate ROI and justified their R&D costs. But when you cut the number to 20...well, the price per article goes way up.
 

FORBIN

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
66 B1B remain in service with a replacement targeted for 2030. 58 B52 are active with about the same end of service date. and of course 20 B2.
Yep but also 18 B-52 for AF Reserve, 2 Sqns of 9 more small as active ( USAF bombers Sqn in general about 10/15 theoretic 15) which is always the case for all or almost all types of aircrafts and sometimes AF Reserve have less in a Sqn that ANG.

B-1B 63 or 66 for be very accurate.

Bombers feature, except 1 B-2 and 1 B-52 used for test to Edwards attached to AFMC 419 Fl Test Squ ( since about a year no B-1 ) all others bombers are in Front line units who lend to other small test units ( TES, Weap Sqns ) also based in the same base.

USAF Bombers organisation :

AIR COMBAT COMMAND/ 12th AF in october rattached to AIR FORCE GLOBAL STRIKE COMMAND for nuclear deterence again.

Dyess :
7th Bomb Wing :
9 BS : 15 B-1B
28 BS OCU : 18 B-1B

Ellsworth :
28th Bomb Wing :
34 BS : 15 B-1B
37 BS : 15 B-1B

AIR FORCE GLOBAL STRIKE COMMAND
8th AIR FORCE

Barksdale
2nd Bomb Wing :
11,20 ( OCU ) and 96 BS : 30 B-52H
307 th Bomb Wing depends AF RESERVE :
93, 343 BS each 9 B-52H

Minot :
5th Bomb Wing :
23, 69 BS : 27 B-52H

Whiteman :
509th Bomb Wing
325, 393 BS : 19 B-2A
353 Cbt Tr Squ 16 T-38

In more

AIR FORCE MATERIAL COMMAND
Edwards
419th Flight test sqn, OEU : 1 B-2A, 1 B-52H no B-1B
 
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kwaigonegin

Colonel
In future battlespace you may need both speed and stealth. The B2 was conceive actually in the late 70's and design work begun not long after and throughout the early 80s when stealth technology was the 'in' thing similar to the F-117 through the Have Blue program. It was made solely to evade Soviet air defenses and penetrate Soviet airspace to drop nukes mainly as a preemptive strike weapon systems to take out strategic sites of the Warsaw Pact!
Then the wall came down and the entire program got cut and we're left with less than a couple dozen.

I think the b52s still has considerable value left despite it's age due to modernization and the types of warfare that we've been seeing and continue to see however against any modern air defenses in a competent c4isr environment the B52s will have ZERO chance of survivability.

I like almost everything I've seen of the LRS-B .. it appears to be both fast and stealthy which is what is definitely needed for future warfare and more importantly has the ability to be a preemptive first strike system if the call ever comes.
 

Scratch

Captain
Talking about that, does anybody know what the current status of the B-52 re-engine program is? Will we see something here or is it dead? With the current financial constraints I guess that has a rather low priority, given the B-52's performance is adequate for what it's doing. Yet, replacing 55(?) years old engines should still give another performance boost. Perhaps the most radical that can still be achieved on that plane. And may still save money in the end.
 

Jeff Head

General
Registered Member
Talking about that, does anybody know what the current status of the B-52 re-engine program is? Will we see something here or is it dead?
The last I read on it was the following article from October 2014 in Aviation Week:

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000000 b52-2 reengine.jpg

Aviation Week said:
The U.S. Air Force is reviewing industry studies of fitting its 50-year-old
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B-52 bombers with new commercial-derivative engines, according to Lt. Gen. Stephen Wilson, commander of the service’s Global Strike Command.

So far, Wilson said Oct. 9 at a Washington meeting, the Air Force assesses that the change would result in a net cost savings over the remaining life of the B-52s, which are expected to fly until 2040.

Wilson did not identify the contractor that made the proposal or whether more than one company is involved. However, an industry source confirms that Boeing has presented a “concept brief” and that
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has looked at fitting the bomber with eight
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-10 engines. Pratt & Whitney also is exploring options.

Fitting new engines would sharply reduce the bombers’ fuel burn, and in turn reduce the need for tanker support, Wilson said. Moreover, under current commercial standards the new engines would not have to be removed for routine maintenance over the lifetime of the aircraft.

Wilson’s Global Strike Command and Air Force Materiel command are examining the proposal; separately, Wilson said he wants his command to become more agile and innovative in terms of procurement and upgrade programs, and that he has worked on learning lessons from Air Force Special Operations Command in this area. One example is the Dragon’s Eye demonstration this summer, in which a
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ASQ-236 radar targeting pod was fitted to a B-52 and flight tested in four weeks.

The main obstacles to a re-engining program could concern budgets and regulations, Wilson says. Airline operating experience would have to be used to support military airworthiness requirements, and the proposal rests on recovering an early investment through lower operating costs. Wilson notes that commanders have budgetary discretion to spend money against future energy savings when they modernize bases and other facilities, but not to modify aircraft.

This represents at least the third attempt to re-engine the B-52, which is powered by eight TF33 engines similar to those used on the Boeing 707.

Pratt & Whitney studied the idea in 1982, with four
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-series engines. In 1996 Boeing and
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jointly proposed to fit B-52s with four RB211-535s, with the government leasing the engines. The first plan was not taken up because all B-52s were to be replaced by B-1s and B-2s by the late 1990s, and the second failed because of resistance to leasing combat assets and a flawed economic assessment by the Air Force.

According to a 2004 Defense Science Board report, the
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failed to take the cost of air refueling into account. At that time, tanker-delivered fuel cost $17.50 per gallon, 14 times the cost of fuel on the ground. The DSB task force “unanimously recommend[ed] the Air Force proceed with B-52H re-engining without delay,” but no action was taken.

“Had we done it all those years ago, we’d be patting ourselves on the back today and telling everyone how smart we were,” Wilson said.

GE’s eight-CF34-10 option could deliver more thrust than the current engines (variants are rated at 17,640-20,360-lb. thrust) and would avoid engine-out handling issues.

Pratt & Whitney announced in May that it was launching the PW1135G-JM, aimed initially at the
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and rated at a 35,000-lb. thrust class, slightly more than two TF33s. The new engines would deliver an even greater performance and efficiency improvement than the engines proposed in 1996.

The RB211-535 has been out of production since the end of the
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line in 2004, and the last F117s (military PW2000s) are being delivered with the final
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, so neither engine is a strong candidate today.

...and this Defense News article from February 2014:

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Defense News said:
WASHINGTON — The US Air Force is keeping an eye on options to re-engine its B-52 bombers, including the creation of a public-private partnership with an industry supplier, a top service official said.

Lt. Gen. Mike Holmes, deputy chief of staff for Strategic Plans and Requirements, told reporters during a Feb. 6 event that the service is looking to get "creative" on potential power plant replacements for the aging bomber fleet. Each B-52 flies on eight Pratt & Whitney TF33-P-3/103 turbofan engines, an old and inefficient design produced between late 1950s and 1980s.

"To go out and buy new engines for the B-52, you'd have a really hard time fitting that into our program," Holmes acknowledged. "But that's why we're interested in a public-private partnership, which would be a different way to amortize those engines over time and pay for them in the savings that they actually generate, instead of paying for them out of savings that you hope for."

The idea would allow the service to get new engines onboard without breaking the budget. However, as Holmes noted, non-budgetary hurdles must be crossed before such an agreement could be put into place.

"There are contractor proposals to do some public-private partnerships, kind of creative ways, to get new engines on the airplane," Holmes said. "We have to work through policy and legal and legislative hurdles to be able to do that.

"The idea is in a public-private partnership, somebody funds the engine and then we pay them back over time out of the fuel savings, which are generated out of the new engines," he continued. "Our government has a way to do that with [military construction] facilities. We don't have a way to do that with airplanes, and we are exploring whether there are alternative ways that would let us do that."

In October, Global Strike Command chief Lt. Gen. Stephen Wilson told reporters he had people "looking at" installing new engines on the bomber fleet, which is expected to operate until 2040.

"Look at what the airline industry is doing — they're all re-engining," Wilson said at the time. "Why? Because it saves you a lot of money. If there is a commercially available engine which can give a 25-30 percent increase in either range or loiter, you have my attention."

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Analysts have identified the Pratt PW2000 engine, known as the F117 on military aircraft, as a potential replacement. That engine is used on the 757 commercial jet, which ended production about a decade ago, and the C-17 military cargo plane, which ends production this year.

Speaking the day before Holmes, Bennett Croswell, head of Pratt's military engines unit, told reporters his company has made "some very attractive offerings" to the Air Force.

Croswell said that while the F117 may be logical, in the past there were issues with control authority of the plane that could have required a re-wing to mount the more powerful engines. That problem has been solved, he said, and the company has offerings that can keep the eight-engine configuration.

"I think there it's going to just be affordability," Croswell said of the chances a program moves forward. "There would be significant savings in terms of the fuel economy of the engines… we have some attractive options for the Air Force to consider."

If a B-52 engine program does go up for bid, it is possible General Electric and Rolls-Royce would likely investigate entering the competition.

So, basically, in that last article, in order to get past the upfront budgetary issues, I had heard that the Department of Defense was trying to work a deal with private industry where they look at a leasing program where those private companies actually purchase the new engines and then lease them to the USAF. Military costs could then be determined by depreciation and actual usage, and avoid the up-front large expenditures. If they could make that work, it would be...creative.
 
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Scratch

Captain
Defensenews has an interesting article on the LRS-B.

It seems the Air Force has briefed external stakeholders on the program, and a bit of that info has become public.

The air force has already conducted extensive testing on both designs, which seems to indicate they are further along the way than exspected. Although non has flown yet.
There was also a lot of risk reduction already, and a contract, apparently, could come as early as September.

Size wise it will be somewhere between the UCLASS and B-2, with way better LO characteristics when compared to the Spirit.

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WASHINGTON — The two designs competing to be the US Air Force's next generation bomber have undergone extensive testing by the service and are far more mature than previously known, to a level nearly unheard of in the Pentagon before a contract award, Defense News has learned.

The designs also feature significantly improved stealth capabilities when compared to the B-2 and still feature plans for future certification of nuclear weaponry and the ability to be optionally manned.

Considered one of the US Air Force's three top acquisition priorities, the Long Range Strike-Bomber (LRS-B) program has been kept primarily in the dark as the service weighs two competing proposals, one from Northrop Grumman, and the other from a team of Boeing and Lockheed Martin. A contract award is expected soon, with indications it could come before the end of September.

On Tuesday, the Air Force held a meeting with outside stakeholders laying out new details on the secretive bomber. According to two individuals with knowledge of the meeting, the service has conducted far greater testing of the bomber designs than is normal for a pre-award program.

One source said the Air Force officials who briefed made it clear that both designs are "very mature," having undergone wind tunnel testing and extensive survivability tests to evaluate the design from all angles. However, neither design has actually flown, both sources said. ...

Way more info in the link.
 

kwaigonegin

Colonel
QsLEz17.jpg


This image along with a few others have been circling around for a while but I personally think it's most likely the closest depiction of what the finalized design will look like.

I guess I'll find out in about 10 years if I'm right or wrong.
 
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