Forum: General F-35 Forum

bigjku wrote:

marksengineer wrote:

It would not take much to build a 79 Plymouth on a modern Dodge assembly line. The 79's were uni-body construction and so are the new vehicles. About the only changes you would need to make would be the addition of locating tabs to the sheet metal for robotic assembly and welding.

Thought the B-2 tooling was still stored at AMARG. Saw it there in 2008. Aren't they using it to rebuild one?

Wasn't the costly redesign of the B-2 from the simple W shape the result of adding the low level penetration to it's mission?

What bothers me about the new bomber is the reduction in range from 6000 miles unrefueled to 5000. How many less targets are we able to reach as result of this?

Not many. Go draw some 2,400 mile radius circles on a map and see where you can't get. If I refuel the thing somewhere along the line from Japan to the Philippines I can get the vast majority of China.

Something has to give on designs. We have plenty of tankers so trading some range for affordability makes all the sense in the world.

+ about 1000 miles for ALCMs.

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SpudmanWP wrote:

The lower you are the closer you have to get to launch a weapon and you can be seen/heard by people on the ground.

The higher you are the harder you are to see or hear.

The higher you are the easier it is to detect and geolocate emissions on the ground.

Actually, the lower you are the fewer there are to see you. I can look up and see 747s 60 miles away... So can about 2,000,000 other people in my area. If they were 500ft above the earth, you're talking about a handful of people that have have to be in just the right location, and then its only visible for a fleeting moment, if its even operating in daylight! Plus 500ft up, it's not targetable by very many SAMs, unlike at 50,000ft. I'm just saying, if the stealth nut get's cracked, we're left with a fleet of essentially modern day buffs. There really is no such thing as an undectable airplane... High and slow, down they go.

Okay, first of all it's not going to be a flying wing. It's going to be a twin engine F-135 varient design with a supersonic dash speed of mach 1.6 which can't be done with a flying wing. It will most likely be an updated version of the YB-23 proposal with updated F-35 avionics and sensors.

Guys, it's being built by Northrop... and it's going to be a flying wing...
It's a bomber, not a fighter, dashing is nice-to-have feature, flying wing is superior in term of LO, and range.

And it will not fly low level penetration... B-2 never did that, that is the era before stealth technology, the purpose of stealth is that you don't need to fly low any more. When flying low, you're closer to enemy radar, your bombs have less range and penetration depth, and your aircraft has less range too. And range is the one most important characteristic for bomber, strategic bomber.

A B-2 at Diego Garcia can reach lots of asia, without tankers. Tankers are good but have no survivability, and if you can fly a tanker from Japan, you can also fly a bomber from Japan. A Japan tanker fueling a Guam bomber will not make Japan innocent in this military action.

And the benefit of an unmanned bomber is also the range, a B-2 can fly a 30-hour mission, but unmanned aircraft has better endurance.

sewerrat wrote:

High and slow, down they go.

That is where the F-117, B-2 and F-22 live, they must know something you don't. Wink

megasun wrote:

Guys, it's being built by Northrop... and it's going to be a flying wing...
It's a bomber, not a fighter, dashing is nice-to-have feature, flying wing is superior in term of LO, and range.

And it will not fly low level penetration... B-2 never did that, that is the era before stealth technology, the purpose of stealth is that you don't need to fly low any more. When flying low, you're closer to enemy radar, your bombs have less range and penetration depth, and your aircraft has less range too. And range is the one most important characteristic for bomber, strategic bomber.

A B-2 at Diego Garcia can reach lots of asia, without tankers. Tankers are good but have no survivability, and if you can fly a tanker from Japan, you can also fly a bomber from Japan. A Japan tanker fueling a Guam bomber will not make Japan innocent in this military action.

And the benefit of an unmanned bomber is also the range, a B-2 can fly a 30-hour mission, but unmanned aircraft has better endurance.

There is no reason why in a pinch I can't fly a tanker out of Guam to fuel a bomber out of Guam. It is not efficient but it could be done in a pinch if you really needed to get further than the new bomber could go. 5,000 unrefueled is still a pretty good ways to go so you may or may not need to. The point is you could if you had to.

Dropping from 6,000 to 5,000 miles range is not a huge deal in the end if it lets you get the price and size down quite a bit.

Here is a question: would a diamond shape be more stealthy than a boomerang shape?
Also, would it be plausible that they might arrange drive shafts so that each engine drives multiple fans, so as to increase bypass ratio for the same size core without putting another bulge in the wing?

LRS-Bomber Project: Project Scope, speed, range, stealth, high altitude, optionally manned; Project Schedule, enter service in the mid-2020s (13 years); Project Budget, 100? @ $550 million each or 200? @ $250 million each. Project Resources - B-1 & B-2 operating experience; F-22 & F-35 materials ,systems and engine manufacturing technology; F-35 design, engineering and manufacturing technologies. Project Scope - What type of aircraft design can perform these scope requirements? Are multiple engine type designs for speed and range required or must these be mutually exclusive? After 70 years of jet engine evolution to the B787- GEnx, F22- F119 and SR71- J58-1, is there any hope of both speed and range? Question

As far as I understand, supersonic hurts range, drag increases greatly, even if you have virable cycle engine, you can "dash", but if you want to reach max range, you'll cruise at economic speed, like airliners.

archeman wrote:

popcorn wrote:

Expect the LRS-B to reset the bar for,stealth aircraft. I'm hoping they manage to implement some sort t of morphing wing design.

Please No. No. No.
More than ever this next bomber stands a great chance of proving all the pundits of The Death Spiral correct.
Trying to implement over-the-top features that have never been production proven into the design is a very bad first step down that road.
How many years would a morphing wing add to the production and test schedule? I guessing two Administrations worth.

It really depends on the progress they've made in the technology. It may be part of the answer to the challenge of achieving high speed and long range along with new engines.

archeman wrote:

popcorn wrote:

Expect the LRS-B to reset the bar for,stealth aircraft. I'm hoping they manage to implement some sort t of morphing wing design.

Please No. No. No.
More than ever this next bomber stands a great chance of proving all the pundits of The Death Spiral correct.
Trying to implement over-the-top features that have never been production proven into the design is a very bad first step down that road.
How many years would a morphing wing add to the production and test schedule? I guessing two Administrations worth.

It really depends on the progress they've made in the technology. It may be part of the answer to the challenge of achieving high speed and long range along with new engines.

archeman wrote:

popcorn wrote:

Expect the LRS-B to reset the bar for,stealth aircraft. I'm hoping they manage to implement some sort t of morphing wing design.

Please No. No. No.
More than ever this next bomber stands a great chance of proving all the pundits of The Death Spiral correct.
Trying to implement over-the-top features that have never been production proven into the design is a very bad first step down that road.
How many years would a morphing wing add to the production and test schedule? I guessing two Administrations worth.

It really depends on the progress they've made in the technology. It may be part of the answer to the challenge of achieving high speed and long range along with new engines.

err, popcorn - you seem to be multiple posting of late...

I think if we could actually get the USAF to agree to use existing (or derivative) engines and existing (or derivative) avionics, boatloads of time and money could be saved. We could probably field a really capable aircraft at a bargain price.

Has anyone else seen the Northrop design for a 'kite' stealth bomber? That's probably the way the LRS-B is going to go, as many people here have already mentioned.

I think the most worrying statement from the story is "speed" included as one of the bombers characteristics. I don't know how they're going to get 'ultra-stealth' and speed at the same time.

If they do go for speed, then its going to have to be a 'low-ish' altitude penatrator, just because it won't have the broadband stealth of the LRS-B. Why low altitude? Because this plane, theoretically, is going to have to do deep strike into China and as such won't have the ability to run and hide like the F-22.

Granted, I would like to see a Mach 1.6 F-111 replacement. That would handle the strikes into areas where there is heavy fighter activity, while the LRS-B does the deeper strategic airstrikes. The F-111 replacement, however, will come off of the F-15E replacement airframe.

Finally, it is good news that the USAF is talking about technology sharing. Whatever happens to the F-35 program, it should at least provide a very strong tech base for follow on aircraft. (Which hopefully won't make the 6th gen jump anytime soon)

Forum: General F-35 Forum

LRS-Bomber to look at proven technologies from the F-22/ 35