The B-52 and the future

[Gregory]

Speaking of UCAVs, would there be any benefit in making our next tanker plane a UCAV?

[Kenneth P. Katz]

I don't think that the P-8A will be short-ranged. Check out the BBJ and BBJ2 if you want to see a long ranged 737 derivative.

 

The P-8A is small, but I'd be more concerned with its relatively short unrefueled range than payload.  You can just fly more aircraft to meet a payload requirement. 

 

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[Kenneth P. Katz]

No, the advantage of UAVs is that they do no expose aircrew to danger and that is not a major cncern with tankers.

 

The disadvantage of UAVs is they are less reliable.

 

Therefore I see a UAV tanker as a bad idea, less reliable and not able to benefit from the advantage of being unmanned.

 

Speaking of UCAVs, would there be any benefit in making our next tanker plane a UCAV?

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[gewing]

Much as I love the BUFF, and the improvements that will be result from the CONECT and AMI programs, it's a very old airplane. It is very expensive and manpower-intensive to maintain, and is a gas hog, which is not only expensive but puts much stress on the tanker fleet. A typical OEF/OIF mission (and note that the B-52 is still heavily involved in combat ops) requires two tanker sorties in support. It requires lots of AGE, which is not so good when the force needs to deploy to fight.

 

I would like to see the wings, tail, engines and APU of a 777 or 787 combined with a new fuselage to create a B-3 to replace the B-52. No stealth, no supersonic speed, no low-level penetration -- those are the gold-plating that drive costs through the roof. Built in large quantities, I don't see why it should cost much more than an comparable airliner, and it would be economic to operate relative to the B-52H.

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I'm still in favor of the re-engining program for the B-52.

 

While a bomber derived from a commercial wide body aircraft would probably be the simplest solution, I'm not certain it would be the best.

 

I worry that the US has grown too complacent over air dominance. Yes, such a plane could fly over Iraq or Afghanistan today. Are we CERTAIN that future combat zones will not be areas of higher threat against our aircraft? If we are, then we can convert just about anything to a bomber. I would like some assurances that the survivability of the aircraft will be pretty good.

 

 

I would love to read the design studies the companies presented the Airforce under the regional bomber proposal. I suspect that a "Degraded B-2" built as a B-3 could be built for a RELATIVELY reasonable cost, and due to the enhancements to RAM in the last decade, could probably have stealth equivalent to the F-22 fairly easily.

 

I don't know enough about the details of avionics and such, but I would imagine that the LPI radar they built for the B-2 is very expensive, for instance. What if the multipurpose radar from a modern fighter were substituted? would it cost more? Less?

 

Another possibility is the Blended wing body concept that Boeing inherited and has been playing with. It should be capable of significantly enhanced payload or range at a given size, and relatively cost efficient to operate. This would not tend to have a HUGE advantage over a 777 based plane, for instance, but it might be worth the extra cost partially to bring the design into full development.

[gewing]

Way back when, in the early 1960s, Vickers proposed a bomber version of its VC-10 passengerliner/transport aircraft.  It was to have two large panniers a'la the Vickers Wellesley, one under each wing to carry the payload.  They also proposed a version carrying I seem to remember a dozen Skybolt airlaunched IRBM, six under each wing. I wonder how difficult would it be to do something similar with one of the modern airliners.  I expect you'd need to redesign the wing to accept hard points but it would mean little major alteration to the aircraft's structure.

 

Further, I wonder how hard it would be to adapt a modern airliner's baggage handling doors to use as bombdoors? Those behind the wing would be ideally positioned while the storage hold would make a reasonable bomb bay if you could design an internal bomb handling system to move the bombs to the doors. It would mean a minimal redesign of the fuselage structure.

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Interesting idea, I hadn't heard of that proposal for the VC-10.

 

I confess I'm still bitter the Vulcan was retired. One of the most beautiful planes that flew.

[gewing]

At some point I expect USAF or USAF + foreign partners to develop a supercheap ALCM, which dovetails right in with the B-3 Dreamliner    concept. I haven't tried the calculator exercise to look at breakeven points for ALCMs versus JDAM type PGMs, but I think it'll happen sooner or later. Design the thing for cheap fabbing, buy them in lots of 2500 units or whatever, accept a higher in-flight system failure rate, and plan on throwing them at OPFOR by the dozen.

 

Otherwise, make your #10 your #1 priority and I'll vote for you.

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IIRC the navy is working on an "affordable munition" that is basically a no frills cruise missile.

[gewing]

Thanks.

 

I agree that the neer peer scenario is rather unlikely, but HALE UAVs aren't THAT expensive.  This may mean even less-than-neer peers could produce a significant anti-access threat that would have to be dealt with before bombliners could be used.

 

Plus, bombliners are a system that can't realistically be used without standoff munitions in anything but completely benign environments.  Even the hint of high-altitude IADS would rule them out.

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I suspect HALE UCAVs will fulfill many roles, and the old Missileer concept is probably one of them. Armed with Meteor or an extended range version of AMRAAM, and under ground control...

[gewing]

Threat nations, enemies, competitors. I just hate the US culture of buzzwords and uselessly complex wording. It stems from all of the f**king lawyers we have.

What, F18C/D/E, combined with an assload of Standard SM-2's not adequate for you? China is a non-issue, most everything worth killing is near the coast. A 2000km range hypersonic missile puts your fleet well out to sea between Taiwan and the south part of Japan in deep water and still leaves the ability to hit just about everything in China worth hitting. Even baseline CALCM has over 1000km range.

OK, you're presuming they fly unescorted then?? Why the Hell would they do that?

There are going to be all sorts of penetrating systems, just not manned. Have you read the NDIA links I posted?

 

Hell, I don't know. From 35k ft AGL and 500kts launch speed, probably far enough to keep it well outside any current SAM range anyways.

Yeah, so what?

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One worry I have is that a winged MOAB or MOAP would just be another targer for the SAMs. S-300 imo isn't quite the bogie man that some want us to think, but I also don't discount it.

 

I liked the idea earlier of a LOCAAS derived ARM.

[gewing]

I was looking at that last week. Do you have any information on that "penetrating submunition" pair of pictures. It looks like it might be an MLRS waread package, but Each submunition looks like it is a foot or two long, not just a short little ICM.

 

 

 

Why do we need a manned stealth penetrating bomber?  As proven in Kosovo and Iraq(twice), the chances of detecting something on the flight in and redirecting to attack it are on the same order of probability as random celebratory gunfire bringing down a stealth aircraft. 

 

By the time a "near peer opponent"(.mil psuedo intellectual verbiage crap) develops, we'll almost certainly have stealth UCAV's fully capable of autonomous attacks for the penetrating mission.  Otherwise, there's the much more useful hypersonic missiles to attack with, along with stealthed subsonic cruise missiles.  To go along with the manned bomb truck.   

 

The whole jammed uplink bugaboo is getting old.  A simple default routine to deploy LOCASS or Viper Strike type ARM's(or a bay worth of HARM's for that matter) upon detecting a jamming signal that breaks uplink (would have to be broad band and pretty damned obvious) is the simple solution.  The old SAC "blast your way in" routine is just as effective now as it was in the 50's, 60's and 70's.  Current systems are fully capable of executing preplanned attacks using GPS guided weapons without any further input from the controller.  I can have a $60k Dragoneye fly a 45 minute mission, loiter over X (doing circles, ovals, figure 8's, etc) and take photos of Y and come back to where ever I want (within the range of the bird), all without any further input from the ground.  And that's the M151 Jeep of the UAV world.   

 

And that's ignoring tactical solutions to the bomb truck intercept issue, such as making the whole thing a giant mousetrap for the enemy interceptors by luring them into a bunch of ERINT's or F22's or preferably both, outside their own airspace (and presumably, ability to recover their downed aircrews)

 

Currently, there is no need for a manned penetrating stealth bomber, aside from the extreme niche role of delivering current tech heavy penetrators such as GBU-28 and those are on the way out as BROACH/Mephisto type shaped charge follow through designs are fielded.

 

http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2005psts/muthig.pdf

 

So, essentially, the B2 fleet fills that role until they become fiscally unsupportable.  You can design your bomb truck to fit truly massive penetrators like MOAP, equip them with scissor glide wings and perhaps a booster rocket or turbofan and use that for your super hard targets.  S/F....Ken M

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[Gregory]

No, the advantage of UAVs is that they do no expose aircrew to danger and that is not a major cncern with tankers.

 

The disadvantage of UAVs is they are less reliable.

 

Therefore I see a UAV tanker as a bad idea, less reliable and not able to benefit from the advantage of being unmanned.

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And yet - we save on crew requirements. Let's take KC-135, it has 4 crews - 3 officers and a boom operator. Let's say that the officers are all captains, and are worth about ... 70,000$ a year in salary and benefits, and another 35,000$ for the enlisted. That's 240,000$ a year. Over the 30 year lifespan, that's 7,200,000$ - not an insignificant chunk of change. We replace each tanker crew with a single UAV operator crew per 4-6 aircraft, since for vast majority of the time in flight the aircraft is perfectly capable of flying itself.

[Kenneth P. Katz]

UAVs crash often. I believe that over the last decade approximately 1/3 of all Predators that have been built have been lost. For semi-expendable aircraft, that is fine because the cost is low, not to mention that if lives are saved or aircrew kept out of POW camps, that is also very valuable. For tankers, transports and bombers carrying stand-off weapons, where the vehicle is expensive and the risks to aircrew, it is cost-effective to keep the crews on the aircraft.

 

And yet - we save on crew requirements.  Let's take KC-135, it has 4 crews - 3 officers and a boom operator.  Let's say that the officers are all captains, and are worth about ... 70,000$ a year in salary and benefits, and another 35,000$ for the enlisted.  That's 240,000$ a year.  Over the 30 year lifespan, that's 7,200,000$ - not an insignificant chunk of change.  We replace each tanker crew with a single UAV operator crew per 4-6 aircraft, since for vast majority of the time in flight the aircraft is perfectly capable of flying itself.

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[Guest pfcem]

And yet - we save on crew requirements.  Let's take KC-135, it has 4 crews - 3 officers and a boom operator.  Let's say that the officers are all captains, and are worth about ... 70,000$ a year in salary and benefits, and another 35,000$ for the enlisted.  That's 240,000$ a year.  Over the 30 year lifespan, that's 7,200,000$ - not an insignificant chunk of change.  We replace each tanker crew with a single UAV operator crew per 4-6 aircraft, since for vast majority of the time in flight the aircraft is perfectly capable of flying itself.

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And what do you do when the enemy breaks your security codes & orders your UAV tankers to abort their refueling missions & land at one of their airfields?

 

You just lost several $100million+ aircraft & several hundred thousands of pounds of fuel. Not to mention all the combat aircrat that run out of fuel & fall out of the sky.

[Gregory]

And what do you do when the enemy breaks your security codes & orders your UAV tankers to abort their refueling missions & land at one of their airfields?

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Use better codes, obviously.

[Guest pfcem]

Use better codes, obviously.

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And when those are broken too & you lose several more $100million+ aircraft & several hundred thousands of pounds of fuel. Not to mention all the combat aircrat that run out of fuel & fall out of the sky.

[Gregory]

And when those are broken too & you lose several more $100million+ aircraft & several hundred thousands of pounds of fuel. Not to mention all the combat aircrat that run out of fuel & fall out of the sky.

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At that point, it doesn't really matter what happends with the tanker fleet - because the entire Air Force has been already lost to an opponent that knows exactly where they are and what they are doing at any point in time.

[FlyingCanOpener]

At that point, it doesn't really matter what happends with the tanker fleet - because the entire Air Force has been already lost to an opponent that knows exactly where they are and what they are doing at any point in time.

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Well, if someone breaks into the codes, then we'll JDAM the source into the ground. Besides, considering how I understand UAV controls work, you have to find the frequency being broadcast at that time before you even get to try breaking it.

 

Anyway, let me be the first to say that this has already been discussed ad nauseum here as my Smacktard Senses are tingling over the fact a Pombo Amendment-esque discussion is about to commence...

Edited January 9, 2006 by FlyingCanOpener

[Smitty]

I don't think that the P-8A will be short-ranged. Check out the BBJ and BBJ2 if you want to see a long ranged 737 derivative.

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The specs on various websites give it a 1300nm radius with 4 hours on station. This would seem a bit short for a strategic system.

 

I guess if you tack on a 1000nm for JASSM-XR, then it doesn't seem quite as bad.

[EchoFiveMike]

The USAF attempts to bitch slap Congress IOT get their way on F-22. It appears that USAF has decided that F22 is the only thing in the USAF worth having. Maybe the US should save money by firing all the USAF's general officers without pension? S/F.....Ken M

 

 

\

InsideDefense.com

January 9, 2006

 

Pentagon To Retire B-52s, U-2s, And F-117s In Bid To Save $16.4 Billion

 

 

The Defense Department plans to accelerate retirement of key Air Force aircraft, including nearly half the B-52 bomber force and the full U-2 spy plane and F-117 stealth fighter fleets, in a bid to save $16.4 billion and boost spending for the services' prized F-22A fighter aircraft program.

 

In a Dec. 20 internal budget document, Pentagon Comptroller Tina Jonas approved significant spending changes between fiscal years 2007 and 2011 that were proposed by the Air Force. The moves, which affect the service's procurement and personnel accounts, are designed to realign resources to produce a more lethal, agile and streamlined force, it states.

 

The document, program budget decision 720, carries the imprimatur of the Defense Department leadership and reflects decisions made in the nearly complete Quadrennial Defense Review, according to these sources.

 

The decisions, however, will require more than support from Pentagon officials; the Air Force will have to convince Congress, which has rejected recent Air Force proposals to retire major aircraft types early, according to defense analysts.

 

“The Air Force is looking to get rid of what they call ‘tired iron,’” said Christopher Bolkcom, an aviation expert at the Congressional Research Service. “Congress in the past has not allowed them to retire airplanes.”

 

Similar attempts in recent years -- including moves to stand down B-1B bombers, KC-135E aerial refueling aircraft, and the F-117 -- have met stiff resistance on Capitol Hill. But this time around, the Pentagon appears to be taking a new approach in proposing to retire three programs at once.

 

“Now they’re going for the whole enchilada,” Bolkcom said. “You can see that they seem to be launching a frontal assault.”

 

Underscoring the difficulty that the Air Force may face in selling this plan to Congress, the fiscal year 2006 defense appropriations bill, signed Dec. 30 by President Bush, includes $9.4 billion to maintain the fleet of 52 F-117s.

 

“The conferees believe it is premature to retire any F-117 aircraft at this time,” lawmakers wrote in the conference report accompanying the final spending bill. “The F-117 provides a unique capability to the combatant commanders and remains the only tactical stealth aircraft capable of delivering certain types of precision munitions.”

 

The fiscal maneuvers detailed in the 14-page PBD would allow the Air Force to inject an additional $1 billion into its prized F-22A program, stretching production through fiscal year 2010 -- two years longer than previously planned -- and raising total acquisition numbers from 179 aircraft to 183.

 

To that end, the PBD trims $3.3 billion from the F-22A program in fiscal years 2007 and 2008 and provides $4.4 billion in fiscal years 2009 and 2010.

 

The Pentagon also plans to terminate the B-52 Stand-off Jammer System, an electronic attack capability, saving $1.1 billion across the five-year spending plan, according to the PBD.

 

Cuts to the long-range B-52 bomber fleet would reduce the inventory from 94 aircraft to 56, a move that would not affect any international treaties, the document states. The Air Force is banking on $4.6 billion in savings with this early retirement: $680 million in the procurement accounts and $3.9 billion in personnel reductions associated with a smaller B-52 fleet.

 

The 33-plane fleet of high-altitude U-2 reconnaissance aircraft would be retired by 2011, according to the budget decision, in a move that garners $1 billion in savings from the procurement accounts and $3.3 billion in manpower reductions. United Press International first reported details of the U-2 cut last week.

 

Cuts to the stealthy F-117A Nighthawk, which played a prominent role in the open salvos of the 1991 war with Iraq but has seen limited duty more recently, produced $6.2 billion in savings -- $1.1 billion from the procurement accounts and $5.1 billion from associated manpower accounts.

 

In addition to these decrements, the Air Force plans to slash its fleet of C-21 jets from 76 to 38 aircraft. C-21s are used to ferry Pentagon executives, cargo and execute medical missions.

 

“There are some pretty sound operational reasons” for the Air Force’s move to retire these aircraft early, said Rebecca Grant, vice president for defense at Defense Forecast International, a Washington-based consulting firm. “What you see is an attempt to get down to the right force structure that’s more manageable and sustainable.”

 

--Jason Sherman and Daniel G. Dupont

[Samson]

one question pops into mind.

 

Can the F22 fill the shoes of the F117?

[larrikin]

one question pops into mind.

 

Can the F22 fill the shoes of the F117?

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It's a hell of a lot sexier, and that's what counts.

[Jeff]

includes $9.4 billion to maintain the fleet of 52 F-117s

 

That works out to $180,769,230.77 per F-117 and we bought and paid for them 20 years ago. Whisky Tango Foxtrot?

[swerve]

allow the Air Force to inject an additional $1 billion into its prized F-22A program, stretching production through fiscal year 2010 -- two years longer than previously planned -- and raising total acquisition numbers from 179 aircraft to 183.

 

$250 million per?

[Smitty]

one question pops into mind.

 

Can the F22 fill the shoes of the F117?

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The current F-22s can't.

 

Under the old plan, later blocks could've, but their funding was frozen with the 180 plane spending cap.

 

If funding is reinstated to let the AF buy the 380 they want, then there'd probably be enough to enhance their A2G capabilities.

Edited January 11, 2006 by Smitty