America's Next Bomber: Unmanned, Unlimited Range, Aimed At China 400
An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. military is developing its next generation bomber with Chinese anti-access strategy — the ability to stop any enemy force from coming to fight with things like carrier killer missiles — in mind. The new bomber will replace older platforms like the 1950's B-52, the 1970's B-1, and 1990's B-2 stealth bomber. The new bomber will sport some unique qualities. It will have an option to be unmanned, will act similar to a UAV, have better stealth capabilities, will be connected to U.S. intelligence networks to create a 'smart' battlefield environment, and have near unlimited range thanks to in-air refueling."
This sort of provocative sensationalistic headline (Score:1, Interesting)
is exactly what fueled more and more propaganda on both sides during the cold war.
Hardware backdoors (Score:5, Interesting)
"The U.S. military is developing its next generation bomber with Chinese anti-access strategy"
That can only be achieved if there's ZERO electronic components made in China in the aircraft....Good luck with that.
Nov 2011 Article: US weapons 'full of fake Chinese parts'
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8876656/US-weapons-full-of-fake-Chinese-parts.html [telegraph.co.uk]
Re:Holy Flamebait Summary (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What about if... (Score:3, Interesting)
What about if the Chinese get our codes and hack our defenses like the Cylons from BSG?
Then in an ironic twist, the political powers that be get a number of things they would dearly love - at the price of innocent lives. They have a "credible" threat to pursue - clearly hacking bombers is a clear act of war, they have a population that is deathly scared and willing to give up all manner of personal freedoms in exchange for perceived safety and they have an attack on their soverign soil which will motivate and infuriate the local population. They then get to enact just about every rule, law and practise that they want - all for the mere cost of innocent lives.
"You can't make an omlette without breaking a few eggs..." is a lovely expression. The real challenge here is working out whether the eggs are worth the omlette in the end. I dare say that in global politics, there are folks that think it is, and folks that think it isn't.
The US knows that it is getting a lot of bad press worldwide, that a lot of staunch supporters and backing away and that its economy is in some trouble. Historically, one of the ways it sorts some of these problems out is by going to war (whether genuinly or under pretext) but the latest few in the middle east are quickly draining public support and also the coffers. From a propaganda point of view, nothing would be better than having a ligitimate case to present to the public, and be able to cry foul in the UN against the baddies. It is much easier to sell a country as being the "good guys" if they are the ones being attacked by someone else - pushing a "We are doing this for democracy/good/their benefit" is a song that many US citizens are getting very sick of hearing when they keep seeing body bags coming back and their pensions and savings just aren't worth what they should be.
Too Goddamn Expensive (Score:4, Interesting)
This plan is just a way to spend $TRILLIONS on US military/intel crony capitalists.
If the US just spent $1T on an industrial policy, and put China's neighbors in charge of their own military defense (but shared our intel), we'd have security, peace, and $TRILLIONS more. Not to mention the increased GDP and taxes from it, with a better functioning industrial system.
But that wouldn't dedicate all our money and effort to the war business. Which is the business that controls America.
Re:near unlimited range thanks to in-air refueling (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not involved in the bomber project they're talking about here, but I noticed that it looks almost exactly like the drone Boeing was fiddling with... just scaled up.
I wouldn't be surprised if this is basically a way to salvage (at least on a ledger somewhere) a huge amount of R&D costs sunk on a machine that never got bought up.
Re:Meanwhile ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Ayup. We collapsed the USSR by forcing them to compete with our military spending, and now we're letting guerrillas "force" us to spend money we haven't got on our military.
Bin Laden was a bastard, but you have to admire a professionally done job.
Re:U.S. loves to kill things (Score:5, Interesting)
Meanwhile, yes, the world's medical isotope supply is VERY DEPENDENT upon HEU targets. LEU is very inefficient, doesn't work for shit. So-called "anti proliferation" efforts have resulted in a near inability to generate medical isotopes to the point where if a reactor goes offline people die. And there are only FOUR REACTORS in the entire world producing medical isotopes. All are past their lifespan and running when a power-generating reactor wouldn't be allowed to. Every year they save more lives than nuclear weapons and accidents have ever killed.
I hope one of those four reactors doesn't go down when you or your family require cancer treatment or diagnostic imaging. Not like moly cows last too long.
"Well yes, we'd love to give you the best treatment for your rapidly growing cancer we can and find out where it is in your body with some nice Tc-99m, but well, a reactor went offline and due to political lobbying by anti-nuclear activists and the US state department, it will be at least 25 years until a replacement can be built. Although one probably never will be. But the chapel is down the hall and to the left..."
Re:Holy Flamebait Summary (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry chickenhawks, but America and China won't go to war. Our economies are far too interdependent.
I'd never trust where the guns are going to point during a collapse. A good example now is Greece which is starting to fall apart, they voted in a neo-nazi party (according to everyone but themselves, they just call themselves nationalist and patriotic) with 7% of the votes that promises to expel all immigrants, put landmines on the border to Turkey to stop illegal crossings, they sell Mein Kampf at the party office and they do the Nazi salute (which they say is an ancient Roman and Greek salute). And while Greece has over 20% unemployment and a constant recession since 2008 they haven't even been thrown out of the euro or the EU yet so the situation could get a lot worse.
And behind Greece there's a whole lot of other dominos lined up that are also fighting a collapse, Spain and Italy being the prime concerns right now. I don't really think people see how bad the the worst case scenarios can get because these countries have been borrowing from each other just like the Lehman collapse, if one goes down the whole house of cards starts falling apart. And I'm sure the world economy doesn't need another kick in the balls from Europe, it seems down enough as it is. The whole of the 2000s after the dotcoms is starting to look like the world's biggest bubble, I don't mean any particular branch like housing but the whole world economy. That 2008 = 1929 and we're now early into the 1930s, I pray we don't get to the end of them...
Re:Holy Flamebait Summary (Score:5, Interesting)
The truth is that this will really be aimed at China and North Korea because their locations make it really hard for the US to project any force in the region. The Middle East isn't a problem because we can base our weapons in friendly nations, and Russia isn't a problem because we have Poland and Turkey and those countries. The China/NK problem will only get worse as these countries develop anti-access weapons such as rockets and ballistic missiles. In China's case, the J-20 stealth fighter is probably going to be a strike fighter that is stealth only from the front; if you have a base nearby, China will flood your defenses with J-20s, then bomb it to pieces.
The new generation of bombers will be stealth enough to penetrate deep into enemy territory, big enough to carry munitions that can destroy bunkers (which cruise missiles can't do), and can be unmanned so they can be made cheaper and deployed more readily than the B-2.
Right now, the B-2 only has a two-man crew. Even if you refuel all the time, eventually the crew gets tired and has to sleep and the mission has to end. But with a drone, you can conceivably have the mission go on indefinitely if you can figure out how to refuel in flight. You can have extended loiter capabilities in enemy territory, which can be killer. The first wave of stealth goes in and bombs the known enemy air defenses. They carry bombs in reserve and loiter. The second wave comes in and when anyone opens their radar, the loiter drones pop them from behind. You can get pretty creative when you can fly a drone for days in a row.
Re:Meanwhile ... (Score:4, Interesting)
He succeeded beyond his wildest imagination.
Re:And once it's connected to US military networks (Score:4, Interesting)
To the mods:
I don't think I intended this to be funny. It was a few hours ago, so I admit my perspective may be skewed, but I think I was highlighting the fact that "unhackable" had the same veracity as "unsinkable" w.r.t. the Titanic. It's only a matter of time before someone figures out how to take control with a hack.
Re:Not possible, Ace. (Score:4, Interesting)
It would take the concerted effort of the majority of the world to "destroy" the USA militarily
The USSR wasn't destroyed militarily, it collapsed under the effort of paying for all the military dick waving.
However many big expensive toys it has, the USA can be taken down by a well funded terrorist organization. ALl they need to do is start blowing up a few airport scanner queues, etc., and the politicians will spend enough 'emergency' money for the USA to collapse under its own debt. Another country invasion (eg. Iran) would do the trick, no fancy new stealth missiles or long range bombers necessary.
Re:Not possible, Ace. (Score:2, Interesting)
The USSR 'paid' for its military production by sacrificing investment in it's people, education and consumer goods in order to maintain expenditures in it's military. Where the resources are allocated matters. It also did so using a very inefficient (though theoretically nonprofit) model. The corrupt officials didn't need profits to move most of the remaining production into their pockets.
To have any impact on the rest of production, there would have to be insufficient number of people in civilian industry (everything is nonprofit, so only people actually matter). That was clearly not the case.
When Perestroika kicked in and let people see what they were missing things started to fall apart and when they didn't quickly and oppressively use the military it came totally apart.
No. Just no. Gorbachev was surprised to see that Eastern part of the country (that he visited on a rather unusual trip) did not live up to rosy pictures that Communist Party expected to see. That, and similar reality vs. expectations "revelations" in the top Communist Party officials triggered some idiotic overreaction that allowed local version of Libertarians to steer the country toward economic suicide.
Population at the same time was fed ridiculous lies about how perfect Libertarian society works in US -- that is, everyone lives in a brick house (USSR had no concept of dry wall as a construction material), stores never have checkout lines, only lazy people have any hardships, and similar crap, along with promises to build exactly the same society in Russia and other then-USSR-member countries. That caused a wave of outrage against Communists supposedly mismanaging the economy, and Perestroika, originally a political system reform, was derailed into dismantling the foundations of economic system. USSR was dissolved in the middle of this process, allowing more extremist Linertarians (Russia) and Nationalists (all other USSR members) to take power. It was, as I described before, an economic suicide after seven decades of working economy.