SchorschThe Messiah® is further left than Jimmy Carter and we all know how it went for the military under him. In a nut-shell the military is f–ked. The only political entity with a lower approval rating than Bush (the Democrat-controlled congress) having the furthest left in the bunch at the helm? Watch them run wild with entitlement programs. My wallet is already feeling thinner. 😡
What is the main objective of a president in his first term?
Correct, winning the election for the second term.
The current US fiscal balance is unsustainable when
– there is no major economy upturn (which is unlikely the next 12-18 month)
– the 100 billion USD for Irag & Afghanistan will continue to hurt (neither theater allows a troop withdrawel in the next 24 month, Obama knows that despite saying different things)
– the credit crises continues to require money from federal budget
In the end, some moderate defense cuts, especially in running costs (reducing sortie rates, postponing modernizations) are the better decision than putting the whole country at stake. Carter may have procured no B-1A, but he sure left some fiscal flexibilities for Reagan to procure the B-1B.
SchorschI see a return to the days of Jimmy Carter with no money for training, fuel, munitions or spare parts. Mission capability rates for fighters, bombers and transports all dipped down below 40%. The USN was pretty much tied to the pier because there was no money to buy fuel and supplies to put to sea. The only reason the Soviet tank Armies didn’t roll through western Europe in 1979-80 is because there would be no choice to stop them other than nukes. So they invaded Afghanistan instead.
So, where do the Russkis go this time? Afghanistan would be a pleasant surprise.
Anyways, the President cannot change fiscal realities. If the USA goes further into debt to afford high sortie rates of supersonic fighters and nuclear submarines (which – honestly – has a very indirect impact on homeland security, different than 1980), it didn’t really win. If the Iraq mission is suspended within two years so much money is freed up that the USAF can get one F-22 each week.
I’ll definitely see the end for some expensive looking programs (this C-130 size tilt rotor for example) and on stuff is too risky.
But, so nobody feels unsafe, the Russians or the Chinese will not cut the lead in a few years.
SchorschI see a return to the days of Jimmy Carter with no money for training, fuel, munitions or spare parts. Mission capability rates for fighters, bombers and transports all dipped down below 40%. The USN was pretty much tied to the pier because there was no money to buy fuel and supplies to put to sea. The only reason the Soviet tank Armies didn’t roll through western Europe in 1979-80 is because there would be no choice to stop them other than nukes. So they invaded Afghanistan instead.
So, where do the Russkis go this time? Afghanistan would be a pleasant surprise.
Anyways, the President cannot change fiscal realities. If the USA goes further into debt to afford high sortie rates of supersonic fighters and nuclear submarines (which – honestly – has a very indirect impact on homeland security, different than 1980), it didn’t really win. If the Iraq mission is suspended within two years so much money is freed up that the USAF can get one F-22 each week.
I’ll definitely see the end for some expensive looking programs (this C-130 size tilt rotor for example) and on stuff is too risky.
But, so nobody feels unsafe, the Russians or the Chinese will not cut the lead in a few years.
SchorschMy greatest concern with this concept of a ‘Business Jet as Regional Bomber’ is that it may start a state of over zealous shot downs of mistakenly identified civilian jets.
Or worst giving some of these rogue country’s an excuse to shot down legitimate civilian business jet’s, by using the excuse of Business Jet as Regional Bomber.
After all there has been many post WWII incidents of civilian airliners being intercepted and or shot down due to there miss identification or similarity to those of known military aircraft that have been adapted from original civilian/airline designs – i.e. Douglas DC-4/6’s, Boeing 707 (similar to RC-135’s and KC-135’s) and know the likes of the Boeing 737 family (i.e P-8 MPA……………)Regards
Pioneer
In the conflicts I talk about there is hardly any air defense, especially no fighters. Even if, when they can identify an aircraft as “civilian looking”, they gonna know if it is a bomber or a true business jet. Radar cannot tell the difference (or only few systems are able).
Much more worrying is the use of civilian aircraft as photographic or electronic intelligence (ELINT) asset, and that is the reason for the majority of airliner kills. The Russians considered KA007 to be a spy aircraft.
SchorschSo we will continue to see that a suspicious looking tent is bombed from a supersonic semi-stealth fighter flying at 50k USD per hour, dropping a single 250k USD bomb. For the delivery price of that bomb you could pay so much money to the opposing Talibans that they happily advertise Budweiser Beer in the streets of Kabul. Silly world.
SchorschIf you really do want a modest number of aircraft able to deliver PGMs in a permissive environment, & able to be adapted to other uses, at the lowest price, then Frank is right – there are dozens of S-3s available off the shelf at much lower price than converted business jets, with plenty of airframe hours remaining & excellent spares availability. They’re also already equipped for AAR, including of each other.
Then I wonder why the USN is throwing away lifetime of its Hornets to fly all the way to Afghanistan and back in order to [not] deliver one bomb.
SchorschI quite agree, they are 2 different concepts.
But to come back to my silly idea, you would still have a man in the loop, as the UAV wouldn’t have any targeting systems. It would just be a carrier, releasing ordinance on behalf of a human who’d pass the coordinates on. Kind of a distributed system.As for the bizjet bomber, if you want it simple, forget about the bomb bay. Just slap pylons on the wings, and a flir under the belly.
The bomb bay is important to get the range. There is also plenty of space in the fuselage and deleting the pressurized cabin takes out lots of weight (modern bizjets have 4500ft cabin altitude at 45000ft pressure altitude, by that taking much bigger differential pressure than any airliner in service). Adding bomb bays forward of the wing does not compromise the aircraft too much. It would be necessary though to built some kind of internal delivery system as putting all the bombs above the bomb bay doors would cause some CG issues.
Bizjets have plenty of unused volume.
I dislike the idea of a UAV as it reduces the flexibility and pretty much means the system can only be used for the purpose originally designed for, which is stupid as we don’t know how future conflicts look.
SchorschIt wasn’t a third man, it was a third, fourth & fifth, & space for two more. Cutting it down to three would still save a lot of space & some weight.
BTW, it was bigger than any business jet, unless you count BBJs & A320 variants. It’s really an alternative to a bomber version of the P-8 or the proposed A320 MPA.
But back to the original proposal: what payload is realistic for such a bomber? It’s limited to stand-off weapons that keep it out of range of air defences, or operating in a fairly permissive environment.
As a stand-off bomber, how many JASSMs or Storm Shadows or KEPD-350s or whatever could a modified business jet carry?
Operating against weak or non-existent air defences, what advantages does it have over non-stealthy (e.g. Reaper or Mantis) UAVs? It won’t be down in range of MANPADS, so the crew will have much the same view through their sensors as the ground controller of a UAV.
You all think that it would gain such a big advantage, but I highly doubt. Removing the man from the flight deck might bring an obvious weight advantage, but for such an aircraft the growth factors are limited. Additionally, I would mean tremendous challenge to operate it along manned aircraft.
Finally, you always need somebody controlling it and sensors and communications. So, you may win by some aspects, but you reduce the flexibility to a point where you can question the whole sense of the program and just drop PGMs out of the load ramp of a C-17.
I would consider an effective internal bomb load of 10000lbs for a normal radius (that is 20x 500lbs or 5x 2000lbs), or 16000lbs with limited fuel on take-off. Alternatively you could carry stand-off missiles on wing pylons, up to six is realistic (given that on weights up to 2500lbs). How to design the weapons bay and which payloads should be able to be put inside would be one of the more challenging questions. As no pressure cabin is needed aside the cockpit, one has more freedom than on aircrafts like the P-8 or the MRA.4.
Considering that today the job is done by supersonic aircraft with severe lifetime restrictions, refueled in the air, which need huge maintenance crews and highly trained crews, any bizjet-based solution would win on life-time costs, although restrictions apply in many areas.
Why deliver a JASSM by a stealthy aircraft when it can be launched outside the envelope of enemy air defense?
Such an aircraft would also be effective as stand-off jammer when wing pylons are used for ECM-pods.
SchorschHanging modern engines on the wings is technically a relatively trivial challenge – the money to do it isn’t.
The re-engining of KC-135’s is a lesson on how to, and how not to, do it.
No, it is not. The wing structure must accommodate the weight and especially large flexible wings will also have issues with flutter and gust response. If I remember correctly the program was discontinued because the technical challenges were to large (and thus the program too expensive).
SchorschJackonicko, the question is, even if Typhoon’s MMI would be more effective and intuitive (a claim which I have no reason to doubt if you are an insider) does this result in any decisive advantage in combat? I mean, now regardless of the necessity to push one button and say one voice command to perform a task in a Typhoon compared to pushing three buttons in the Rafale, does this mean anything in 99,7% of all situations?
Think of Formula 1 cars, which, too, probably have some sort of MMI, does this really contribute to overall results?
It is decisive, that is the reason why money is invested.
An engagement between fighters, especially when they are supersonic and treated with RCS-reduction features, will result in very short reaction times. If the fighter is designed to be independent of external target information, the pilot must be able to digest the available information very quickly, with low chance of misinterpretation and with good chance of taking the right decision. That is in my point of view more important than 10% more thrust or a 5% larger radius.
SchorschWhat’s wrong with Fox ? 😀
Back on topic: while I dislike UAVs except for long duration reconaissance tasks, the UAV idea micht not be that bad: load up some very high endurance UAV with PGMs, have it loiter at very high altitude over the theater of operations. And have the payload available to the guys on the ground / or to FAC planes like a PC9 / OV-10 / … through some secured datalink. And there you get some flexibility.
Mock me now.. 😉
Why the headache with a pilot-free aircraft?
It would require a total change of the aircraft. The advantage of modifying a business jet is that it requires limited time and funding and limits the fantasy of the customer (by that reducing costs). The toughest problem most recent developments have is “overspecification”, putting too much in one system with inadequate funding.
The sense of having a manned bomber is not that you have the bomb available, but also that there is a man in the loop (so you don’t end up bombing another wedding party). The mission does not put an extraordinary strain on the crew (no 15 hour missions, no 9g turning).
SchorschNaah. Take the Vulcan airframe, rebuild it using modern materials & stress calculations, with four OTS bizjet engines (e.g. the BR715) & a two-man crew (don’t need the extra 3 with modern avionics), thus saving a great deal of weight & internal space. Apply a bit of RAM & some other RCS-reduction tweaks & you have a semi-stealthy (fortuitously, it had a pretty low RCS to start with) bomber with a much better bomb load & fuel capacity than a modified bizjet & several other performance improvements.
:diablo:
Development would cost a bit, though. 🙁
The advantage a Vulcan holds over a business jet is small. Range-wise their is only limited advantage, a tough look at payload-range would probably reveal that it is actually worse. The Vulcan was only marginally faster and only had a marginally higher ceiling (which is pretty irrelevant anyways, if it flies 45 or 55kft, a high-alt SAM gonna get it anywhere).
There is no way how you can achieve semi-stealth, a reduction of 99% in RCS is needed versus ground based radars.
The third guy is pretty much reserve, in case their is additional work like ground communication, target identification or defensive electronics stuff. Rather have one spare seat than having an overloaded crew.
SchorschBasically no different than using a 737 or 320 as auxiliary bomber.
Maybe expensive internal changes are not even needed?
Look at the ASTOR canoe – how many SBD could that thing hold?And for the more affluent murderer: THe Advanced Tactical Laser, now installed in a SOCOM C-130, soon in an inconspicuous biz-yet.
A B737 and an A320 are more limited in their speed and altitude envelope, and their cabin is too large. The basis is simply too large. A business jet is what you need.
As for the crew, why not get rid of them entirely? Boeing was going to do that with their G550-based BAMS proposal, IIRC. Since – as you said in the first place – this thing will not be used in contested airspace, why not?
It is supposed to be a low threat aircraft, and humans are needed to make decisions. You are all overly faithful in the UAV bubble without really considering how important a human is. UAV mania will end the day it enters a tricky situation and fails miserably.
SchorschSaw one over the Beltway near Andrews AFB, flying slow and low and was surprised at how good it looked – seemed in excellent shape. Was wondering how come. Did they receive any structural overhauls lately?
I guess you hardly see the structural condition of the airframe.
The B-52s went through several upgrade programs in the 70ies and 80ies. In the end, the official limit (in terms of cycles and flight hours) is still far in the future for most airframes.
Biggest issue are the engines, which are so outdated and require intensive maintenance.
SchorschReally, nothing can beat the MiG-25 ….. ??? :diablo:
Please, Deino, you have to post the picture taken immediately afterwards, too!
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The MiG hasn’t won, but I would call it a draw!
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