Tango01 | 03 Mar 2015 9:33 p.m. PST |
…Long-Range Bomber?. "While America's aerospace industry is hard at work creating the USAF's next generation bomber, Russia has a similar ongoing program known as the the PAK-DA. Now, after years of requirements changes, it appears that a blended wing, subsonic design, much like the one pictured above, will be the new jet's overall configuration"
From here link Amicalement Armand |
chaos0xomega | 03 Mar 2015 11:25 p.m. PST |
Interesting shape, best of luck to them, global politics just isnt as interesting without an at least somewhat threatening Russian bear. |
mandt2 | 03 Mar 2015 11:27 p.m. PST |
How are they going to pay for that. Just one of them will likely wipe out Russia's entire defense budget. |
javelin98 | 04 Mar 2015 9:28 a.m. PST |
The PAK-DA is being developed in response to Sweden's new bomber, the UFF-DA. |
Lion in the Stars | 04 Mar 2015 12:13 p.m. PST |
@Jav: interesting idea, but I think it would have to be stealthy to penetrate the US's air defenses. |
Mako11 | 04 Mar 2015 12:58 p.m. PST |
Looks like a pretty stealthy bomber to me. Granted, not B-2 stealthy, but still, a very nice shape, somewhat reminiscent of a cross between a Vulcan bomber and a B-1/Backfire, with canted rudders. |
David Manley | 04 Mar 2015 3:26 p.m. PST |
With the advent of high endurance autonomous systems is there anything more pointless than a manned long range bomber? Why the USAF I is letting itself get drawn into shch an obvious money pit is a mystery |
Mako11 | 04 Mar 2015 7:02 p.m. PST |
Well, I guess it depends upon whether you think your internet can get hacked, or if there needs to be someone to fly the thing if circumstances change during the mission. I agree we have the capability of building nice, unmanned drones, and even pre-targeting them with attack coordinates provided before a mission, in order to get around the whole hacking concern, but the manned bomber has had quite a strong following for a very long time. Given their huge costs now, I suspect that makes it even more of a concern, since a human is a relatively cheap component of the whole weapons system. Obviously though, to support said human(s), you need to add a lot of costly equipment to the designs, and weight, etc., which increases the costs. If overly concerned with that, might as well just stick to long-range cruise, and ballistic missiles, instead. |
David Manley | 04 Mar 2015 8:30 p.m. PST |
I think the "strong following" both political and from senior military personnel is the only real reason the USAF is prepared to throw money at this. A bit like the battlship admirals who couldn't accept the idea that those pesky aircraft carriers would ever catch on |
wminsing | 05 Mar 2015 2:32 p.m. PST |
Given their huge costs now, I suspect that makes it even more of a concern, since a human is a relatively cheap component of the whole weapons system. I'm always dazzled when someone refers to a human pilot as 'cheap'. The money and time cost to train a pilot, and keep that pilot trained, is absolutely staggering. The pilots are in fact much more expensive than the aircraft they operate. -Will |
Lion in the Stars | 05 Mar 2015 2:56 p.m. PST |
The pilots are in fact much more expensive than the aircraft they operate. Which is a depressing thought when you consider that modern combat aircraft cost ~75mil US for a fighter, and hundreds of millions for a bomber. |
Jemima Fawr | 05 Mar 2015 3:18 p.m. PST |
Sorry, but that's nonsense. According to the RAF, fast jet pilots cost £3.20 GBPm to train (£600,000 for multi-engine & £800,000.00 GBP) up to the start of Operational Conversion Unit (OCU) training. Typhoon OCU then adds another £6.00 GBPm to that cost. HOWEVER, the majority of these costs include all the costs of purchasing, maintaining, supplying, supporting and running the aircraft, the vast majority of which you would still have to pay if the aircraft was robotic. |
wminsing | 05 Mar 2015 6:10 p.m. PST |
Yes, except that this doesn't account for the limited pipeline for training and how it takes to train a pilot (2 years, given or take), meaning that yes, pilots are still more expensive in real terms (if not dollar terms) than the plane they fly. -Will |
Failure16 | 05 Mar 2015 6:45 p.m. PST |
Meh…Reaper has been producing suspiciously similar attack aircraft for years now: TMP link |
Jemima Fawr | 05 Mar 2015 10:09 p.m. PST |
Will, Do you have an English version for that? The cost per F-35B to the RAF/RN (including maintenance and support costs) is estimated to be £154.00 GBPm per aircraft. The total cost to train an RAF fast jet pilot from IOT to full operational readiness (including all costs) is estimated to be £9.00 GBPm. Those costs do not even remotely compare. |
javelin98 | 06 Mar 2015 1:51 p.m. PST |
Unless you account for the fact that you can't just buy a fully-trained and experienced fighter pilot off the shelf. If you factor in the opportunity costs (in the form of missions not being run) for the years it takes to produce a combat-effective pilot, then the pilot suddenly becomes the critical choke point for fielding a weapon system. The $200 USD million jet fighter is useless without the pilot. This is why I suspect that manned aircraft will become a thing of the past within the next 50 years. Pilots will fly craft remotely from safe locations in CONUS, while the unmanned drones will be able to scream into battle at 15 Mach (or faster!) and deliver their payloads. If a drone gets shot down, the pilot can log into another one that is circling in an automated holding pattern a thousand miles behind the FEBA. That way, the pilot's training and expertise is preserved despite the loss of the drone. Even aircraft carriers could eventually become obsolete if we have drones capable of high-hypersonic speeds that could leave CONUS, attack targets in the Middle East or Asia, and return home in a few hours. |
Jemima Fawr | 06 Mar 2015 2:18 p.m. PST |
Thus far, they haven't been able to get over the problem of situational awareness for remote pilots. Quite simply, the drone pilot can't turn his head to look behind him and can't 'feel' the aircraft. And what happens when you face an opponent with effective electronic warfare capability? The $200 USD million remotely-piloted aircraft is useless without the data link. Which brings us to another issue with remotely-piloted aircaft: signal-lag. There is presently no way for a remotely-piloted aircraft to conduct fast air combat manoeuvres or even land/take off safely without a controller in close proximity (i.e. line of sight). It simply cannot be done from another continent, as signal-lag prevents the pilot from receiving information and acting on it quickly enough. Consqeuently, Predators and Reapers are launched/landed by a local controller who then hands off to a mission controller, who in turn hands back to the local controller for landing. The launching/landing problems can be countered by fully automated systems, which are now fitted to some new types of drones (such as the British Army's Watchkeeper), but that still leaves the thorny problem of controlling a drone in high-speed combat. The relatively slow and sedate speed of current drone operations can be done from the other side of the globe, but high-speed combat is an entirely different matter. It simply can't be done from the other side of the globe, which means that you either have to have local controllers (who are then vulnerable to enemy attack) or have an artifical intelligence system on board the drone that can act autonomously and make judgement-calls… And that technology is a. Non-existent b. Open to exploitation by an enemy power and c. Possibly illegal/unethical. What you're describing is A LOT further away than 50 years – possibly even centuries until we have robotics that are sophisticated enough to do what you describe autonomously (the problem of signal-lag is unlikely to ever be resolved due to the laws of physics, which means that pilotless aircraft will have to fly and fight autonomously). There is also the truly staggering development and maintenance cost of such a technological leap forward. It might simply be too rich for our blood. In the meantime, we have a relatively cheap, extremely adaptable, reliable and flexible technology that is proven to work and is unlikely to be exhausted: Human pilots. So I wouldn't write off pilots just yet… |