U.S. Air Force Said Poised to Award Bomber Contract Tuesday

a reply to: aholic

Very interesting in the same time all the time before the LRS-B award USAF spoke about a family of system , so for now we just know the Northrop LRS-B , surely in fact everybody will have job with long range strike.

a reply to: gfad

This is actually a correct assessment, I do have a soft spot in my heart for supersonic aircraft. I just cant agree with you guys that sneeky is going to win out in an all out war, and my main reason is simple, once its spotted its a sitting duck.

Not everything is radar, theres many other ways to see these aircraft.

Now, seeing a hyper-sonic burner may be easy once its overhead or coming up, but by the time the guy who spotted it picks up the phone or pushes the red button to alarm, the plane has already traversed half the sky.

I believe there is an obsession with stealth becuz the PTB want to loiter and hang out. Well if thats the desire, park a satellite overhead in GEO and be done with it. Put bombs on it and just lie, whose going to know otherwise?

a reply to: Zaphod58

Zaphod, so if im correct, the LRS-B is the public white world bomber and the green flame is the black world hypersonic beast bomber im dreaming of, isnt it?

LRS-b good for penetrating when time isnt an issue, green flame is needed for 60 minutes or less time critical asset termination?

Sound about right? In that case, you really only need 1 or 2 green flames.

originally posted by: BigTrain
a reply to: Zaphod58

Zaphod, so if im correct, the LRS-B is the public white world bomber and the green flame is the black world hypersonic beast bomber im dreaming of, isnt it?

LRS-b good for penetrating when time isnt an issue, green flame is needed for 60 minutes or less time critical asset termination?

Sound about right? In that case, you really only need 1 or 2 green flames.

Its a reconnaissance aircraft like the SR-71 was.

a reply to: drwire

Ya but that doesnt make sense. How much reconnaissance can you do at mach 5 or 10?

I think thats the gov explanation they give to Russia or China "No worries guys, this amazing aircraft is just spying on you, not outfitted with bombs"

Why would you need a hypersonic recon plane? Doesnt make sense as you have an very small window for taking pictures.

a reply to: BigTrain

That's not a problem at all, in fact its the point.

Satellite imagery can only give you so much. It's predictable for the enemy and that's one its biggest weaknesses. A hypersonic recon plane can grab imagery, on demand, unpredictably.

originally posted by: BigTrain
a reply to: drwire

Ya but that doesnt make sense. How much reconnaissance can you do at mach 5 or 10?

I think thats the gov explanation they give to Russia or China "No worries guys, this amazing aircraft is just spying on you, not outfitted with bombs"

Why would you need a hypersonic recon plane? Doesnt make sense as you have an very small window for taking pictures.

You need an hypersonic recon aircraft because it gives wow factor and survival.

a reply to: BigTrain

It's not hypersonic. And at the altitude it flies at the camera range is in the hundreds of miles. So you're getting thousands of miles of imagery every flight.

random post from bassplyr here.

I can think of plenty of good reasons we could use a hypersonic recon platform.

I agree the air force has "begun to come clean" with two of the birds. they sorta hinted at a third very publicly but seems like very few actually caught on as to what she really is and still havent. not talking about Texas or Kansas for that specific bird either.



as for the lrsb family. i can think of 5 new birds off the top of my head that would for sure be part. but can consider 6 - 7 total that would be possibly an immediate part of that family or would interact with that family.

crawls back under my rock again.

originally posted by: BigTrain
a reply to: drwire

Ya but that doesnt make sense. How much reconnaissance can you do at mach 5 or 10?

Mach 6 spy plane at 100k+ ft: 4500 mph.

Spy Sat. in LEO: 17,000 mph and they do just fine with taking photos of their targets.

a reply to: BigTrain

This is what the SR-71 could cover, with older sensors.







Taken from here.

a reply to: darksidius

It's actually in part due to Northrop's experience with the other members of the family that they won the bomber contract. A lot of these platforms have been drawn up and flying for some time.

I wonder if the RCO are a give away, they are on the LRS-B and the X-37, what if the X37 was the answer to the satellites Achilles Heel of predictability and this (or a black project) is putting Orbital vehicles up there with fantastic cameras that could be anywhere in a few hours, you then need one less stealth platform and a few less bases.

originally posted by: darksidius
When do you think we will see a concept art of Northrop LRS-B ?

The USAF are working on the classification guides now, there may be no further details until the 2017 fiscal budget is announced. Apparently LaPlante has said that when the SAR goes to congress the same information that was released to congress the day before the contract award will be released to the public.

I imagine the details of the LRS-B budget will be classified

So perhaps we won't see anything else until January/February.

Cheers
Robbie

a reply to: aholic
Ok for that so it can say Northrop have more job on the drawing board than Skunk since a lot of years. For the green lady more supersonic than hypersonic ? Surely it will be the rapid and large eyes girl of the family

a reply to: Forensick
If I was a USAF General I will put 2 X-37B for imagery in orbit , and 2 with ASAT capacity just in the case of somebody will play with me.

originally posted by: darksidius
a reply to: aholic
Ok for that so it can say Northrop have more job on the drawing board than Skunk since a lot of years. For the green lady more supersonic than hypersonic ? Surely it will be the rapid and large eyes girl of the family

As AHolic has already suggested, have a look back to 2010.

The decision to go with NG may be because in ~2010 NG may have built the P-AEA MQ-LO/A Companion

Your Greenlady could be a Lockheed high speed ISR UCAS?

Just thinking out loud.

Cheers
Robbie

originally posted by: stratsys-sws
As AHolic has already suggested, have a look back to 2010.

The decision to go with NG may be because in ~2010 NG may have built the P-AEA MQ-LO/A Companion

Like in this article?

awin.aviationweek.com...

My apologies if it is not allowed to link there.

a reply to: spaceman42

Interesting article thanks!

a reply to: Forensick

A few of his conclusions were wrong. There is o one UAV that was publicly talked about that everyone forgot about that is rather interesting. After one or two mentions everyone, and I mean everyone came to the wrong conclusion and it disappeared. In fact, I suspect it's why some other information just happened to come out at around the same time.