us new bomber

seems the us has finally decided on at least one part of their new bomber

January 17, 2006: The U.S. Department of Defense has decided to make the next generation heavy bomber an unmanned aircraft. The Department of Defense also wants the new aircraft in service by the end of the next decade, some twenty years ahead of schedule.

www.strategypage.com...

the way i read the rest of the article the X45C is making a comeback and will be in the us air foce inventory within 4 years. the article also mentions how ucavs (their designers and pilots) are looking to start moving in to air to air engagements as well as air to ground.

Does this mean that the f-35 and f-22 are the last manned aircraft to be built for the us airforce to serve in a fighting (not transport) capacity?

has the X45 had bits of the X47 intergrated into it to make it better or is it still a pure blood descendand tof the X45A?

has anyone got any mor einfomation on the new bomber such as whether or not it still has to be able to land on a carrier, or whether it has to loiter before launching a super high speed pinpoint attack or whether it is a hypersonic global strike vehicle. any other info would be much apprieciated.

justin

[edit on 26-9-2006 by justin_barton3]

First off, the StrategyPage article you cite is over 9 months old and a lot of things have happened since then.

But the Pentagon finally got hip to the fact that the J-UCAS developers were coming up with an aircraft that could replace all current fighter-bombers.

Source: Warplanes: Pilots Surrender to UAVs

This article was written before the USAF lost their mind and cancelled their role in J-UCAS altogether, leaving the Boeing X-45 & Northrop X-47 UCAV systems to battle it out for a Navy contract. The program is now called N-UCAS.

Originally posted by justin_barton3Does this mean that the f-35 and f-22 are the last manned aircraft to be built for the us airforce to serve in a fighting (not transport) capacity?

The Pentagon is pushing for at least one more manned bomber system, discussions of an interim bomber version of the Raptor or the YF-23 have been discussed at length as well as a revamped B-1 or a knocked down version of a B-2. The fact is not even the guys in the Pentagon know what they are going to do as there is much disagreement internally as to what the next system should be. It's fun to speculate but only time will tell.

Originally posted by justin_barton3
has the X45 had bits of the X47 intergrated into it to make it better or is it still a pure blood descendand tof the X45A?

There has been no cooperation between competitors Boeing and Northrop on the former J-UCAS program that I have heard of.

Originally posted by justin_barton3has anyone got any more infomation on the new bomber such as whether or not it still has to be able to land on a carrier...

This has been suggested but not seriously considered.

Originally posted by justin_barton3...or whether it has to loiter before launching a super high speed pinpoint attack or whether it is a hypersonic global strike vehicle.

Again, the Pentagon is in disagreement regarding what form the new system will take. My personal speculation is that the Long Range Strike/GLobal Strike initiative will be layered as opposed to one system doing it all (not unlike "layered" missile defense where you have launch phase defense DEW's, mid course defense missiles and terminal phase DEW's and missiles).

I therefore think that it will shake out in 2 "layers"; a regional or interim manned bomber (probably a bomber version of the F-22) and a hypersonic unmanned UCAV (FALCON) that can dispence smaller, multiple loitering UCAVs that in turn can do precision attacks.

[edit on 9-26-2006 by intelgurl]

Personal Oppinion, but I don't like the idea of going to an unmanned strategic bomber at all. There are too many things that can go wrong! I'll confess I'm not a UAV person, I guess I've seen Terminator too many times, but I see too much danger. What the hell do you do when the computer crashes and you get US Air Force bombers attaking American targets?

A spy UAV- OK
A Cargo carrying UAV- OK
An Air to Air Fighter UAV- Maybe
A light attack UAV- I'm not crazy about it, but could discuss it.

A Strategic Bomber- Don't you dare go there!

Tim