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The military always keeps the real game changing stuff under wraps for strategic purposes. The very public parading of this plane, along with other "cutting edg

The military always keeps the real game changing stuff under wraps for strategic purposes. The very public parading of this plane, along with other "cutting edge" planes like the F35, makes me think that manned airplanes are already obsolete. It's been perfectly obvious for a while that unmanned aerial vehicles have the potential to be greatly superior - the lack of life support requirements alone creates an enormous amount of possibilities for maneuverability and observability. Highly recommend checking out the following article for more details on this: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/3889/the-alarming-case-of-the-usafs-mysteriously-missing-unmanned-combat-air-vehicles https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/3889/the-alarming-case...

themodelplumber 4y ago
> The very public parading of this plane My thinking was maybe they are building public support to effectively cover any budget surprises later on. Especially since we know there are big concerns about the budget. And, I'm not sure this isn't a modular platform, where manual control / remote is concerned.
hammock 4y ago
Nevertheless I have to imagine there are serious barriers to putting an actual nuclear bomb on an unmanned aircraft. Just as our nuclear missile silos are still manned, you want a human(s) at the button as close to the bomb as possible, to avoid accidents resulting from errant, erratic or unexpected behavior, or to be able to clean up after them before they lead to the apocalypse. Imagine if an unmanned bomber was sent on a mission and you lost contact. There was a movie (Fail Safe) about a manned bomber that happened to and it was scary enough
- Throwawayaerlei 4y ago
  We have technology to address the problem in that Fail Safe movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_action_link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_action_link And that's one reason manned bombers are a very important part of the nuclear triad, they can be launched "on warning" and sent the codes to arm their bombs and missiles later.

themodelplumber 4y ago

> The very public parading of this plane My thinking was maybe they are building public support to effectively cover any budget surprises later on. Especially since we know there are big concerns about the budget. And, I'm not sure this isn't a modular platform, where manual control / remote is concerned.

hammock 4y ago

Nevertheless I have to imagine there are serious barriers to putting an actual nuclear bomb on an unmanned aircraft. Just as our nuclear missile silos are still manned, you want a human(s) at the button as close to the bomb as possible, to avoid accidents resulting from errant, erratic or unexpected behavior, or to be able to clean up after them before they lead to the apocalypse. Imagine if an unmanned bomber was sent on a mission and you lost contact. There was a movie (Fail Safe) about a manned bomber that happened to and it was scary enough

Throwawayaerlei 4y ago
We have technology to address the problem in that Fail Safe movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_action_link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_action_link And that's one reason manned bombers are a very important part of the nuclear triad, they can be launched "on warning" and sent the codes to arm their bombs and missiles later.