7 ms·

Northrop Grumman unveils B-21 bomber

40 points by zppln 4y ago

zppln 4y ago
Additional photo from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-21_Raider#/media/File%3AB-21_Plant_42_hangar.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-21_Raider#/... Additional PR from Northrop: https://www.northropgrumman.com/what-we-do/air/b-21-raider/10-facts-about-northrop-grummans-b-21-raider/ https://www.northropgrumman.com/what-we-do/air/b-21-raider/1... I have to admit that the 6th gen classification sounds a bit weak. Data links are hardly new and fighters have been integrating every weapon under the sun for decades. But the Open Architecture stuff (and more generally how tech is shared between projects) appears to have started serving America well.
- jandrewrogers 4y ago
  The 6th gen is primarily based on a completely new generation of stealth technology. The data infrastructure is more 5th gen (which is still pretty sophisticated).
  - radu_floricica 4y ago
    F35 is built with upgradability in mind, so I think with regards to software the lines will be very blurred.
    - _8j50 4y ago
      The connections I understand but software being shared means one vulnerability can bring down multiple types and generations of aircraft.
      - zppln 4y ago
        This is an interesting point. While pulling of an attack like that wouldn't be easy, just having your entire air force having to patch for it simultaneously would be devastating from an availabilty PoV. Perhaps information security assurance is the real 6th gen? :)
    - ThinkBeat 4y ago
      As soon as they are able to get rid fo the bugs in the current system.
- kelseyfrog 4y ago
  >The B-21 is a digital bomber. Northrop Grumman uses agile software development I stopped there. We're fucked.
  - fnrslvr 4y ago
    Don't worry, they probably just want to fill out requirements documents with "Agile" written on them.
gigatexal 4y ago
“The aircraft were projected to cost approximately $550 million each in 2010 dollars, or about $750 million in today's inflation-adjusted dollars. The Air Force planned to buy at least 100 of the planes and begin to replace B-1 and B-2 bombers.” 75 Billion or what? 10% of all defense spending on these planes?!
- Vecr 4y ago
  They might not buy all of them. The military usually reserves themselves a right to buy hundreds of jets, but due to various conditions (such as a recession or the cold war ending) they sometimes don't buy all of them. There were some plans for 132 B-2 Spirit planes, but only 21 were made in the end. One of them crashed and was destroyed, and I'm not sure about the one that went of the runway last year, so there might only be 19 usable airframes at this point. You can't use all of them at the same time due to maintenance, so it could take months for all of them to get a chance to drop bombs from the start of an actual war. For the F-22 Raptor as well, an original idea in the 1980s was to order up to 750 aircraft, but only 187 production models were actually made. Not all could be made operational due to crashes and other damage.
- stavros 4y ago
  Wait wait, $750m EACH?! Fucking hell war is expensive.
  - zppln 4y ago
    The B2 Spirit cost like $2B+ each. In the 90's...
    - acchow 4y ago
      Does anyone know how much of a cost savings is due to moving to more software-driven tech? (kind of like in Teslas)
      - google234123 4y ago
        B2 program had a lot of problems from what I’ve heard. E.g. a lot of the equipment made to make parts for the blame would break after being used to make parts for one or two planes lol.
vlovich123 4y ago
Am I the only that sees a flying saucer shape if you look at it from the bottom?
- hinkley 4y ago
  No they’re definitely getting more saucer like with each generation.
  - vlovich123 4y ago
    Realist: I wonder how long the military has been playing with such shapes and if that explains the flying saucer phenomena of the 1950s UFO mania. Conspiracist: I guess they’ve finally started to figure out how the flying saucers that crashed in the 50s worked and are incorporating them slowly into designs to hide the alien influence. The realist interpretation seems more sane but it wouldn’t surprise me if the conspiratorial interpretation is bouncing around corners of the internet.
    - hinkley 4y ago
      Some of those UFO sightings are also clearly forced perspective errors. If you think a ship is larger than it is then it appears to accelerate much, much faster than it actually can, because you assume it’s farther away and for it to cross fifteen degrees of your field of view in one second it must have pulled 50 G’s. Or it was a drone sized object four hundred yards away.
    - samus 4y ago
      One conspiracy theory proposes a mix of both: that the flying wings use reverse-engineered antigrav technology from UFOs, which is argued to be required for takeoff.
hindsightbias 4y ago
I’m going to go with this isn’t an actual flying article. It’s just too smooth, even the high-rez pic. No cutouts/markings for ejection seats. No air sensors, no hatches, access panels. Possible it’s so fresh out of paint booth they’re not marked, but doubt it. Probably a structural/ground test victim. That NG said “you won’t see it again until it flies” says we won’t see much more. Lots of wing washout, more than the B-2. It’s porky, so they didn’t go with two or three engines (unless there’s a top inlet) so four P&Ws, draggy, lots of fuel needed. But I bet the payload is more than 2/3 the B-2. It makes the B-2 look svelte.
- torginus 4y ago
  Afaik even the B-2 didn't have pitot tubes for airspeed sensors. If I remember correctly, it used lasers to measure the change in the refractive index of air, which changes based on density, and used that to calculate dynamic and static air pressure.
  - hindsightbias 4y ago
    Yes, and there are none of those on this B-21
    - baybal2 4y ago
- LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
  Lack of ejection seats, or visible provisions for them have come to my mind, too.
user3939382 4y ago
This is like someone robbing you and then showing you how nice their new watch is.
- cyanydeez 4y ago
  So, most of capitalism in the 21st century
l3uwin 4y ago
I'd rather have heatlhcare and better schools
- CamperBob2 4y ago
  Tell Putin.
  - senttoschool 4y ago
    I'd rather America does not provoke Russia and have a military presence bordering Russia and not support Ukraine joining NATO.
    - radu_floricica 4y ago
      All, in all, if you also count Ukraine, NATO and EU expansion meant adding about a hundred million people to the western world. This may or may not be worth anything to you, but I'm glad you didn't make the decision.
    - petre 4y ago
      That's playing Putin's game.
    - _kbh_ 4y ago
      > I'd rather America does not provoke Russia and have a military presence bordering Russia and not support Ukraine joining NATO. Appeasing Russia will never work, they have appeased for decades and it just leads to more conflict. The only thing Russia will respond to is being physically rebuffed, luckily this is happening in Ukraine. Russia was never provoked into invading Ukraine, they merely used their own propaganda machine to invent excuses for the invasion.
    - Mikeb85 4y ago
      https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/exclusive-war-began-putin-rejected-ukraine-peace-deal-recommended-by-his-aide-2022-09-14/ https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/exclusive-war-beg... Ukraine offered to stay out of NATO to prevent war, guess what, it didn't prevent it. Nothing we can do will stop Russia except defeating them.
torginus 4y ago
There isn't much to go on but it seems weird to me, that compared to the extremely complex geometry of the B-2's intake that clearly looked computer designed, the B-21 has smooth, clean, flowing lines. It looks like something that could've been designed with a slide rule in the 60s.
- samus 4y ago
  I bet that the design is telltale of the computational power that was available for simulations at the time they were designed. They probably had to use clunky approximations for the B1, and the resulting design was clunky as a result. And better technology and knowledge of aerodynamics let them design models with smoother (read: more computationally intensive) contours later. Whether these smooth shapes were achievable in the 60s is a difficult question. They had parametric curves back then, but probably less idea how these contours influence aerodynamics and radar cross section, and even much less what the optimal shapes would be.
  - turrican 4y ago
    I think you’re correct! There’s a fantastic book called Skunkworks by Ben Rich that covers the development of the F-117. Part of the reason it came out so “blocky” looking was due to computer design limitations of the time.
sschueller 4y ago
So we now have apple'esc style reveal events for death machines. That's nice /s If this thing ever gets to see action a lot of lives will be lost.
ThinkBeat 4y ago
I had expected the military to go with autonomous self-flying self-bombing if necessary, kamikaze drone strategic bombers. It could maneuver and operate in conditions a ride along pilot could not survive. As several others have pointed out the promo shots seems to leave out ejection facilities and other nifty things for humans to survive.

40 points by zppln 4y ago

Additional photo from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-21_Raider#/media/File%3AB-21_Plant_42_hangar.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-21_Raider#/... Additional PR from Northrop: https://www.northropgrumman.com/what-we-do/air/b-21-raider/10-facts-about-northrop-grummans-b-21-raider/ https://www.northropgrumman.com/what-we-do/air/b-21-raider/1... I have to admit that the 6th gen classification sounds a bit weak. Data links are hardly new and fighters have been integrating every weapon under the sun for decades. But the Open Architecture stuff (and more generally how tech is shared between projects) appears to have started serving America well.

jandrewrogers 4y ago
The 6th gen is primarily based on a completely new generation of stealth technology. The data infrastructure is more 5th gen (which is still pretty sophisticated).
- radu_floricica 4y ago
  F35 is built with upgradability in mind, so I think with regards to software the lines will be very blurred.
  - _8j50 4y ago
    The connections I understand but software being shared means one vulnerability can bring down multiple types and generations of aircraft.
    - zppln 4y ago
      This is an interesting point. While pulling of an attack like that wouldn't be easy, just having your entire air force having to patch for it simultaneously would be devastating from an availabilty PoV. Perhaps information security assurance is the real 6th gen? :)
  - ThinkBeat 4y ago
    As soon as they are able to get rid fo the bugs in the current system.
kelseyfrog 4y ago
>The B-21 is a digital bomber. Northrop Grumman uses agile software development I stopped there. We're fucked.
- fnrslvr 4y ago
  Don't worry, they probably just want to fill out requirements documents with "Agile" written on them.

gigatexal 4y ago

“The aircraft were projected to cost approximately $550 million each in 2010 dollars, or about $750 million in today's inflation-adjusted dollars. The Air Force planned to buy at least 100 of the planes and begin to replace B-1 and B-2 bombers.” 75 Billion or what? 10% of all defense spending on these planes?!

Vecr 4y ago
They might not buy all of them. The military usually reserves themselves a right to buy hundreds of jets, but due to various conditions (such as a recession or the cold war ending) they sometimes don't buy all of them. There were some plans for 132 B-2 Spirit planes, but only 21 were made in the end. One of them crashed and was destroyed, and I'm not sure about the one that went of the runway last year, so there might only be 19 usable airframes at this point. You can't use all of them at the same time due to maintenance, so it could take months for all of them to get a chance to drop bombs from the start of an actual war. For the F-22 Raptor as well, an original idea in the 1980s was to order up to 750 aircraft, but only 187 production models were actually made. Not all could be made operational due to crashes and other damage.
stavros 4y ago
Wait wait, $750m EACH?! Fucking hell war is expensive.
- zppln 4y ago
  The B2 Spirit cost like $2B+ each. In the 90's...
  - acchow 4y ago
    Does anyone know how much of a cost savings is due to moving to more software-driven tech? (kind of like in Teslas)
    - google234123 4y ago
      B2 program had a lot of problems from what I’ve heard. E.g. a lot of the equipment made to make parts for the blame would break after being used to make parts for one or two planes lol.

vlovich123 4y ago

Am I the only that sees a flying saucer shape if you look at it from the bottom?

hinkley 4y ago
No they’re definitely getting more saucer like with each generation.
- vlovich123 4y ago
  Realist: I wonder how long the military has been playing with such shapes and if that explains the flying saucer phenomena of the 1950s UFO mania. Conspiracist: I guess they’ve finally started to figure out how the flying saucers that crashed in the 50s worked and are incorporating them slowly into designs to hide the alien influence. The realist interpretation seems more sane but it wouldn’t surprise me if the conspiratorial interpretation is bouncing around corners of the internet.
  - hinkley 4y ago
    Some of those UFO sightings are also clearly forced perspective errors. If you think a ship is larger than it is then it appears to accelerate much, much faster than it actually can, because you assume it’s farther away and for it to cross fifteen degrees of your field of view in one second it must have pulled 50 G’s. Or it was a drone sized object four hundred yards away.
  - samus 4y ago
    One conspiracy theory proposes a mix of both: that the flying wings use reverse-engineered antigrav technology from UFOs, which is argued to be required for takeoff.

hindsightbias 4y ago

I’m going to go with this isn’t an actual flying article. It’s just too smooth, even the high-rez pic. No cutouts/markings for ejection seats. No air sensors, no hatches, access panels. Possible it’s so fresh out of paint booth they’re not marked, but doubt it. Probably a structural/ground test victim. That NG said “you won’t see it again until it flies” says we won’t see much more. Lots of wing washout, more than the B-2. It’s porky, so they didn’t go with two or three engines (unless there’s a top inlet) so four P&Ws, draggy, lots of fuel needed. But I bet the payload is more than 2/3 the B-2. It makes the B-2 look svelte.

torginus 4y ago
Afaik even the B-2 didn't have pitot tubes for airspeed sensors. If I remember correctly, it used lasers to measure the change in the refractive index of air, which changes based on density, and used that to calculate dynamic and static air pressure.
- hindsightbias 4y ago
  Yes, and there are none of those on this B-21
  - baybal2 4y ago
LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
Lack of ejection seats, or visible provisions for them have come to my mind, too.

user3939382 4y ago

This is like someone robbing you and then showing you how nice their new watch is.

cyanydeez 4y ago
So, most of capitalism in the 21st century

l3uwin 4y ago

I'd rather have heatlhcare and better schools

CamperBob2 4y ago
Tell Putin.
- senttoschool 4y ago
  I'd rather America does not provoke Russia and have a military presence bordering Russia and not support Ukraine joining NATO.
  - radu_floricica 4y ago
    All, in all, if you also count Ukraine, NATO and EU expansion meant adding about a hundred million people to the western world. This may or may not be worth anything to you, but I'm glad you didn't make the decision.
  - petre 4y ago
    That's playing Putin's game.
  - _kbh_ 4y ago
    > I'd rather America does not provoke Russia and have a military presence bordering Russia and not support Ukraine joining NATO. Appeasing Russia will never work, they have appeased for decades and it just leads to more conflict. The only thing Russia will respond to is being physically rebuffed, luckily this is happening in Ukraine. Russia was never provoked into invading Ukraine, they merely used their own propaganda machine to invent excuses for the invasion.
  - Mikeb85 4y ago
    https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/exclusive-war-began-putin-rejected-ukraine-peace-deal-recommended-by-his-aide-2022-09-14/ https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/exclusive-war-beg... Ukraine offered to stay out of NATO to prevent war, guess what, it didn't prevent it. Nothing we can do will stop Russia except defeating them.

torginus 4y ago

There isn't much to go on but it seems weird to me, that compared to the extremely complex geometry of the B-2's intake that clearly looked computer designed, the B-21 has smooth, clean, flowing lines. It looks like something that could've been designed with a slide rule in the 60s.

samus 4y ago
I bet that the design is telltale of the computational power that was available for simulations at the time they were designed. They probably had to use clunky approximations for the B1, and the resulting design was clunky as a result. And better technology and knowledge of aerodynamics let them design models with smoother (read: more computationally intensive) contours later. Whether these smooth shapes were achievable in the 60s is a difficult question. They had parametric curves back then, but probably less idea how these contours influence aerodynamics and radar cross section, and even much less what the optimal shapes would be.
- turrican 4y ago
  I think you’re correct! There’s a fantastic book called Skunkworks by Ben Rich that covers the development of the F-117. Part of the reason it came out so “blocky” looking was due to computer design limitations of the time.

sschueller 4y ago

So we now have apple'esc style reveal events for death machines. That's nice /s If this thing ever gets to see action a lot of lives will be lost.

ThinkBeat 4y ago

I had expected the military to go with autonomous self-flying self-bombing if necessary, kamikaze drone strategic bombers. It could maneuver and operate in conditions a ride along pilot could not survive. As several others have pointed out the promo shots seems to leave out ejection facilities and other nifty things for humans to survive.