Timex
2956
Maybe?
I mean, Ukraine is playing with NATO toys at this point… Which is stuff that is reasonably on par with our own stuff.
While we rightly assume that China is a capable adversary, as it’s better to overestimate an enemy than underestimate, has China ever had to actually execute such military procedures? I don’t think so. I am skeptical they would actually do that well. Ukraine with our toys may very well be more effective than China… And the toys we have to destroy anti air capabilities are most definitely better than what Russia can field.
JonRowe
2957
I am just erring on the side of over-estimation.
In some ways it’s a moot point in this context, because ain’t no one gonna send a fleet of these things deep into hostile airspace.
I hope.
Dejin
2959
I’m thinking it would be useful for getting troops/supplies from Okinawa to Taiwan. If we’ve completely lost control of the airspace East of Taiwan, we’re probably completely screwed anyway.
schurem
2960
If some fokker is shooting things at me, I’d rather be in something that moves at 300+ knots than something that tops out at 120. It will have wtfawesome thrust-to-weight so it will be agile as fuck. Really good to get the passengers to loose their lunch and make you fucking hard to catch when zipping around mountains and hills.
Helicopters are great, but they are also unstable, slow and incredibly vulnerable. In plane mode, the “valor” (gack that name. What tribe will it be called after?) will be probably more stable and can better deal with battle damage than in helo mode.
Still, flying troop transports around is not something you do if there’s any chance of fighters getting a look at them. Neither herky birds nor choppers.
That’s my point. Not that this thing isn’t better than a chopper–it probably is–but that neither is terribly useful for flying in contested air space.
Well, yeah. But I’m pretty sure there are better planes to haul lots of stuff that distance than these things.
I mean, I think they are pretty cool and probably a good upgrade. I’m just riffing on the infographic being used to sell 'em!
Dejin
2962
Depends on the state of runways.
True, though the C-17 as I understand it is pretty good at landing and taking off at rustic airfields. But I guess if we’re talking about a helipad or nothing…though in that case we are screwed probably.
schurem
2964
I also think the V-280 is a bad blackhawk replacement. If your chainsaw is old and weary and need replacing, does it make sense to get a polesaw? No, you need something at least chainsaw-like.
I understand the pentagon wants generational leaps and gamechanging innovative technology. But can they and will they be able to get enough of these cool new toys to be as cheaply ubiquitous as blackhawks are, or hueys before those? I think not. Let alone the complete rewrite of operational concepts needed.
I suspect the days of vast fleets of helicopters are fast reaching their end. Smaller forces, higher tech, more automation–these are the things we’re going to see going forward. You needed fleets of UH-1s or Blackhawks when you actually intended to lift a whole division into combat. As noted elsewhere, that seems to be a very outmoded operational concept.
Not that I disagree with you really, it’s just that I think this isn’t really a Blackhawk replacement so much as exactly that rewrite of operational concepts you mention. Of course, the info from the government and the contractors isn’t giving us much on that aspect of things, and perhaps even the Army doesn’t know exactly what they will do with these things or how that rewrite will pan out.
The military is always rediscovering some doctrine or capability they’ve de-emphasized before. I was part of the 25ID back in the 80s, when we reconfigured to ‘light’ infantry (translation: get rid of all the vehicles for infantry forces), like several other infantry divisions, because we had discovered that future wars were going to be low-intensity conflicts in remote places against lightly-armed enemies and the key factors were ease of transport to the combat zone and infantrymen prepared to carry everything on their backs in terrain inhospitable to vehicles anyway. Then along came multiple wars in Iraq and similar terrain, wars characterized by heavily mobile and armored maneuver and assault over large distances requiring, well, transport of heavy stuff to the region, and transport of troops in the region. Now there’s a major land war in Europe. I suspect we don’t really know what sort of forces we will need in every eventuality in the future, and ‘a little bit of everything’ is probably the best preparation.
Yeah, probably. It’s easy to criticize militaries for “preparing to fight the last war,” but really, what else can they in good conscience do? Within limits, all you have to go on is experience, which at least is pretty concrete. You can, and should, try to predict trends and where things are going, but that is always going to be a crap shoot. There are very good reasons why militaries (and navies) are intrinsically conservative.
abrandt
2968
Certainly I don’t think you can figure out exactly where things are going until you’re fighting in that next war and both sides are trying to one up the other with whatever they’ve got. It’s good the military is trying to get ahead of that but you also don’t want to gamble all on one thing and have it turn out to be wrong. I feel like every major vehicle type in WW2 ended up being used differently and therefore needing very different designs than what people thought going in. Tanks, aircraft, ships all changed drastically in just a few years. Hell, our most recent wars led to heavy development on drones and IED resistant vehicles.
Indeed. Going in to the war, US doctrine saw tanks primarily as infantry support and break-through exploitation systems, plus recon/cavalry roles for light armor. Anti-tank work was the responsibility of the Tank Destroyer units, towed and self-propelled. Of course, the enemy didn’t play along usually, and it turned out that medium tanks like the M4, which were not designed to fight other tanks initially, ended up doing just that, while TDs which had been intended for defensive operations wound up also being used on the offense. By the end of the war vehicles like the M26 were arriving, designed with wartime lessons in mind.
A B-2 had some kind of in-flight emergency and did an emergency landing at Whiteman, and it looks like the landing gear collapsed and there was a fire, although damage is not revealed.
Another B-2 had a gear collapse in 2021. They spent almost a year repairing her enough so she could fly to Palmdale for full repairs, which are ongoing now.
The B-21 was just introduced, but it is realistically years and years from service. It’ll depend on how much damage was done to the B-2, but the Air Force may have to repeat the “repair her enough so she can fly to Palmdale.” Or she may end up as parts.
The B-2 involved was Spirit of New York.
In 2010, Spirit of Washington was involved in a serious fire in Guam that almost destroyed her. The Air Force and Lockheed Northrup spent four years to repair the damage, and didn’t even come clean about what had happened until after the aircraft was back in service.
Geez. I’m guessing the funky materials and the way they are put together makes these things super hard to fix? I mean, you can’t just whip out the bondo and the duct tape I guess.
abrandt
2972
Certainly one of the benefits of a larger fleet of cheaper aircraft is that the inevitable accidents are less of a problem individually. Losing a B-2 or a B-1 is a pretty big deal considering how few of each there are.
According to wikipedia, we built 104 B-1s (I guess both A and B), which is about the same size as the proposed B-21 fleet. Ten were lost in accidents, and some number have gone to museums already. I don’t know how many are left in service, are they rare enough that a hull loss is a bigger than normal problem?
I think the 2008 B-2 crash was a write off and didn’t much affect the B-2 program either. Some amount of losses are normal for planes like these.
abrandt
2974
According to Wikipedia, as of last year there were 45 B-1Bs left in service. So yeah, losing one of those isn’t a huge dent, but losing a few starts to be a sizeable percentage of the fleet. It looks like there are 20 B-2s left, so each one is 5% of the total fleet. 10% of the B-2 fleet has been involved in accidents in the last year that has taken them out of service until who knows when.
21 B-2s were built. One was destroyed in a crash on takeoff on Guam. Another is not in squadron service but is based in Edwards for testing and R&D purposes.
The remaining 19 are based in Whiteman. And two are currently out of service; one is being repaired, and the other’s fate is pending.
