@15:50 you / the USAF say they want "loyal wingmen" to fly alongside the bomber of the day, but also noted that the USAF rolled-back their claim that the B21 was going to be optionally manned.! My suspicion is that the B21-X (the B21 replacement that I just named) will be the new manned bomber of the day and the B21's that are now in production will then become the unmanned "loyal wingmen" with a relatively (for any project like this) small upgrade, and they stopped saying that the b21 was going to be "optionally manned" for a few reasons: . Recruitment, they still need to recruit pilots, and broadcasting that they might not need any a few years in the future is going to wreck their recruitment possibilities, many of whom are in school right now.! . They do not want to give away too much of what they are planning on doing to other less than friendly countries. . They are not sure yet whether they will continue to need someone in the cockpit essentially as a "backup" if there is an EMP that takes out their "web of communication" and breaks their "killchain", or IMHO, in the even of nuclear war, the great likelihood of an EMP (or many, plus mass satellite destruction) and they need to rely on the Human onboard plus the onboard sensors because the chain and web are no more, and without them what would the AI do.? . They don't actually know, and they are changing their minds / unable to make up their minds as time and technology progresses, and likewise the likelihood of their need in a near-peer hot war that the decision now could be very different from one made a month from now and so they need to keep their options open. . That the B21 was truly designed to be from the ground up (as I have heard), an upgradable, AND an iterative platform, so they could be working hard on the B21A, whilst planning the B21B and considering what might be needed for the B21C, and for example the B21 and B21A could both be quite similar and have 50 of each produced for the 100-total and the B21B and B21C might be different enough, but still use the same airframe that they are considered the new orders that are being considered. Alternatively the B21B and B21C could simply become the B31 and B31A, noting that you have suggested that future F35 upgrades are so large it could warrant a new designation.! . Any combination of the above plus things that I have overlooked, or not even thought of (by far the most likely) as I am no expert, I am just an interested observer not even an "enthusiast".

Any idea if it's true that the Russians recently shot down an Israeli F-35 as it left Jordanian airspace to launch an EMP over Iran?

Hi Alex. can you make a video on Horsepower???? Cars Planes Trains. It doesn't matter. I think you would say it cool

The 4 engine hypersonic AirForce One replacement is probably the bomber they are thinking about.

This is just a guess. What if Starshield the $1.8 billion dollar satellite. Built by SpaceX with Lockheed Martin sensors. Comes equipped with the same advanced sensors suiteas the B21. An unstoppable kill web

it's exactly as you say. Happened to B2, B1b, and F-22.

Come on guys we have to let China catch up with us we can't have the greatest of everything and lots of it

Yup long history of this🙏🙏🪬🪬👍👍🥃🥃💎💎🇬🇧🇬🇧

Exactly. What's the point of making your bomber extremely modular if you only take minimal advantage of that? These functions can't be added to the B-21?

But that's how it goes. Money has to be allocated to these programs. At the beginning things look big and then they have to scale down to keep everything within budget (lol).

Also no considerations needed for supersonic aerodynamics.

No wonder it is on time and budget

The f35 is 3 DIFFERENT aircraft. Not exactly the best comparison. Only the so called F35B has a lift fan and is almost completely different from the F35A, for instance.

@wstavis3135 In fact, no. The dimensions, power and function of the engine were all dictated by the liftfan system, In fact, the whole airplane was. The other small differences between the aircraft are mainly due carrier fleet considerations or reuse of the space that not having a lift fan allowed. You can take the engine module from an F35B and graft it into any other model with minor adjustments. The software takes care of everything else. That is the strength and the weakness of the F35. But the whole principal of the system was sound, its not as agile as an F16 because what ever dogfighting ability it may have is of little use for a plane that is basically a mini AWACs that happeneds to have missiles and carry bombs that it can drop with pinpoint accuracy 50 miles or more from the target without ever being detected by hostile radar. The B21 leverages tge same thing but with even more stealth and a much larger internal weapons load.

@@wstavis3135 The F-35A prototype was modified into the F-35B prototype. I disagree that Raider is much simpler to aircraft to build. Much simpler, negative Ghostrider.

Shield AI already has software flying to add AI capability to the F-16. It would be nice, too, if a production divererless inlet could be added. The one tested on the AFTI-16 was a scabbed on prototype to.prove the concept for the F-35.

Retired M.D. here. I always enjoy reading what the engineers have to say!

it is more accurate to say that the rate of change with technology _has_ been exponential. Thus far, tech has been the limiting factor, but we are quickly coming up against other limiting factors such as materials or energy availability that may blunt, or even end that trajectory. They also may not, but we cannot be sure, so we should not make declarative statements which include an uncertain future.

The New AI Intergrated F-16 is INSANE

It’s really not exponential. It’s a number of sigmoid curves laid over each other. IE - A ton of iterative upgrades over a long span of time. These things don’t happen “all of a sudden”. They take large teams of highly skilled people gradually making things better, such as yourself. - ex game programmer

I would assume that stand off weapons are cheaper than the vehicle.

That's actually very dependent on the battlefield. For decades the US pivoted to fighting insurgencies, not near peer. In those cases you want high precision missiles that deliver knives instead of explosives to take out a driver in the middle of a city, instead of carpet bombing the city. With the US pivoting now back to more traditional near peer, military V military type of fighting, saturation bombing and large area bombings are back on the menu. A $20m missile to take out a $5M tank is not a good use of money, but $500k of dumb bombs capable of demolition sing a tight groups squad if tanks is a great investment. This gets even more dynamic with the use of drones, and loitering which can sort of straddle that line. Finally missiles can be shot down, I have yet to see anything that says artillery gets shot down.

Frankly, it makes a better AWACS than a bomber

​@@granatmofcant the Phalanx system (land based CIWS) shoot artillery/mortars or am I wrong about that?

​@@thelizard556 yes, that's C-RAM or Counter Rocket/Artillery/Mortar which is the role land based phalanxes fill. Also something like Israel's Iron Dome can shoot down shells and mortars etc with a bit larger of a kill envelope than the gun based phalanx.

This has only accelerated with all digital design, manufacturing, operational modeling, war gaming, and even maintenance. Add autonomous AI and new aircraft pop up naturally. Run to keep up.

The is true of a lot of commercial technology as well. However, product must be brought to market so choices must be made and a design finalized. IRL it's not obsolete, since the technology isn't equaled.

When I was in college in the early 2000’s, one of my professors had retired from CINCSAC. He told us that civilian technology is roughly 30 years behind military technology. He described technology to us that we now have in the civilian world but were not available in 2001. He described mesh networks, large flat panel touch screens, and fully wireless speakers/headphones. He further talked about rods from God as something we already had.

@@Iamdarthplague There's a big difference between drawing board aspirations and operational weapons systems.

@@hoghogwild you're not wrong but he described these systems as active and functional.

Whether the drones are recovered or not, Autonomous drone swarms that have a target list to take out without need for continuous data streams will be something in the future. Saturation strikes are just that important.

Along with a gimbaled laser cannon to take out ground to air threats and air to air threats.

"Why do I hear Boss Music?"

Zerg!

They'll just retrofit a B-52 for that. 😄

A big reason why the US hasn't fielded new generations for 30 years is just the leaps in performance year over year of computational power leading to better modeling, digital design, and even 3d printing. Combine complex models with generational algorithms that may spit out hundred of design evolutions to something even more optimized, and it makes since to keep delaying new decades long purchase programs until your data models start to stabilize in capability, which let's be honest, they have for the most part. This means that the new generations of systems should be smaller since the new design processes are going to maybe be fast enough to take practical lessons from a large scale deployment back to the computer model and make something even more powerful. The US has massive computational resources to drive all of this, and it's not always about raw computational power. Big elements is the bespoke air modeling systems created and maintained by Boeing and Lockheed et al. Reliable modeling data is the single most important part of computer modeling. If your data is bad, it doesn't matter how great your computers are.

I remember playing a hand held football game in 1978. My first game console was Pong followed by Atari

My parents must have been rich, we had a Super VGA monitor, Dot Matrix printer, and 2800 baud modem. Still had to use DOS though.

Commodore 64 had 64!KB of RAM, lol. Still was pretty cool. My friend and I would log onto random BBS sites when we were in elementary school in the '80s. We were 8-9 years old.

​@@lewiskemp5893I remember having a party line phone, people shared the same line, if they were in an active phone call you could listen in .

I sure hope they are

To me, they looked taped over to conceal something. But I had the same thought as soon as I saw it.

​@@SeattlePaulie Exactly. They're concealed.

B-72?

There is no room for bombs, dam thing is all engines! 2 turbo fans and 2 ram jets.

@@ElonMuckX I'm sure Skunk Works can figure those funky stuff out.. attach a 500lb directly on the damn engines!

@@dean5047 At those speeds a 500lbs wouldn’t need to explode.

That’s something I don’t understand; why piss away money on a rebooted version of the B-2 stealth bomber? Why not put that money into hypersonic technology instead of a rehashed 1940s airframe coupled with 1970s stealth technology? Not very wise in my opinion.

fr

It would want to go faster than 630 mph for it to be of ANY use at all.

Raid3r Mk.III

@@mrhassellYou clearly don’t understand modern aviation at all

@@mrhassellno

That’s an interesting concept that would be pretty practical without a big price tag. I’m familiar with discussions of fielding a ground-launched variant, and the LRASM already has VLS capability, so plenty of potential customers. The Air Force may not like the idea of anyone biting into their high-end ISR business, but I want to see LRASM production increase anyway, so it’s got my vote.

@SandboxxApp I was part of the design team for the AGM-137A/BGM-137B and a BDA version, with potential follow-up attack capabilities, was under study. Too, the modular nature of TSSAM would have allowed a vertical launch version by combining elements of the A and B variants of the missile. By the same token, the modular design would have allowed quick development of an extended range air-launched version for the USAF & USN.

The YF-23 was the better airplane but the leadership at Northrop Grumman back then screwed the pooch. I was told they didn’t even have a fly off between it and the YF-22. Lockheed chose to put their airplane in the air and let it strut it stuff while the doofuses running Northrop at the time just sat back on their ass and thought it was theirs from the get-go. I used to work with Northrop Grumman and not much has changed; they were an arrogant elitist company back then and they still are. Of course Northrop Grumman would deny it all day long but I worked with people that worked on the YF-23 program and they told me all about how Northrop Grumman screwed it up.

@@phayzyre1052 I believe every word of that. I know the YF 23 was the better plane. It was stealthier, faster and better looking.

Why do you keep asking this question? Do you have some monetary interest in that story?

Easy now, tiger.

The SR-72 is designed for reconnaissance, not bombing. Dropping bombs or missiles at those high speeds is problematic. There may be hypersonic bombers and fighters someday, but it is not this day.

@@hanrockabrand95 obviously nothing's been officially confirmed, but most people who report on the sr72 report that it's capable of strikes

@@goodsocksproductions9397 News to me. I'd be curious to see how they work that out.

​@@goodsocksproductions9397 Most people who report on the SR-72 also draw their "facts" from their personal aft passage...

There's also ionic thrust/ air displacement for airfoil/ control surface shaping without actual control surfaces, and plasma sheath shaping by related technologies for hypersonics. Current jet engines (f-35 onwards) are now getting to the sorts of power/ weight outputs where it's feasible to sacrifice some thrust for large electric field generation, if that ends up being useful. Can also be vaguely used as a form of "electric chaff", or as a sort of magnetic thrust vectoring or engine wall heat shielding with the right fuel dopants. The future is going to be very interesting, though I'm not sure if any of the above mentioned technologies will be feasible in the near-term future.

The B21 has some limitations. It's a medium range, medium payload high stealth platform. Having a new large Frame replacement for the B2 or even the B1 could be important. Imagine tactical bombing by a heavy bomber that's invisible to air defenses.

There's also the high-end computing available to the USAF. Where processing power allows many other things. And the huge advances in material science/ manufacturing availablity. Why not make the entire (ok, just lots of bits of it) airframe out of distributed radar elements? And fairly high power or very sensitive ones? Processing power... Now not as much of a problem. Why not have hundreds of IR/ UV detectors/ cameras on an aircraft? Again, not as much of a problem these days. Why not have 10x the communication abilities? Well, it's doable these days. There's so many things the B21 or its replacement could have, it's hard to speculate on what it will actually have. Just depends on what's useful, how much of it is, and how much it costs.

I agree. Those subjects would be fascinating to learn. 👍

@zerg.....good question!

That would be interesting seeing how B-52 used to help out the USN via Harpoon missile missions and continues those missions with LRASM. Then there's the B-1B with its internal loadout of 24 LRASM on its 3 8 shot rotary launchers and another 8 externally with the Boeing's new adaptable Boeing rail system. That's a lot of LRASM/JASSM capability.

Any hypersonic object will be easily detected by satellites. At those speeds, the aircraft will be extremely hot, even as hot as ballistic missiles. Perhaps even something early warning satellites could pick up...

It’s fine. Why ruin it?

Oh I think I got a PackardBell with a 540mb hdd a bit after the gameboy was released (in the US) for ~$1500

Same question was asked in the early-mid 1960’s when we got involved in Vietnam & was the entire reason the early version F-4’s were built without a gun and was why our loss-ratio in Vietnam as no better than 1:1 until 1969-70!

They still haven’t…

@@silenciummortum2193right? Sadly most people have no idea and just listen to what theyre spoon fed by main stream media

@@jonengelbird7051 @silenciummortum2193 They look pretty inept to anyone bothering to look, yeah they’ve got more meat and steal and the Ukrainians are reliant on slow moving democratic partners...... but anyone who thinks Russia has not been utterly inept and their equipment mediocre needs to put the crack pipe down and pay attention. They’re currently advancing solely because of American traitors acting for Russian interests, they’re advancing despite their inept performance, poor training and mediocre equipment and its cost them almost 1/2 a million casualties

@@silenciummortum2193 Yes they have kekw. A peer adversary to the United States doesn't take 2 years to defeat Ukraine. We'd have done it in weeks.

@@TheNerdForAllSeasons Invasions are incredibly difficult and heavily favor the defender. What's the most recent invasion that worked out well for the US?