Today's Bomber Fleet

With the miniaturization of Today's nukes. An F-15 or even an F-22 could be just as effective with "lethal" cargo as their larger cousins. It is not how many bombs you carry, or how big they are, but just getting to your enemy to drop the "egg" is the issue. An F-15e or a F-22A is more cost effective than a B-2 by hundreds of millions of $ -- and they can still penetrate! Really now, in a nasty WWIII enviroment, getting home isn't the issue. There will be no "home" to get to. Remember the B-2 was designed in 1988 to bomb the Soviet Union, not the Taliban, Al-Qaida or Serbia. For today's current USAF mission requirement, the B-2 is superfluous. Now if China or Russia started acting up.... that's another story.

The reason that the B-52 is still in the arsenal is that it is the premier carpet bomber of all time. In late 1972 I was on a ship stationed three miles off the coast of North Vietnam when B-52's came in from Guam and dropped string after string of 750-lb bombs, the dreaded Arclight missions which the communist Vietnamese veterans today will still tell you was by far the most-feared of the American weapons. From my vantage point the concussion of each explosion felt like a slap in the face. I could only feel very sorry for the human beings being targeted.

In fact, the feature in the Military, Aviation & Space category directly to the right of this box talks about our soldiers who served in Iraq suffering from terrible-yet-invisible brain trauma. Researchers who want to know the long-term consequences of this alleged syndrome should fly to Hanoi and interview those communist soldiers who survived being carpet bombed 40 years ago.

The reason you carpet bomb in the first place is to kill troops who are dug in over a relatively large area. Both the Russians and the USA did experiments early in the Cold War in which it was realized that soldiers in trenches or bunkers can survive many nuclear explosions. In fact, your grandad may have been one of the guys in the trenches on the Nevada test range who was actually within one mile of a real nuclear above-ground blast! The Russians actually exploded some air-dropped nuclear weapons directly over some guinea-pig regiments of Mongolian soldiers that the Russian high command felt were expendable.

At the museum of nuclear testing in Las Vegas you can view pictures of a bunker we designed that would have made being 500 feet below a nuclear blast survivable (although apparently no human volunteered to actually be in the bunker to prove the theory for sure.)

Carpet bombing with conventional bombs actually is the most lethal technique against a division of infantry who are in deep trenches and bunkers over a large area. Well, actually biological or chemical weapons would be the most lethal technique, but that's another story. . .

Do we really need another way to kill people?

@ejmfoley

What we really need is a solid eugenics program complete with well-reasoned population controls, but that ain't going to happen either. See the movie Serenity. People need to have the freedom to blow each other to bits. It's only ethical.

Kinda silly to waste money developing something inferior to the existing bombers.

Any replacement should exceed the capabilities of existing aircraft.

And only 1/4 the range of the B52 this will not be a very useful aircraft in today's geopolitical environment where most wars are going to be more limited and require very fast response which mains any future bomber is going to need speed and long range.

The 2018 bomber sounds like a project that needs put down ASAP as producing the B1R an updated B1A that is more stealthy and even super cruise and a modernized B52 is going to be a lot cheaper.

Speaking of the B-2, I was surprised to read recently that the Germans had a jet powered pure flying wing fighter under production when the factory was overrun in 1945. The aircraft had a welded tubular steel center and plywood covered wings. If I remember correctly, it had a top speed of approximately 650 MPH but that might have been KPH. Even so, Allied piston powered fighters of the era had top speeds in the 450 MPH range. One wonders if there are any surviving specimens in a museum somewhere.

The future lies with aircraft that does not require pilots, look at the new one that came out a few months ago, it is 2-3 times larger then the previous 2 virsions, it can stay up longer and fly further, sure they are slow but at a cost of a little more then 1 million each they do quite a bit and can be flown from air craft carriers and when you look at the total cost deploying them will be a lot cheaper..They will only get better and better..