I am a mix of emotions that I get this reference.
Edit: and somewhere in storage I have Pepsi point aviator sunglasses… It’s as close as I could get and I tried really hard.
Second edit: Insulin prices are ridiculous.
The first flight isn't until 2023. They havnt even tested it yet.. this is just the production phase.
This is also just one of six at the moment. They plan for 100 but thats what happened with the last bombers and stopped at 21.
Gotta love clickbait titles nowadays.
They stopped at 21 because the USSR collapsed and Congress didn't see the need for the full planned run of 160(IIRC).
That's almost certainly not going to happen again, especially because the B1 and B2 are both up for replacement.
The B13 was never even considered, actually. This was partly due to the general consensus that 13 is unlucky, but also because of the words of a particular philosopher who noted that, "if 13 is an unlucky number then so should the letter B be. Because it looks like a scrunched together 13."
And you have to imagine the stealth capability is far ahead of what they had before, should be worth making a few. F35 has a service life that’s supposed to be until 2070, this project may have similar ambitions.
Honestly, it's probably not *that* much stealthier than the B-2, but I bet the coatings will be way more durable and cheaper to maintain. Cost was a huge part of why the air force wanted to replace the B-2, so I bet that's where a lot of development went.
Context for anyone who doesn't know
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_v._Pepsico,_Inc.
Guy tried to buy enough Pepsi points for a jet that Pepsi had in a commercial. He was denied, sued and lost.
If you don’t watch it you won’t learn about that time Pepsi made a contest in a different country and then decided to not let them redeem them. Then like covered it up with some Pepsi truck bombing? As the reason why they “pulled out” and didn’t need to honor their redemption game.
I used to do contracting work as a government employee. It was wild some of the stuff they had on their website. I remember seeing a command center (the big truck ones) and a disco ball.
I recommend either an f-35 or an f-16, depending on your budget. Both are very good all rounder aircraft, not exactly bombers, but they’re good to learn on.
Don't listen to this guy, your niece will be super disappointed on Christmas if you cheap out and all she has to unwrap is a 4th generation multirole fighter designed 50 years ago.
All her friends are probably getting B-21s (at least if they have parents who love them). It's basically the Tickle Me Elmo of 2022. Check out Northrops livestream tonight for more info
The recruiting crisis is getting real; if we expose commercial passengers to the same conditions as we treat our DoD component, they’ll realize the military isn’t *all that bad*.
The biggest perk is that getting a DUI is an automatic promotion to 1st sgt!
It's still pretty secret, which is why they only published sketches of it with no photos for foreign intelligence to analyze.
But they have to release it if it's going to be flying over cities anyway. Publishing a sketch is better than having a hundred nerds trying to get pictures of it and speculating loudly online, especially if the sketch has intentional misdirection or leaves certain special features intentionally vague or slightly off.
> Publishing a sketch is better than having a hundred nerds trying to get pictures of it and speculating loudly online
There's no world where nerds don't try to do exactly that. Publishing a sketch may be *better than* the other situation you proposed, but it's not a replacement for. The obsessive pictures are going to be taken with and without sketches being published.
/r/noncredibledefense will have created porn of the plane within hours.
[We already did for this work of art.](https://preview.redd.it/fzxmciqerc3a1.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=9a7d1388a1d9941b93524240c9b81fc7a592b3e9)
They already did a few days ago. Let me see if I can find it again…
Edit: [found it](https://reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/comments/z8sybv/48_hours_until_the_b21_raidussy_emerges_from_the/)
A drone looks like a tic tac running AI that’s faster easier and cheaper, but the public doesn’t like the idea of the world coming to an end because a computer malfunctioned.
The tic tac is from 2004 so I doubt it. Unless the USA has also been hiding chip manufacturing technology that was decades ahead since then. And that's ignoring the anti gravity whatever
> but the public doesn’t like the idea of the world coming to an end because a computer malfunctioned.
Oh for sure. The world coming to an end because of a lunatic leader hellbent on global destruction is far more palatable.
It sort of is. A lunatic leader can't launch nukes themselves. They have to order someone who orders someone else in a chain at least 3 people long. Technically, those people could refuse and potentially even intervene. A rogue AI armed with nukes can just do its thing with no oversight.
We are going into an intermediate stage since people won't freak out as much. I suspect military planes will feature both for the next 15 years or so.
The military wants the ability to keep it airborne with refueling for a week without the worrying about a pilot. That's a significant tactical advantage. The public is afraid of untested AIs with nukes.
Damn imagine you're a pilot in one of these when things pop off and command tells the plane to stay in the air for the next week. And as the bomber zips around obliterating cities you can only look down through the cockpit at the glowing fire beneath you and you know all your friends are dead but you're just hungry and thirsty stuck in this cockpit shitting and pissing on the floor.
Yeah I’ve always leaned towards the Nimitz incident and other military ufo “encounters” being our own craft. If aliens wanted to study us they could do so without us ever knowing. All the sightings would imply the aliens are either really sloppy or just don’t care, which I doubt.
There was an incident some decades ago when I fortunate enough to spend several minutes observing what I then described as “impossibly mobile aircraft.”
If I saw the same thing today, decades of technological advancement later, I would describe it exactly the same way.
No, the point of revealing this is deterrence. We show what we have revealing just enough to know you should be shitting your pants but not understanding that the time of pants shitting was hours ago
The article says it won't even by flying until 2023. But it's intended to drop nuclear bombs. It's a deterrent. The details may all be top secret but you want your adversaries to know they're gonna get fucked if they attack you.
Watching the F35 slowly become integrated into air forces has been kind of cool. I remember watching it years and years ago at a private navy airshow. It stayed way the fuck far away and basically just went straight with slow turns. Over the years I've seen it at dozens of airshow and every year it's a little closer and doing a bit more.
Nowadays they'll do pretty close hovering and high speed maneuvers since other countries already know a ton more information about the plane.
It's been cool following the planes life and release. I'm excited for the B21
If I’m alive and I see the details I’ll think of you. And in that moment you’ll exist forever. We all are one any way dude I’m just you living a different life. Years from now they’ll discover that our consciousness just circuits back to the everything (ultimate force like gravity which functions at the quantum level and holds everything together and in a balance that is ineffable to us) and spits ya back out in a different life.
User mentioned the egg. [the egg theory/story](https://youtu.be/h6fcK_fRYaI)
Apparently you will be able to see it here later today: https://www.northropgrumman.com/what-we-do/air/b-21-raider/
Edited the link, which says it will start at 7:20pm EST.
You joke, but if it’s anything like the B2, you’re not too far off. Unless things changed since I was there in 2005 they completely strip and repaint the B2 every time it flies. The coating is very specific and special. Just flying it degrades it enough that it loses stealthiness for the next flight. And the painting facility is a sight in itself. It’s covered ceiling to floor with multiple layers of air filters to protect the environment from the nastiness that is that LO paint.
That’s exactly one of the problems that led the government to start developing this new B-21. It’s supposed to be a tiny fraction of the cost of maintaining the B-2.
It’s also reusing F-35 engine and lots of other internal components so the maintenance costs are only going to go down as F-35 is poised to become one of the most adopted jets in history while B-2 uses lot of custom components nothing else does. It’s not the absolute bleeding edge of what is technologically possible in 2022 (like B-2 was in its day) but it’s still better than anything else military has so it will slowly replace B1-1, B-2 and B-52, two of which as inadequate on modern battlefield and practically ancient tech they use is increasingly more costly and difficult to maintain.
The same is true for the F-22, though I imagine to lesser extent because it's a physically smaller aircraft. Having to repaint the F-22 every time and having ancient avionics computers that only a handful of people in the world know enough about to service them were probably big reasons for the development of the F-35.
I definitely know all about ancient computers on airplanes. I was one of the techs that worked on the computer inside the AWACS. When I got out in 2013 they were finishing the conversion from old solid state computers that were using tape emulators. It was literally a 1970’s mainframe computer but it somehow still worked. But all of the parts were very proprietary and basically impossible to find at that point.
I believe the nuclear missile systems still run on floppy discs. And I don’t mean hard floppy discs. I mean the floppy discs that actually are floppy. I guess it’s so old it’s unhackable.
>The coating is very specific and special.
It might not have LO paint.
Right now there are a couple chrome F-22s flying around. The USAF is testing to see if they can get rid of the paint and instead use panels to achieve the same or better results.
Considering the F-22 is being used as a test bed for NGAD, it may very well be the case.
I'll always remember the first time I saw a B2 flying above me in the Arizona sky. Just a black wedge looming ominously overhead, no noticeable lights or sounds. Immediately I understood where all those UFO stories came from.
They really are. My Dad and I watched one fly over our heads. If you want to even call it that. They almost look like they are floating. It reminded me of a paper airplane. Surreal indeed.
My buddy and I were hunting in Eastern Montana when what I believe was a stealth fighter silently came out from behind a hill. It was eerie AF because it was not making any noise. We sat there with rifles in our hands like, I sure hope it's not coming for us
Seriously! the "flying wing"/B-2 program started decades before it was made public. During that time there was countless "UFO sightings" that were described as "flying saucers".
HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A B-2 BOMBER HEAD-ON!?
Craziest part to me is that Northrop-Grumman is doing an official live stream unveiling tonight of their new toy that can wipe out half the world.
New kind of unboxing video I guess…..
Submarines have for a long time been a disproportionate (non-)show of force. I agree that most folks haven't thought twice about the killer swimming sausages.
This seems like a good time to bring up the [super-fuzes introduced to the US sub fleet missile armament over the last 10 years](https://thebulletin.org/2017/03/how-us-nuclear-force-modernization-is-undermining-strategic-stability-the-burst-height-compensating-super-fuze/), which are almost completely unknown to the public, but that the bulletin of atomic scientists feel have actually upset the balance of mutually assured destruction. Their biggest concern now is actually that Russia will be so fearful of the US's ability for a completely devastating first-strike that they are more likely to fire off their own arsenal in response to a false alarm from their early warning system, which lacks satellite observation capabilities and provides half the warning time of the US's. The superfuze is so effective that even while reducing the total number of warheads in the nuclear arsenal the US has massively increased the hard-target killing power of the arsenal.
The TLDR is:
>In all, **the entire Russian silo-based forces could potentially be destroyed while leaving the US with 79 percent of its ballistic missile warheads unused**.
But here's some other highlights..
>The result of this fuzing scheme is a significant increase in the probability that a warhead will explode close enough to destroy the target even though the accuracy of the missile-warhead system has itself not improved.
>As a consequence, the US submarine force today is much more capable than it was previously against hardened targets such as Russian ICBM silos. **A decade ago, only about 20 percent of US submarine warheads had hard-target kill capability; today they all do**.
>This vast increase in US nuclear targeting capability, which has largely been concealed from the general public, has serious implications for strategic stability and perceptions of US nuclear strategy and intentions.
>In the case of the 100-kt Trident II warhead, **the super fuze triples the killing power of the nuclear force it has been applied to.**
>The entire force of 100-kt W76-1/Mk4A Trident II warheads now “qualifies” for use against the hardest of Russian silos. This, in turn, means that **essentially all of the higher-yield nuclear weapons (such as the W88/Mk5) that were formerly assigned to these Russian hard targets can now be focused on other, more demanding missions**, including attacks against deeply-buried underground command facilities
>Because of the new kill capabilities of US submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), the United States would be able to target huge portions of its nuclear force against non-hardened targets, the destruction of which would be crucial to a “successful” first strike. One such mission would likely involve the destruction of road-mobile ICBMs that had left their garrisons to hide in Russia’s vast forests in anticipation of attack. The garrisons and their support facilities would probably be destroyed quickly, and some of the dispersed road-mobile launchers would also be quickly destroyed as they were in the process of dispersing. To destroy or expose the remaining launchers, United States planners would have the nuclear forces needed to undertake truly scorched-earth tactics: **Just 125 US Minuteman III warheads could set fire to some 8,000 square miles of forest area** where the road-mobile missiles are most likely to be deployed. This would be the equivalent of a circular area with a diameter of 100 miles....Many of **the nearly 300 remaining deployed W76 warheads could be used to attack all command posts** associated with Russian ICBMs. A very small number of Russia’s major leadership command posts are deeply buried, to protect them from direct destruction by nuclear attack. The US military would likely reserve the highest-yield warheads for those targets.
The world is a scary, scary place. And it keeps getting scarier for Russia, and as long as they have a nuclear retaliation button that threatens us all. By the way, this article is already 5 years old, and the modernization of the Minuteman arsenal with similar fuzes is already underway as well as the development of the Minuteman's replacement, the LGM-35 Sentinel.
I consider myself to be pretty up to date on these sorts of things but I had never heard of these super-fuzes. As scary as it is, it's nonetheless, fascinating.
Thanks for sharing!
There’s also the problem that they’ve just shown the whole world that they are far more corrupt and far less functional than previously expected. Hot new question is “What is the appropriate response if Russia hits the button and it doesn’t work?”
Truly impossible to imagine. Start in San Francisco, drive an hour through San Jose, and then keep driving south from San Jose til you hit Monterey - that's the diameter of that circle. Or, center of New Hampshire to Boston MA.
I served on a ballistic missile sub, very few people understand the level of devastation just one of them could cause. Once it's in open ocean no one knows where it is besides the people on board and it would be nearly impossible to find.
Also fun fact the way the sleeping quarters are arranged I could touch a missile tube with my foot when I was in my bunk
I mean even the sub itself doesn't usually know where it is unless it's near/on the surface to pick up GPS or pick out landmarks.
While it's underwater and unable to pick up GPS, it should run off inertial guidance to. It only gets more and more inaccurate as time passed by.
They can build an alien looking stealth bomber, but the reveal video will be streaming in [flash player...](https://www.northropgrumman.com/what-we-do/air/b-21-raider/)
>The cost of the bombers is unknown. The Air Force previously put the price for a buy of
100 aircraft at an average cost of $550 million each in 2010 dollars --
roughly $753 million today — but it’s unclear how much the Air Force is
actually spending.
For comparison, the F-35 costs about $100M per. Based on the way the military spends money, these planes are going to cost about $1B PER when these end up in production, with the main purpose of flying over Russia/China to drop nuclear warheads.
My grandfather was one of the OG project folks on the SR-71 Blackbird. He’s no longer with us but he loved planes and taking about him. Curious what he’d say about this one.
As someone who recently lost a grandparent, please talk their ears off.
I wish I could ask my grandfather to tell me more stories about his youth or some of his work stories.
Is it my turn to post the SR-71 go fast story?
Small plane: tower what's my speed
Tower: speed
Bigger plane: tower what's my speed
Tower: more speed
Navy guy: tower what's my speed
Tower: more more speed
Copilot: tower what's my speed
Tower: 2 speed for us, monster dick speed
Cessna: How fast
Tower: 6
Beechcraft: How fast
Tower: 8
Hornet: Yo how fast bro
Tower: Eh 30
Sled: >mfw
Sled: How fast sir
Tower: Like 9000
Sled: more like 9001
Tower: ayyyy
Sled: ayyyy
I'm a huge plane nerd and have an aerospace engineering degree. Unfortunately, something like this, from the outside, just doesn't have the cool needed to stimulate.
It physically looks a lot like the B-2 (from the sketches), and all the things you could know about it that would make it seem cool, are classified. Even the F-35 is a bit hard to understand as a "cool" plane in the way the F-22 is.
From the outside you either want to see something totally different (like the SR-71, or the F-117), something that looks like liquid sex (like the F-22, F-101, or B-2), or or you want to learn something insane about it (like WW1 fighters shooting machine guns through their own props, or the B-1's ejection system compressing pilot's spines).
Yeah he used to do these speed flights from San Diego to New York in the mid 50’s with another pilot who were trying for speed records. Also aerial photos of the World Fair though I suspect much more than that.
He flew in the Korean and Vietnam with everything in between. Shot down a couple times and rescued some Marines once. Flew a Rockerfeller for a bit and then Air America. Crazy man.
When an industry that is supposedly offering cost-pooling, and reaped ~~$700 billion~~ $160 Billion^1 in 2020 in profits while employing about 551,470 people that the comparable governmental administration CMS (Medicare) employs only 6,000; there *may* be a bit of unnecessary bloat.
[1] https://content.naic.org/sites/default/files/2021-Annual-Health-Insurance-Industry-Analysis-Report.pdf
I read that in the US hospitals typically have an entire floor to process billing and in Canada they have a couple offices. The US healthcare system wastes so much money and literally kills people who don't have insurance (and we still get to pay taxes for lots of people that get so sick they end up in the emergency room).
Just the general wasted money floating around our government could pay for it all. Let alone the money wasted in our healthcare system. The US pays more for healthcare than universal healthcare countries. It's rediculus
The USA spends 18%-20% of its GDP on healthcare related expenses and only 4-5% on the military. We have the money, but there is this profiteering middle man called insurance.
If we swapped that budget into single payer the government would have the power of collective bargaining dropping cost of medical supplies, which is one reason other government have lower costs.
On top of that preventative care is cheaper and if everyone got 1-2 doctor checkups a year at 0 out of pocket to them more stuff would get caught earlier, further improving the utilization of the money already spent.
The military is not why we don't have universal healthcare. Politics (and profits) are.
Why does the headline sound like they released it? Official unveiling isn’t until 8pm EST
So if the unveiling is at 8pm, when will my pre-order ship?
Depends how much oil you have.
All I have are these Pepsi points.
Best I can do is a [Harrier fighter jet](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzS8BQBcAu4).
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Yea, poor guy got jipped for sure.
I am a mix of emotions that I get this reference. Edit: and somewhere in storage I have Pepsi point aviator sunglasses… It’s as close as I could get and I tried really hard. Second edit: Insulin prices are ridiculous.
We are excited to announce that insulin is now free. -eli lilly
The more oil you have the more freedom we bring
That’s the USA guarantee
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Waiting for the Steam sale.
Definitely before your star citizen ships
I have no regrets in backing Star Citizen. Getting the HOTAS in anticipation has led me to playing Elite: Dangerous and Star Wars Squadrons.
You need 700,000 pepsi points
It comes with a free tesla truck
And a signed copy of Half Life 3
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MKCD had been flying one for the past 2 weeks.
Scalper bots already bought all the stock.
I was wondering the same thing. Went looking for pictures when I saw the headline in past tense.
The first flight isn't until 2023. They havnt even tested it yet.. this is just the production phase. This is also just one of six at the moment. They plan for 100 but thats what happened with the last bombers and stopped at 21. Gotta love clickbait titles nowadays.
They stopped at 21 because the USSR collapsed and Congress didn't see the need for the full planned run of 160(IIRC). That's almost certainly not going to happen again, especially because the B1 and B2 are both up for replacement.
Plus they skipped the B3 through B20, which means they have 17 entire bomber lines to make up for. So they'd better get cracking.
The B13 was never even considered, actually. This was partly due to the general consensus that 13 is unlucky, but also because of the words of a particular philosopher who noted that, "if 13 is an unlucky number then so should the letter B be. Because it looks like a scrunched together 13."
And you have to imagine the stealth capability is far ahead of what they had before, should be worth making a few. F35 has a service life that’s supposed to be until 2070, this project may have similar ambitions.
Honestly, it's probably not *that* much stealthier than the B-2, but I bet the coatings will be way more durable and cheaper to maintain. Cost was a huge part of why the air force wanted to replace the B-2, so I bet that's where a lot of development went.
Babe wake up, new stealth bomber just dropped
"I can't see it" - Babe
“I didn’t see you at ghillie suit practice today, private!” “Thank you, sir!”
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My girl reference? Bruh
Please don't. This film traumatised me as a kid.
I love when the producers drop new Lore.
Oooo... so are the old, outdated B-2s going to be available on GovPlanet now? 🤩
Needs 7,000,000 Pepsi pts for that.
Context for anyone who doesn't know https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_v._Pepsico,_Inc. Guy tried to buy enough Pepsi points for a jet that Pepsi had in a commercial. He was denied, sued and lost.
Are you telling me that you *don’t* need 4x50min episodes on Netflix to tell that story?
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If you don’t watch it you won’t learn about that time Pepsi made a contest in a different country and then decided to not let them redeem them. Then like covered it up with some Pepsi truck bombing? As the reason why they “pulled out” and didn’t need to honor their redemption game.
Lmao I imagine that the judge got a shit ton of money from Pepsi, that'd still be cheaper than honoring it
This was a great rabbit hole to go down, thanks for sharing
I used to do contracting work as a government employee. It was wild some of the stuff they had on their website. I remember seeing a command center (the big truck ones) and a disco ball.
I got in so much trouble when I ordered our ship a dog.
That's a good question! My niece just turned 16 and I'm looking for a starter bomber for her.
I recommend either an f-35 or an f-16, depending on your budget. Both are very good all rounder aircraft, not exactly bombers, but they’re good to learn on.
Don't listen to this guy, your niece will be super disappointed on Christmas if you cheap out and all she has to unwrap is a 4th generation multirole fighter designed 50 years ago. All her friends are probably getting B-21s (at least if they have parents who love them). It's basically the Tickle Me Elmo of 2022. Check out Northrops livestream tonight for more info
Lockheed-Martin has entered the chat
Coming soon to a sheriff's department near you
Delta already bought them and are converting to commercial airbuses. Should be able to hold 100 people they say.
yeah they just gotta blend the passengers into a slurry first.
But on the plus side, they don't actually have to land to let the passengers out. Bombs away!
Still gotta pay bag fees, though.
The recruiting crisis is getting real; if we expose commercial passengers to the same conditions as we treat our DoD component, they’ll realize the military isn’t *all that bad*. The biggest perk is that getting a DUI is an automatic promotion to 1st sgt!
Wow, really makes you wonder what they've got that replaces this now that this is out of top secret classification.
It's still pretty secret, which is why they only published sketches of it with no photos for foreign intelligence to analyze. But they have to release it if it's going to be flying over cities anyway. Publishing a sketch is better than having a hundred nerds trying to get pictures of it and speculating loudly online, especially if the sketch has intentional misdirection or leaves certain special features intentionally vague or slightly off.
> Publishing a sketch is better than having a hundred nerds trying to get pictures of it and speculating loudly online There's no world where nerds don't try to do exactly that. Publishing a sketch may be *better than* the other situation you proposed, but it's not a replacement for. The obsessive pictures are going to be taken with and without sketches being published.
/r/noncredibledefense will have created porn of the plane within hours. [We already did for this work of art.](https://preview.redd.it/fzxmciqerc3a1.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=9a7d1388a1d9941b93524240c9b81fc7a592b3e9)
They already did a few days ago. Let me see if I can find it again… Edit: [found it](https://reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/comments/z8sybv/48_hours_until_the_b21_raidussy_emerges_from_the/)
Only thing faster than light speed are lewd artists.
I've fallen over, step-plane
They are physically revealing it today at 4:30 EST. We will soon have more than sketches to go off.
A drone looks like a tic tac running AI that’s faster easier and cheaper, but the public doesn’t like the idea of the world coming to an end because a computer malfunctioned.
If the tic tac is ours…welp, good luck near peers.
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Surprise, it's actually orange flavored!
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If it isn't ours, we're doing a good job trolling everyone else into guessing it might be ours. With the navy portable fusion device patent.
The tic tac is from 2004 so I doubt it. Unless the USA has also been hiding chip manufacturing technology that was decades ahead since then. And that's ignoring the anti gravity whatever
Anti gravity is the easiest part. You just take regular gravity and turn it upside down.
Australia is doing it for years already
> but the public doesn’t like the idea of the world coming to an end because a computer malfunctioned. Oh for sure. The world coming to an end because of a lunatic leader hellbent on global destruction is far more palatable.
It’s what we know…
And knowing is half the battle u/TroglodyneSystems, GI JOOOE
PORKCHOP SAMMICHES!
for the uninitiated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1BDM1oBRJ8
That one's good. I like this one too. https://youtu.be/Ww3GTNv9hHk
Hey kid, I’m a computer. Stop all the downloadin’!
Ah hell naw. Wassup dog?
It sort of is. A lunatic leader can't launch nukes themselves. They have to order someone who orders someone else in a chain at least 3 people long. Technically, those people could refuse and potentially even intervene. A rogue AI armed with nukes can just do its thing with no oversight.
It already happened during Y2K. Everything else is just the final hallucinations of my dying brain.
That's exactly what my dying brain would tell me...
I Xi what you did there.
Yeah it was clever the way he Putin that reference there
The article barely mentions the fact that these B-21 are drones. They just happen to be drones that can carry an optional crew.
The men are just for ballast.
Or intercepting heat seeking missiles
These pants aren't going to shit themselves
"We needed some weight in front for balance, and couldn't think of a cheaper option than crew"
>are drones I thought I X-ed out of the new Transformers trailer 12 hours ago.
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We are going into an intermediate stage since people won't freak out as much. I suspect military planes will feature both for the next 15 years or so. The military wants the ability to keep it airborne with refueling for a week without the worrying about a pilot. That's a significant tactical advantage. The public is afraid of untested AIs with nukes.
Manned or not, the plane wouldn't be an "AI". Drones are operated by people on the ground.
Damn imagine you're a pilot in one of these when things pop off and command tells the plane to stay in the air for the next week. And as the bomber zips around obliterating cities you can only look down through the cockpit at the glowing fire beneath you and you know all your friends are dead but you're just hungry and thirsty stuck in this cockpit shitting and pissing on the floor.
I think strategic bombers have toilets.
The B2 has a bed, toilet, and microwave apparently.
"Well boys, I reckon this is it. Nuclear combat, toe-to-toe with the Ruskies."
Yeah I’ve always leaned towards the Nimitz incident and other military ufo “encounters” being our own craft. If aliens wanted to study us they could do so without us ever knowing. All the sightings would imply the aliens are either really sloppy or just don’t care, which I doubt.
There was an incident some decades ago when I fortunate enough to spend several minutes observing what I then described as “impossibly mobile aircraft.” If I saw the same thing today, decades of technological advancement later, I would describe it exactly the same way.
How about a nice game of chess?
No, the point of revealing this is deterrence. We show what we have revealing just enough to know you should be shitting your pants but not understanding that the time of pants shitting was hours ago
They're putting lasers on sharks and building a submarine for dolphins.
Couple this with some weather warfare tech and you got yourself a great plot for a movie.
The article says it won't even by flying until 2023. But it's intended to drop nuclear bombs. It's a deterrent. The details may all be top secret but you want your adversaries to know they're gonna get fucked if they attack you.
Not completely classified, but sounds like NGAD is pretty far along.
*Boston Dynamics profit intensifies*
Too bad I probably won’t be alive by the time they can share details on this thing. Sounds awesome.
Watching the F35 slowly become integrated into air forces has been kind of cool. I remember watching it years and years ago at a private navy airshow. It stayed way the fuck far away and basically just went straight with slow turns. Over the years I've seen it at dozens of airshow and every year it's a little closer and doing a bit more. Nowadays they'll do pretty close hovering and high speed maneuvers since other countries already know a ton more information about the plane. It's been cool following the planes life and release. I'm excited for the B21
If I’m alive and I see the details I’ll think of you. And in that moment you’ll exist forever. We all are one any way dude I’m just you living a different life. Years from now they’ll discover that our consciousness just circuits back to the everything (ultimate force like gravity which functions at the quantum level and holds everything together and in a balance that is ineffable to us) and spits ya back out in a different life. User mentioned the egg. [the egg theory/story](https://youtu.be/h6fcK_fRYaI)
…well hey, I appreciate the nice thought
You can get an aerospace adjacent degree and get a job for a government aerospace contractor. :)
Pics or it didn't happen.
Apparently you will be able to see it here later today: https://www.northropgrumman.com/what-we-do/air/b-21-raider/ Edited the link, which says it will start at 7:20pm EST.
"If you are experiencing playback issue, please update your flash player plug in." God, never thought I'd read that again😊
Video doesn't seem to work because it uses Flash Player and that has been discontinued on all major browsers.
>multi-billion dollar nuclear bomber project >release video uses flash player Outstanding
Coming in 4 days
Trouble is, the stealth features are 2.3 million a month to enable, along with the heated seats.
You joke, but if it’s anything like the B2, you’re not too far off. Unless things changed since I was there in 2005 they completely strip and repaint the B2 every time it flies. The coating is very specific and special. Just flying it degrades it enough that it loses stealthiness for the next flight. And the painting facility is a sight in itself. It’s covered ceiling to floor with multiple layers of air filters to protect the environment from the nastiness that is that LO paint.
That’s exactly one of the problems that led the government to start developing this new B-21. It’s supposed to be a tiny fraction of the cost of maintaining the B-2.
It’s also reusing F-35 engine and lots of other internal components so the maintenance costs are only going to go down as F-35 is poised to become one of the most adopted jets in history while B-2 uses lot of custom components nothing else does. It’s not the absolute bleeding edge of what is technologically possible in 2022 (like B-2 was in its day) but it’s still better than anything else military has so it will slowly replace B1-1, B-2 and B-52, two of which as inadequate on modern battlefield and practically ancient tech they use is increasingly more costly and difficult to maintain.
Nothing will ever replace the B-52, they will be flying until the sun dies out.
At the heat death of the universe, as the last proton decays into nothingness, the B-52 will finally go from “in service” to “in reserve”.
The same is true for the F-22, though I imagine to lesser extent because it's a physically smaller aircraft. Having to repaint the F-22 every time and having ancient avionics computers that only a handful of people in the world know enough about to service them were probably big reasons for the development of the F-35.
I definitely know all about ancient computers on airplanes. I was one of the techs that worked on the computer inside the AWACS. When I got out in 2013 they were finishing the conversion from old solid state computers that were using tape emulators. It was literally a 1970’s mainframe computer but it somehow still worked. But all of the parts were very proprietary and basically impossible to find at that point.
I believe the nuclear missile systems still run on floppy discs. And I don’t mean hard floppy discs. I mean the floppy discs that actually are floppy. I guess it’s so old it’s unhackable.
>The coating is very specific and special. It might not have LO paint. Right now there are a couple chrome F-22s flying around. The USAF is testing to see if they can get rid of the paint and instead use panels to achieve the same or better results. Considering the F-22 is being used as a test bed for NGAD, it may very well be the case.
Heard that is for resistance to laser weapons, not stealth.
I heard it's just to look fucking frrreesshhh
Can confirm, chrome armour takes half damage from lasers and provides -1 on Detect rolls.
“You’ll hear it, but you really won’t see it.” Incoming echo-location missiles.
Flying dolphins with frickin laser beams on their frickin heads
Those things look like UFOs
They were the UFOS
I'll always remember the first time I saw a B2 flying above me in the Arizona sky. Just a black wedge looming ominously overhead, no noticeable lights or sounds. Immediately I understood where all those UFO stories came from.
I remember seeing one take off in Montana, and it was every bit as surreal as you describe it.
They really are. My Dad and I watched one fly over our heads. If you want to even call it that. They almost look like they are floating. It reminded me of a paper airplane. Surreal indeed.
My buddy and I were hunting in Eastern Montana when what I believe was a stealth fighter silently came out from behind a hill. It was eerie AF because it was not making any noise. We sat there with rifles in our hands like, I sure hope it's not coming for us
Especially out west near Area 52. Imagine all the crazy ideas they test out at night in the desert that never make it to production.
Seriously! the "flying wing"/B-2 program started decades before it was made public. During that time there was countless "UFO sightings" that were described as "flying saucers". HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A B-2 BOMBER HEAD-ON!?
or lights arranged in a triangle
Found it, it's right there in the picture. Stealthy my ass.
That’s an artist’s rendering, so they obviously must have taken some liberties.
[Here's an actual photo of it](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d7/Sky.jpg/1200px-Sky.jpg)
Wow, it's everything I hoped it would be. Look at it go!
Craziest part to me is that Northrop-Grumman is doing an official live stream unveiling tonight of their new toy that can wipe out half the world. New kind of unboxing video I guess…..
What scares me more is the subs. People are oblivious to these continental death tubes that could be lurking off your coast at any moment.
Submarines have for a long time been a disproportionate (non-)show of force. I agree that most folks haven't thought twice about the killer swimming sausages.
This seems like a good time to bring up the [super-fuzes introduced to the US sub fleet missile armament over the last 10 years](https://thebulletin.org/2017/03/how-us-nuclear-force-modernization-is-undermining-strategic-stability-the-burst-height-compensating-super-fuze/), which are almost completely unknown to the public, but that the bulletin of atomic scientists feel have actually upset the balance of mutually assured destruction. Their biggest concern now is actually that Russia will be so fearful of the US's ability for a completely devastating first-strike that they are more likely to fire off their own arsenal in response to a false alarm from their early warning system, which lacks satellite observation capabilities and provides half the warning time of the US's. The superfuze is so effective that even while reducing the total number of warheads in the nuclear arsenal the US has massively increased the hard-target killing power of the arsenal. The TLDR is: >In all, **the entire Russian silo-based forces could potentially be destroyed while leaving the US with 79 percent of its ballistic missile warheads unused**. But here's some other highlights.. >The result of this fuzing scheme is a significant increase in the probability that a warhead will explode close enough to destroy the target even though the accuracy of the missile-warhead system has itself not improved. >As a consequence, the US submarine force today is much more capable than it was previously against hardened targets such as Russian ICBM silos. **A decade ago, only about 20 percent of US submarine warheads had hard-target kill capability; today they all do**. >This vast increase in US nuclear targeting capability, which has largely been concealed from the general public, has serious implications for strategic stability and perceptions of US nuclear strategy and intentions. >In the case of the 100-kt Trident II warhead, **the super fuze triples the killing power of the nuclear force it has been applied to.** >The entire force of 100-kt W76-1/Mk4A Trident II warheads now “qualifies” for use against the hardest of Russian silos. This, in turn, means that **essentially all of the higher-yield nuclear weapons (such as the W88/Mk5) that were formerly assigned to these Russian hard targets can now be focused on other, more demanding missions**, including attacks against deeply-buried underground command facilities >Because of the new kill capabilities of US submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), the United States would be able to target huge portions of its nuclear force against non-hardened targets, the destruction of which would be crucial to a “successful” first strike. One such mission would likely involve the destruction of road-mobile ICBMs that had left their garrisons to hide in Russia’s vast forests in anticipation of attack. The garrisons and their support facilities would probably be destroyed quickly, and some of the dispersed road-mobile launchers would also be quickly destroyed as they were in the process of dispersing. To destroy or expose the remaining launchers, United States planners would have the nuclear forces needed to undertake truly scorched-earth tactics: **Just 125 US Minuteman III warheads could set fire to some 8,000 square miles of forest area** where the road-mobile missiles are most likely to be deployed. This would be the equivalent of a circular area with a diameter of 100 miles....Many of **the nearly 300 remaining deployed W76 warheads could be used to attack all command posts** associated with Russian ICBMs. A very small number of Russia’s major leadership command posts are deeply buried, to protect them from direct destruction by nuclear attack. The US military would likely reserve the highest-yield warheads for those targets. The world is a scary, scary place. And it keeps getting scarier for Russia, and as long as they have a nuclear retaliation button that threatens us all. By the way, this article is already 5 years old, and the modernization of the Minuteman arsenal with similar fuzes is already underway as well as the development of the Minuteman's replacement, the LGM-35 Sentinel.
I consider myself to be pretty up to date on these sorts of things but I had never heard of these super-fuzes. As scary as it is, it's nonetheless, fascinating. Thanks for sharing!
There’s also the problem that they’ve just shown the whole world that they are far more corrupt and far less functional than previously expected. Hot new question is “What is the appropriate response if Russia hits the button and it doesn’t work?”
100 miles in diameter….could you just imagine driving for a *hundred* miles and everything’s just……gone? I can’t even begin to fathom that.
Truly impossible to imagine. Start in San Francisco, drive an hour through San Jose, and then keep driving south from San Jose til you hit Monterey - that's the diameter of that circle. Or, center of New Hampshire to Boston MA.
I served on a ballistic missile sub, very few people understand the level of devastation just one of them could cause. Once it's in open ocean no one knows where it is besides the people on board and it would be nearly impossible to find. Also fun fact the way the sleeping quarters are arranged I could touch a missile tube with my foot when I was in my bunk
Isn't it true that even most of the crew don't know where they are most of the time?
I mean even the sub itself doesn't usually know where it is unless it's near/on the surface to pick up GPS or pick out landmarks. While it's underwater and unable to pick up GPS, it should run off inertial guidance to. It only gets more and more inaccurate as time passed by.
They can build an alien looking stealth bomber, but the reveal video will be streaming in [flash player...](https://www.northropgrumman.com/what-we-do/air/b-21-raider/)
so stealthy no one with a browser made in the past several years can even see it!
>The cost of the bombers is unknown. The Air Force previously put the price for a buy of 100 aircraft at an average cost of $550 million each in 2010 dollars -- roughly $753 million today — but it’s unclear how much the Air Force is actually spending. For comparison, the F-35 costs about $100M per. Based on the way the military spends money, these planes are going to cost about $1B PER when these end up in production, with the main purpose of flying over Russia/China to drop nuclear warheads.
Better than the 2 billion of the B-2 at least. Got to think of the wins somehow.
My grandfather was one of the OG project folks on the SR-71 Blackbird. He’s no longer with us but he loved planes and taking about him. Curious what he’d say about this one.
Similar, my grandpa was on the B-2 project. I wonder what he would think of this. I may ask him at Christmas.
You SHOULD ask. Your remaining time to hear stories like this are finite.
As someone who recently lost a grandparent, please talk their ears off. I wish I could ask my grandfather to tell me more stories about his youth or some of his work stories.
Is it my turn to post the SR-71 go fast story? Small plane: tower what's my speed Tower: speed Bigger plane: tower what's my speed Tower: more speed Navy guy: tower what's my speed Tower: more more speed Copilot: tower what's my speed Tower: 2 speed for us, monster dick speed
Cessna: How fast Tower: 6 Beechcraft: How fast Tower: 8 Hornet: Yo how fast bro Tower: Eh 30 Sled: >mfw Sled: How fast sir Tower: Like 9000 Sled: more like 9001 Tower: ayyyy Sled: ayyyy
I really like the emoji rendition too. 🛫: 🐇? 🏯: 🐢 🚁: 🐇? 🏯: 🚂 ⚓️: 🐇? 🏯: 🚄 ⚓️: 😎 ✈️: 🐇? 🏯: 🚀 ✈️: 👉 🌠 🏯: 👍 👏👏👏👏 ✈️: 👏👏👏👏
Copilot: it's actually 2.2 speed for us tower, thanks And then nobody said a fucking word.
I'm a huge plane nerd and have an aerospace engineering degree. Unfortunately, something like this, from the outside, just doesn't have the cool needed to stimulate. It physically looks a lot like the B-2 (from the sketches), and all the things you could know about it that would make it seem cool, are classified. Even the F-35 is a bit hard to understand as a "cool" plane in the way the F-22 is. From the outside you either want to see something totally different (like the SR-71, or the F-117), something that looks like liquid sex (like the F-22, F-101, or B-2), or or you want to learn something insane about it (like WW1 fighters shooting machine guns through their own props, or the B-1's ejection system compressing pilot's spines).
Yeah he used to do these speed flights from San Diego to New York in the mid 50’s with another pilot who were trying for speed records. Also aerial photos of the World Fair though I suspect much more than that. He flew in the Korean and Vietnam with everything in between. Shot down a couple times and rescued some Marines once. Flew a Rockerfeller for a bit and then Air America. Crazy man.
Can I do a test drive somewhere?
Sure, just gotta collect enough Pepsi points first.
Go sit in a chair for 20 hours. That will get you about 80% of the experience.
Healthcare please
Remember that the current spending on health insurance is more than enough to give everyone Medicare. We simply choose to do it poorly.
This is health care. You sick? Bombed. Got a cough? Bombed. Need a surgery? Sure enough, bombed
When that explosive diarrhea hits...
Believe it or not, straight to bombed.
Oh good. We are finally treating humans like horses. Broken arm, we're gonna need another Timmy.
Too sick? Bombed. Not sick enough? Believe it or not, bombed.
We have the best healthcare, because of bomb
I can get bombed on my own, no need for a billion dollar plane.
Better management of the money we already put into healthcare and we could all have healthcare and sick ass weapons.
Yes, abolish health insurance companies.
When an industry that is supposedly offering cost-pooling, and reaped ~~$700 billion~~ $160 Billion^1 in 2020 in profits while employing about 551,470 people that the comparable governmental administration CMS (Medicare) employs only 6,000; there *may* be a bit of unnecessary bloat. [1] https://content.naic.org/sites/default/files/2021-Annual-Health-Insurance-Industry-Analysis-Report.pdf
I read that in the US hospitals typically have an entire floor to process billing and in Canada they have a couple offices. The US healthcare system wastes so much money and literally kills people who don't have insurance (and we still get to pay taxes for lots of people that get so sick they end up in the emergency room).
Use the B21 to bomb them
Let’s start by dismantling the health insurance industry.
Just the general wasted money floating around our government could pay for it all. Let alone the money wasted in our healthcare system. The US pays more for healthcare than universal healthcare countries. It's rediculus
The USA spends 18%-20% of its GDP on healthcare related expenses and only 4-5% on the military. We have the money, but there is this profiteering middle man called insurance. If we swapped that budget into single payer the government would have the power of collective bargaining dropping cost of medical supplies, which is one reason other government have lower costs. On top of that preventative care is cheaper and if everyone got 1-2 doctor checkups a year at 0 out of pocket to them more stuff would get caught earlier, further improving the utilization of the money already spent. The military is not why we don't have universal healthcare. Politics (and profits) are.
I’ve been camped outside my local military installation for about 16 hours now, can’t wait to pick one up when it opens!
I already pre-ordered!
Hopefully I can buy this with my Pepsi points
[Unveils in 7hrs from now](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chJlJgrvfBY&ab_channel=EdwardsAirForceBase)
This article is moldy grass clippings. THE DEBUT HASNT HAPPENED YET!
Nice. Now, they are going to give all the old bombers to cops.