US Air Force unveils new B-21 Raider nuclear stealth bomber

Re:US Air Force unveils new B-21 Raider nuclear stealth bomber by tomatotomato37 on Saturday December 03, 2022 @10:14AM (#33844055)

I'm surprised the B2 was the part the nuclear triad the military decided to update. Using close-up manned bombers for our nuclear capability seems archaic now that intelligent long-range cruise missiles that can be launched out of a Stratofortress way out of enemy range are the norm now. It's not like the B2 itself is outdated either; I know a lot of talk has been made by other countries of radar able to detect them, but like all military propaganda those measurements are always in best conditions. It's great that you can detect stealth craft in a sky clear of clouds, smoke, solar interference, nuclear interference, jammers, or anti-radiation warheads, but war tends to be messier than that.

Overall it seems a better investment would have been to just keep blurring the line between missile and drone and creating a reaper/tomahawk/hypersonic hybrid that can accept aerial refueling. Having a missile that can patrol around in the sky all day before ejecting its cruise stage and making a mad rush towards its eventual target seems a lot more versatile in general than continuing development in planes who's only purpose is to drop things.

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Re:US Air Force unveils new B-21 Raider nuclear stealth bomber by credit_guy on Saturday December 03, 2022 @10:12PM (#33850200)

There's nuclear deterrence and there's conventional deterrence. ICBMs and SLBMs are very good at nuclear deterrence, but that's it.

B-21 (and B2) can help with the nuclear deterrence, but only marginally.

But B-21 can help a lot with the conventional deterrence. You can think of them as an alternative to aircraft carriers. Carriers carry F-18s and F-35s, with a range of about 700 miles. B2's have a range of about 7000 miles (and most likely B-21s will match that). Which means aircraft carriers need to get fairly close to China to deter. Well inside the range of China's carrier killer missiles.

B-21 can just go 1000 miles away from China and patrol there for many hours. Maybe not now, but in a few years, they'll have loyal wing-man drones with them. A squadron of B-21s and their associated drones will probably match or exceed the entire bombload of the air complement of an aircraft carrier.

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Re:US Air Force unveils new B-21 Raider nuclear stealth bomber by simne on Saturday December 03, 2022 @10:52PM (#33850419)

B-21s will not match B2's range, because of

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square%E2%80%93cube_law

For other parts, mostly agree.

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