Next generation bomber

[CougarKing]

Related:

Hanscom AFB official link

USAF Will Buy Bomber Via Rapid Acquisition  

By Dave Majumdar
Defense News
April 18, 2011

In an indictment of the Pentagon's normal acquisitions process, the U.S. Air Force says it will buy its next-generation bomber using the kind of battlefield procurement methodology it used to rapidly field the MC-12 Project Liberty surveillance aircraft.

But not everyone is convinced that the new approach is appropriate for a program of the scale and sophistication of a stealth bomber.

The program is intended to design a stealthy, penetrating bomber using mostly mature technologies, then produce 80 to 100 by the mid-2020s.

The effort will use “what we have determined will be a more streamlined management process going forward, where we are using the Rapid Capabilities Office (RCO) to help manage this project,” Air Force Secretary Michael Donley said earlier this month.

Donley said Defense Secretary Robert Gates has approved the decision.

The switch comes after several of the service’s biggest aircraft programs, like the B-2 bomber and F-22 Raptor, delivered its aircraft far later, in far lower quantities, and at far greater cost than planned.

The final straw was the tri-service F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, now projected to wind up five years late and 26 percent over budget, according to a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report.
Current and former officials agree the current procurement system is too slow and cumbersome.

“Yes, that is certainly part of it. That is the same reason that [the Secretary of Defense] set up the ISR Task Force and JIEDDO [Joint IED Defeat Organization], because the normal acquisition process simply cannot respond rapidly enough to changing demands,” one former senior official said.

But Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the decision to use RCO was unrelated to problems with the acquisitions process.

“I don’t think so,” Cartwright said. “I think that’s been an Air Force decision because of where they had the expertise.”

He said that much of the service’s procurement talent had been moved into the area of rapid acquisitions over the past few years.

The Air Force could not comment by press time, but a service document from 2008 describes the RCO staff as the “A-team” of the service’s acquisition’s corps.

But Cartwright said the rapid-acquisition process was inappropriate for the new bomber, which is supposedly going to use largely mature technologies, yet which is certainly one of the service’s most complex new programs.

“You don’t want that kind of program in rapid acquisition,” Cartwright said. “That’s clearly a program that going to be multiple years in building, but also with a level of sophistication that is probably inappropriate for rapid acquisitions … They are trying to figure out how they’re going to handle this.”

RCO History

The RCO has never managed a program of such duration or complexity.

Created in 2003 to react to changing battlefield conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the office’s methods are modeled on commercial practices. It looks for open architecture “plug-and-play” systems that can be moved to different weapons with ease, uses quickly built prototypes to guide thinking, and prefers to upgrade components rather than develop and buy parts anew. It reaches out to smaller contractors with innovative ideas, and often accepts so-called 80 percent solutions.

Much of the RCO’s work is classified. Known RCO projects include the air defense system around Washington, and a smaller-scale Norwegian air defense system. Its most complex known projects so far are the MC-12 Project Liberty aircraft and X-37B space plane.

Paul Kaminski, who chairs the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board (DSB), said the acquisition system isn’t broken, yet he agreed with the decision to have the RCO manage the bomber program.
“If the program proceeds, you may see some adjustments” in the way the Air Force runs it, he said.

“The size and nature of the program during the earlier phases will be a little more limited, but the Rapid Capabilities Office has done some sizable procurements and has done pretty well on them,” Kaminski said.

He said the decision to give the bomber program to the RCO is consistent with a recommendation from the DSB’s summer 2010 study: build a basic aircraft that can be easily upgraded, instead of a full-featured plane with every capability. This block approach requires built-in nuclear hardening, solid systems engineering, and an open architecture that can accommodate upgrades, he said.

Air Force officials aren’t publicly discussing whether the bomber program would take a block approach.

But Kaminski noted that the Air Force in January announced a block approach to satellite programs, dubbed Evolutionary Acquisition For Space Efficiency (EASE).

The bomber’s fielding date in the mid-2020s is not unreasonable, but likely requires a flying prototype or at least wind-tunnel models to be ready within six or seven years, Kaminski said.

Jacques Gansler, the Pentagon procurement chief during the Clinton administration, also applauded the move to the RCO.

“It’s very clear that the system needs to be accelerated even for the next-generation stuff like the bomber,” he said.

Part of the effort is making sure requirements are well understood, and cost and schedule both treated as requirements.

“If you do that, then you’ll undoubtedly be driven to trying to use more existing technology, there’ll be a push in a sense, based on that requirement for schedule and cost being considerations, to having more of an evolutionary acquisitions process,” he said.

How Much Oversight?

Marvin Sambur, a former Air Force procurement chief, said Donley’s approach has merit. But he said one potential drawback is that oversight by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) might inadvertently slow down the process.

The OSD would have to consciously take a hands-off approach to oversight, which would be difficult given the size and scope of the bomber program, he said.

Pentagon procurement czar Ashton Carter has said DoD wants a tight leash on the budget and schedule of the program, which is the service’s most prominent new effort.

Plus news about the procurement process:

link

Pentagon Overhauling Requirements Process  

By Amy Butler
Aviation Week
April 15, 2011

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. James Cartwright says the Pentagon is beginning the long process of revamping its weapon system requirements formulation process because the current system “has been gamed to death” by industry and the military services.

The Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System has been in use for less than a decade. It is the process by which military services must vet their requirements and get buy-in from their sister services before procuring weapons. “You guys have figured out how to game it,” Cartwright told an audience assembled at the 27th National Space Symposium here April 14.

He intends for the revamped system to include three tiers of capabilities based on the urgency of need and time to fielding. The first tier would be for systems needed urgently, and these capabilities would require expedited attention and procurement. The second would be for midterm needs and could allow for more development work. The last would be for long-term needs, and this tier would more closely align with riskier, more sophisticated and expensive programs.

Cartwright says he hope this system would enable Pentagon officials to more quickly buy new technology and deploy it to the field.

Maj. Gen. John Hyten, director of Air Force space acquisition programs, says this could help buy satellites based on varying levels of technological risk rather than relying on single, highly risky designs to provide services around the globe.

Management, procurement and operational efficiencies will be required in each tier, Hyten adds, not just for the quick-reaction satellites developed for near-term needs.

Requirements discipline is seen as essential for the Pentagon to curb spending and complement efforts to reform acquisition at the Pentagon.

(Archives)

 

[a_majoor]

While not directly conected to the "B-3" idea, this is one of those weird ideas that return from time to time. The idea of a supersonic biplane is pretty weird, but the potential for reduced drag, improved fuel economy and so on could allow a smaller plane to carry out the proposed missons of the "B-3", not to mention any other potential role for a large platform with an extensive sensor suite and large payload:

http://web.mit.edu/press/2012/biplane-to-break-the-sound-barrier.html

A biplane to break the sound barrier

Cheaper, quieter and fuel-efficient biplanes could put supersonic travel on the horizon.
(CAMBRIDGE, MA) -- For 27 years, the Concorde provided its passengers with a rare luxury: time saved. For a pricey fare, the sleek supersonic jet ferried its ticketholders from New York to Paris in a mere three-and-a-half hours — just enough time for a nap and an aperitif. Over the years, expensive tickets, high fuel costs, limited seating and noise disruption from the jet’s sonic boom slowed interest and ticket sales. On Nov. 26, 2003, the Concorde — and commercial supersonic travel — retired from service.

Since then, a number of groups have been working on designs for the next generation of supersonic jets. Now an MIT researcher has come up with a concept that may solve many of the problems that grounded the Concorde. Qiqi Wang, an assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics, says the solution, in principle, is simple: Instead of flying with one wing to a side, why not two?

Wang and his colleagues Rui Hu, a postdoc in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and Antony Jameson, a professor of engineering at Stanford University, have shown through a computer model that a modified biplane can, in fact, produce significantly less drag than a conventional single-wing aircraft at supersonic cruise speeds. The group will publish their results in the Journal of Aircraft.

This decreased drag, according to Wang, means the plane would require less fuel to fly. It also means the plane would produce less of a sonic boom.

“The sonic boom is really the shock waves created by the supersonic airplanes, propagated to the ground,” Wang says. “It’s like hearing gunfire. It’s so annoying that supersonic jets were not allowed to fly over land.”

Double the wings, double the fun

With Wang’s design, a jet with two wings — one positioned above the other — would cancel out the shock waves produced from either wing alone. Wang credits German engineer Adolf Busemann for the original concept. In the 1950s, Busemann came up with a biplane design that essentially eliminates shock waves at supersonic speeds.

Normally, as a conventional jet nears the speed of sound, air starts to compress at the front and back of the jet. As the plane reaches and surpasses the speed of sound, or Mach 1, the sudden increase in air pressure creates two huge shock waves that radiate out at both ends of the plane, producing a sonic boom.

Through calculations, Busemann found that a biplane design could essentially do away with shock waves. Each wing of the design, when seen from the side, is shaped like a flattened triangle, with the top and bottom wings pointing toward each other. The configuration, according to his calculations, cancels out shock waves produced by each wing alone.

However, the design lacks lift: The two wings create a very narrow channel through which only a limited amount of air can flow. When transitioning to supersonic speeds, the channel, Wang says, could essentially “choke,” creating incredible drag. While the design could work beautifully at supersonic speeds, it can’t overcome the drag to reach those speeds.

Giving lift to a grounded theory

To address the drag issue, Wang, Hu and Jameson designed a computer model to simulate the performance of Busemann’s biplane at various speeds. At a given speed, the model determined the optimal wing shape to minimize drag. The researchers then aggregated the results from a dozen different speeds and 700 wing configurations to come up with an optimal shape for each wing.

They found that smoothing out the inner surface of each wing slightly created a wider channel through which air could flow. The researchers also found that by bumping out the top edge of the higher wing, and the bottom edge of the lower wing, the conceptual plane was able to fly at supersonic speeds, with half the drag of conventional supersonic jets such as the Concorde. Wang says this kind of performance could potentially cut the amount of fuel required to fly the plane by more than half.

“If you think about it, when you take off, not only do you have to carry the passengers, but also the fuel, and if you can reduce the fuel burn, you can reduce how much fuel you need to carry, which in turn reduces the size of the structure you need to carry the fuel,” Wang says. “It’s kind of a chain reaction.”

The team’s next step is to design a three-dimensional model to account for other factors affecting flight. While the MIT researchers are looking for a single optimal design for supersonic flight, Wang points out that a group in Japan has made progress in designing a Busemann-like biplane with moving parts: The wings would essentially change shape in mid-flight to attain supersonic speeds.

“Now people are having more ideas on how to improve [Busemann’s] design,” Wang says. “This may lead to a dramatic improvement, and there may be a boom in the field in the coming years.”

Written by: Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office

 

[GAP]

A few more tests, a little more work and soon we will have an X Wing fighter......

 

[PuckChaser]

A few more tests, a little more work and soon we will have an X Wing fighter......

Immediately thought of this crack squad flying them....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wS1JT93J5x8

 

[a_majoor]

USAF is still hard at work on the project, trying to keep the costs down to a "reasonable" $500 million/plane. At those prices the airplanes should be made out of solid gold. Since the USAF has recognized that the platform has utility for fighting at sea as well (part of the Air/Sea battle concept), there may be a case for ordering larger numbers of "B-3" bombers to provide sufficient coverage of oceanic and airpower tasks. As for the final criticism raised in the article, the bomber provides a flexible platform for long range ordinance, so if it is used as part of an Air/Sea battle scenario it isn't flying overhead dropping a "dumb bomb" down the smokestacks...

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/07/air-force-launches-new-bomber-program-with-secret-specs-but-clear-aim/

Air force sends secret specs for new bomber to same old contractors
Air Force expected to award LRS-B contract by next spring—so double that and add 30.

by Sean Gallagher - July 10 2014, 2:55pm EDT

The B-2 Spirit was so expensive that its production run was cut. Now the Air Force is looking for a new bomber that will come in at a quarter of the B-2's pricetag.

The US Air Force has kicked off the competition that will determine who will build the Long Range Strike Bomber (LRS-B), a next-generation aircraft intended to replace the venerable B-52 bomber and the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber. This week, the Air Force sent requirements to industry for the program. Its goal is picking a winning design by spring of 2015.

The requirements were largely classified, but the mission isn't very secret. The Air Force has been driving the development of a new bomber around the mission of defending against the Chinese navy, based on a demonstration in 2004 that echoed Gen. Billy Mitchell's demonstration of the superiority of air power in 1921.


The 2004 bombing and sinking of the ex-USS Schenectady by a B-52, using laser-guided ordnance, after it was deliberately set adrift off Hawaii. The ship was found and targeted using sensors aboard the bomber, demonstrating how long-range bombers could be used in maritime strike.
Just like the Army and Marine Corps planes' sinking of the "unsinkable" German battleship Ostfriesland was intended to demonstrate the vulnerability of ships to bomber planes—and to shore up the budget for the then-shrinking Army Air Corps—the location and bombing of the former USS Schenectady off Hawaii was intended to demonstrate the role the Air Force could play in defending the Pacific against the growing threat of Chinese naval power. The role could include launching from bases out of range from China's "carrier-killer" anti-ship ballistic missiles and other long-range tactical weapons. The Air Force has been pushing for a plane built for that type of mission ever since, desiring a bomber capable of evading detection by the Chinese and striking at targets at sea.

Development of the LRS-B has been ongoing, in limited ways, under "black" contracts since the cancellation of the Air Force's "Next-Generation Bomber" program in 2009. That program was shot down by then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates when it was clear that the aircraft would be hugely expensive. In a speech to the Air Force Association in September of 2009, Gates said:

What we must not do is repeat what happened with our last manned bomber. By the time the research, development, and requirements processes ran their course, the aircraft, despite its great capability, turned out to be so expensive—$2 billion each in the case of the B-2—that less than one-sixth of the planned fleet of 132 was ever built.

Looking ahead, it makes little sense to pursue a future bomber—a prospective B-3, if you will—in a way that repeats this history. We must avoid a situation in which the loss of even one aircraft—by accident, or in combat—results in a loss of a significant portion of the fleet, a national disaster akin to the sinking of a capital ship. This scenario raises our costs of action and shrinks our strategic options, when we should be looking to the kind of weapons systems that limit the costs of action and expand our options.
Because of the size of the program and the investment required to even get in the door, the usual-suspect aerospace firms are the only ones getting a crack at the LSR-B contract. Lockheed Martin and Boeing announced last fall that they will make a joint proposal for the LRS-B program; it's not clear if Northrop Grumman, the manufacturer of the B-2, plans to compete or not.

The new bomber is targeted to cost under $550 million per plane with a production run of 80 to 100 aircraft, and it is to be delivered in about 10 years. In a speech in June, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for acquisition William LaPlante said that the program "is designed around a fixed set of requirements [and] relatively mature technologies... [we will] build the first version knowing it won’t have everything on it that we want or will want. We’re building an adaptable approach with an open architecture, [with] places on the wings that allow us to customize sensors and weapons with future capabilities." On the $550 million-per-plane pricetag, LaPlante said, "If later on we decide to buy 200 bombers, or we decide to buy 50, the [cost] will change."

Critics contend that LaPlante's comments mean it will end up costing just as much as the B-2. Even the Air Force's own general in charge of acquisition admits that the cost will be higher. Lt. Gen. Charles Davis told Defense News, "Is it going to be $550 million a copy? No, of course it’s not going to be $550 million a copy once you add in everything.”

There's bound to be some additional adjustment to the requirements as well. The "open architecture" the requirements call for now may not be sufficient to deal with the shifting realities of the mission the LRS-B was conceived for. Chinese military's defensive capabilities have leapt forward considerably in the last decade, casting doubt on how effective unescorted, manned bombers of any kind would be in countering a Chinese naval force. In March for instance, China commissioned the Kunming, the first of a new class of guided missile destroyers intended to rival the US Navy's Arleigh Burke DDGs and provide advanced air defense for the Chinese fleet.

 

[CougarKing]

Thucydides,

It seems your thread here is already one of two parallel threads on the US LRS-B program. Perhaps a merge is in order with MarkOttawa's thread below?

USAF LRS-B program

 

[a_majoor]

Long range strike by bombers is going to be supplemented by these sorts of hypersonic weapons, either "boost glide" weapons launched from the surface under rocket power or carried as munitions by aircraft of some sort:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/08/russia-yu-71-us-prompt-global-strike.html#more

Russia Yu-71, US Prompt Global Strike and China's Wu-14 Hypersonic missile programs

Adm. Cecil D. Haney, Strategic Command’s (Stratcom) senior leader, said during remarks at a nuclear deterrence conference that despite arms control efforts, hypersonic weapons are among several threatening strategic trends emerging in the world.

China has conducted four flight tests of a 7,000 mile-per-hour maneuvering strike vehicle, and Russia is developing high-speed weapons and reportedly tested a hypersonic weapon in February.

Haney said the Pentagon is developing capabilities that can be used to counter hypersonic arms.

Stratcom is in charge of U.S. nuclear weapons and warfighting, and is tasked with protecting and countering threats to strategic space systems and cyberspace, which is used for command and control of both conventional and nuclear weapons.

China was testing extreme maneuvers of the mach 10 (7860 mph) prototype.

Unlike ballistic rockets that re-enter in a predictable path, a hypersonic weapon would be able to constantly change direction.

Russia has been working on the Yu-71 hypersonic vehicle for the last several years. Russia conducted the latest test of its hypersonic missile on February 26, but it was unsuccessful.

Pavel Podvig, a co-author of the Jane's report, said that the flight test was released atop an SS-19 missile into near space. The missile was launched from the Dombarovsky missile base. The hypersonic vehicle is part of the secret program Project 4022. Over the past five years, Russia has stepped up efforts on its hypersonic missile program to penetrate the U.S. missile defenses.

Russia could produce up to 24 nuclear-capable Yu-71 between 2020 and 2025. Russia is planning to deploy both nuclear as well as conventional configuration. The United States is also developing a hypersonic missile for its Prompt Global Strike program.

Even though both Wu-14 and Yu-71 are nuclear capable, the Chinese program has been more successful.

Ballastic missile flight profile compared to hypersonic x-51 release from B52

The US Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are developing a hypersonic glide delivery vehicle that could deploy on a modified Peacekeeper land-based ballistic missile—a system known as the conventional strike missile (CSM). In FY2008, Congress created a single, combined fund to support research and development for the CPGS mission. Congress appropriated $65.4 million for this program in FY2014 and $95.6 million in FY2015; the Obama Administration has requested $78.8 million for FY2016.

The US Army is also developing a hypersonic glide vehicle, known as the advanced hypersonic weapon (AHW). Like the HTV-2, the AHW would use a hypersonic glider to deliver a conventional payload, but could be deployed on a booster with a shorter range than HTV-2 and, therefore, may need to be deployed forward, on land or at sea.

DOD plans to spend a total of $887.5 million over the next five years. The increase supports planned flight tests in 2017 and 2020.

The National Air and Space Intelligence Center has testified to Congress that China’s hypersonic glide vehicle will be used to deliver nuclear weapons. A variant also could be used as part of China’s conventionally-armed anti-ship ballistic missile system, which is aimed at sinking U.S. aircraft carriers far from Chinese shores.

Russian officials have said their hypersonic arms development is aimed to penetrate U.S. missile defenses.

China has conducted four tests of what the Pentagon calls a Wu-14 hypersonic glide vehicle. The four tests over the past several years are an indication the program is a high priority for Beijing.

The Pentagon is also developing hypersonic vehicles, both gliders and “scramjet” powered weapons. A year ago, an Army test of a hypersonic weapon blew up shortly after launch from Kodiak Island, Alaska.

Stratcom also must protect space assets and cyberspace in a conflict, he added.