Pilots complained that tanker aircraft are too big and visible. Basically making the B-2 spirit unusable because it would need to be refueled by non-stealthy refueling aircraft within Soviet radar coverage. Also any retard can bring a tanker down with a simple 60s era SAM which completely disables air operations in an entire region for several days.
So someone thought a quick fix would be to make a drone thats basically an unmanned fuel tank, and follows a jet into combat.
Did this come out of that Navy drone fighter program?
Ethan Rogers
That's a fine idea but I have doubts it can really refuel bombers. The idea behind it is to augment the combat range of F/A-18 from 449 miles to 560 to FINALLY offset the loss range after retirement of the A-6/S-3/F-14…
For a B-2 it's not even a 10% increase in range, it would need 5 air refuel to get a B-52 range, which themselves can reach Russia from the US and come back but barely, we're talking Kola peninsula/Canadian border. Typically they would get an air refuel too. Oh and B-2 need very specific bases (climate control hangars, way longer runways)…
Camden Ward
Why not use a non-stealthy drone then, since the F-18 is too? Seems like a wasteful mishmash to me.
Think of it This is the situation now.
The situation should be reversed. Makes way more sense.
I think so.
Michael Bennett
If the signal is jammed you can't provide "backup control" A large fucking tanker is also far too obvious. It can be spotted with the naked eye and shot down with 60s 40s era FlaK, since it has to fly in a straight line for refueling. Now imagine you have a smaller tanker that is stealthy and can follow your bombers deep into enemy territory. They can refuel your bombers, practically extending their range to near global, while keeping the entire operation covert.
Having many smaller re-fuelers may not be as fuel efficient, but if one gets shot down, you still have the rest and won't lose the entire mission/all of the fuel. You can also more easily adjust for smaller/larger scale operations.
Overall though there is the problem of
Tyler Rodriguez
Because you can't bill the stealth bonus. Or maybe because it's a variant of a stealth strike drone, they could make a common platform strike/light refuel/light transport for carriers and LHD.
Joshua Fisher
Or they're lying about the F-35 range…
Wyatt James
A datalink like MADL between two relatively close (hundreds of kilometers) transmitters is almost impossible to jam. Its directional so it requires a foe to basically put a jamming aircraft on a straight line between or beyond the drone and the mothership. Whereas an omni satellite link circumnavigating the globe (thousands of kilometers) would be incredibly easy to jam, the guy on the ground just has to point a dish up and send confusing data to the satellite so it can't distinguish the weak transmitter on the drone from the noise. Besides the proximity of the mothership to the drone also allows LASER communication links, which are unjammable.
I'm sorry but it is CLEAR that airborne control mothership is a feasible backup control system for UCAVs.
As for a mothership serving as a refueling aircraft… it makes more sense. Square cube rule basics say a larger refueling aircraft would be exponentially more efficient than a smaller one. Forgive my ignorance, but isn't this drone also subsonic, visible, and fly in a straight line? The refueling mothership could be something like the A-12 as well, feeding stealthy UCAVs like a Barracuda, and if the sat link gets cut, providing a control link.
Actually, it depends on the amount of signal to noise ratio. Jamming works by broadcasting at the carrier frequency with a lot of power.
Mason Sanders
Why does it have to be unmanned?
Why not just use existing designs only with their metal components replaced by composites and covered in RAM?
William Bailey
Just revive ASF-14 already!
Brayden Wilson
Why not just designate some b2s as tankers, like how Britain did with their v-bombers in the falklands? they turned the higher payload ones into tankers to refuel the more efficient planes on their bombing runs. On second thought, after some light googling, we don't have enough b-2s to do this, only 20.
What they really need, though, are amphibious tankers able to refuel directly from offshore refineries and ships and much more effectively position themselves to refuel their friends at the best possible part of the mission. Say a b-2 or b-21 take off form Edwards AFB and are heading east to bomb some kebab. Distance from Whitman AFB(where the b-2 is stationed) to Syria is about 6000kn, roughly the b-2's total range. the rest of the middle east would be similarly at the end of the b-2's effective range from home, or even outside it. Our Mediterranean/Red Sea carrier group (which now has a seaplane tender to lovingly care for the amphibians) would be in an excellent position to refuel the bombers just before or just after(or both) they drop their bombs, rather than needing to alter the b-2's course and flight plan to include refueling over Europe somewhere, while there's not as much tank to fill up and making the total distance traveled longer.
Because there is only a handful? It could be done if you only had to do a couple of trips but not when you have to bomb China/Russia…
Also while they were undoubtedly stealthy in the 80's, with the near exponential growth in power of microelectronics that has happened since then, it's extremely dubious that the very modern and diversified radars that comes with a SA-20 battery can't get firing solutions on them at a long range to begin with (hence the X-47 and B-21 projects).
Drones are tiny in comparison to a tanker though. With a wingspan of 20 meters and at an altitude of 10km it would be a maximum of 1° wide, which is (against a blue sky) barely visible. A wingspan of 50 meters however would be 3° wide, which is easily identifyable. A smaller object also has a smaller radar crosssection no matter what. Also: you can point a jamming dish at the tanker aircraft more easily than at a satellite, and you won't need nearly as much power to jam it either. If your tanker is close enough to use laser comms (wich is weather reliant) it's close enough to be shot down.
Adrian Flores
The same way you make a flashlight invisible.
Andrew Russell
Part of the reason for the drone in op is that they wanted a tanker that could land on a carrier, when really they should put the tanker down on the water. To me it makes more sense to have a tanker that can actually fill up an aircraft and that doesn't take up potentially valuable deck time to start up and take off/land. Also the navy would potentially station amphibious awacs for much more independent airborne navy operations. If the navy really wanted a carrier-based tanker they should use a seaplane IMO.
That's not the only problem look at this shit. They built an inlet that's perpendicular to the flight direction. It only works at extremely low speeds when the aircraft is level, because then a portion of the turbine power is being used to generate a vacuum and suck up the needed air.
If it's flying too fast, the engine is literally starved of air, and shuts down. If it's trying to rise to altitude at too great an angle, the engine is starved of air and shuts off. If it's trying to land properly, the engine is starved of air and shuts off.
Boeing is fucking retarded and they are selling the navy a bag of hammers for a million dollars.
You think you can bomb russia or china with only a handful of these pieces of shit? Bombing requires an absolute shit ton of airplanes to be fielded, because otherwise your bombing will be like shooting an elephant with a BB gun.
Noah White
20m at 10km is 0.1°, not 1°. And 50m is 0.3°. 1° is twice the angular size of the full moon, and would be incredibly easy to spot.
Benjamin Price
Maybe if your bb had a thermo-nuclear core
Brody Hughes
B-2 wasn't even stealthy in the 80s, it basically had to get refueled within Soviet radar ranges, and the refueling aircraft isn't stealthy. So if the commies ever detected a lone American refueling aircraft at the edge of their radar ranges, they could pretty much guess what was going on and send a MiG-25 to blow the B-2 the fuck out of the sky long before its approach. And modern Russian radars are ridiculously improved compared to Soviet coverage and range.
A ferry range of about 20,000km is needed to properly get in and out of their current detection range, otherwise its a one way trip. B-2 might be able to carry out a one way trip on some outlying Soviet cities, but it likely wouldn't be able to disgorge the full bomb load before it was shot down. Washing away a billion dollar aircraft to nuke some commie city that has a GDP of a million dollars is kind of a waste, and probably won't influence the enemys war fighting capability or resolve.
Right, because at a certain speed you outrun all the air, even the air that's ahead of you. Why aren't you the one proposing UAV concepts to the Navy, since you seem to be the expert on this subject?
Just like put more fuel on the plane lmao. But seriously, it does seem like refueling aircraft are a bandaid for subpar design.
Nathaniel Morris
The faster the flow becomes over a void, the lower the pressure becomes within that void, which helps to counteract laminar flow. When you are saying would be true only at absurdly high speeds that this aircraft would never dream of reaching anyway.
Furthermore this intake isn't truly perpendicular to the direction of flight like in your diagram, the leading edge of the inlet is clearly several inches lower than the trailing edge as you can see in OP's pic.
Carson Long
Yeah good job, if you fly slowly enough it doesn't happen, which is what I said you giant fucking moron.
Jason Parker
Then why criticize the design if it works? You just presented it as a fatal flaw in your previous post. Stop contradicting yourself, faggot. And stop conflating hypersonic design principles with subsonic ones while you're at it.
Aiden Hill
Because it doesn't work, laminar flow will seperate the faster the aircraft goes, or if the aircraft changes angle of attack AT ALL, like when gaining altitude, turning, or landing.
It's a retarded fucking design that gives ZERO benefits while also supplying a bevy of flaws.
Ian Hughes
It does give a serious stealth benefits, it maybe give it more endurance by accelerating the natural intake air flow to the max?
If it's just a mobile refueling point it doesn't have to fly fast or have a good rate of climb, just need to loiter for a while until replaced by another one. Which again it makes sense for a carrier to have a "mobile refueling point" patrol 24/7 with like 6 of those on board but far less for a scramble of strategic bombers.
Yeah it's cool and a stealth UAV tanker is probably good. However I think they should have just made a base stealth UAV and modified that for different missions.
Michael Edwards
This would be a naca duc, it's not perfectly flush with the skin, there's a slight bank which is supposed to laminar the air in. And it would have to be much much wider at the mouth and much smaller at the engine, what we're seeing in this drone is the reverse.
