One of these days we'll beat those Soviets. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-09-14/u-s-air-force-to-work-on-first-new-bomber-since-b-2.html
Cut that budget baby....cut cut cut.... Build roads, schools, fund state and city projects. Time to cut back on that military spending...cut cut cut. DD
I smell another F-35 debacle. Meanwhile, the right keeps screaming "Cut spending! Cut spending!" Yeah, right.
The right has become hypocrisy, illustrated. It's so bad now that I'm not even sure they really know why they're screaming anymore.
I don't think this is really a left/right issue, this is just an issue of a redundant/obsolete weapons system being built with scarce defense dollars. The strategic bombing concept was arguably outmoded by the 1970's, even in the Cold War paradigm, now in the asymmetric 2010's, against guys with IED's, that's the best return for your defense dollar? A stealth bomber? You've got to be freaking kidding me. Though I heard they will maybe get this guy to command the bomber wing:
Probably not very many however, the development cycle is too long for these types of things to be an effective short-term boost.
Generals like big toys. The Buck Turgidson photo is very appropriate. This is Curtis LeMay's protege's agitating for new toys. The same thing happened a few years ago with the Reliable Replacement Warhead. Air Force guys hate being ground support for the Army. In their daydreams, they still imagine that we can eliminate the other branches of the military, and all wars can be fought with their strategic bombers. Essentially, the guys who like to fly big planes are going to try and get new toys. They are going to tell us all that we are in grave danger if we don't give it to them. Probably, they even really believe it. Hopefully, the idea will die in the planing stages as with the RRW. But this is more a function of the entrenched Strategic Bomber culture of the Air Force, and the bomber culture guys in the Air Force trying to jockey to prove how important they are to national defense. You will never find a man in the world who will happily admit that their entire career has been reduced to a redundant relic of the past.
And boom goes the dynamite. It's incredibly hard to downsize the military when you've got people who make their careers and livelihoods off it.... both inside and outside of government. In other words, "It's hard to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon him not understanding it."
Perhaps a few. This type of manufacturing tends to be pretty automated. It sucks a lot our best tech talent into building squat. They could be developing something that would create many more jobs and be of real use. Actually real ground wars create more as you have to pay the soldiers and the whole big VA Medical system to deal with their health problems for the rest of their lives.
I don't think this is nearly as stupid as the F-35. (Although Canada has been suckered into buying F-35's, so maybe it will be good for the US economy.) Unlike fighters, bombers played huge roles in both Iraq and Afghanistan. I know that the 60-year-old technology was the most effective, but it wouldn't be crazy to foresee a time where the B-52 is obsolete. The problem will be if it's designed by 400 government committees and 250 congressmen to make every constituent happy like the F-35 was.
Bombers played huge roles for about 3 months in each campaign as flying dump trucks....essentially, the same role that 1940's techonology was adept at delivering. A quote from the wiki on this new bomber: Hmm, low observability, loiter for long periods, sound familiar? Hint, it rhymes with "Run Band Throne"
