Bomb Squad:A Boeing–Lockheed Martin coalition is competing with Northrop Grumman to build the Next Generation Bomber, a mid-range stealth aircraft set to arrive in 2018. Northrop’s concept, seen here, has a kite-like shape similar to the company’s X-47B Navy attack drone.Nick Kaloterakis (See it bigger!)

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The B-2 stealth bomber, assisted by midair refuelings, can fly a 44-hour mission to the other side of the world, take out targets using laser-guided smart munitions, then sneak out of enemy territory undetected. Yet it runs on Intel 286 processors -- state of the art in 1982, but these days, not so much.

Yes, the Air Force's stealth-bomber fleet is aging. By 2037, the Air Force plans to build a large, supersonic stealth bomber that can relieve the B-2 of duty. In the meantime, though, the military needs a stopgap, which is why it wants to build about 100 aircraft like the one you see here: the Next Generation Bomber, set to arrive in 2018.

Boeing and Lockheed are currently working together on a design for the bomber, in competition with Northrop Grumman. The Air Force won't announce the full list of final specifications for the new plane until later this year, but the basics are clear. This should be a subsonic craft capable of flying up to 2,000 miles before refueling from an airborne tanker, while carrying between 14,000 and 28,000 pounds of ordnance, possibly including nuclear weapons.

The bomber will use the same bat-wing shape of a B-2, which means no tail to reflect radar signals, and improvements in two key areas -- surface design and surface coating -- could give the new bomber a radar signature as small as one tenth that of a mosquito. (Today's stealth bombers are believed to appear on radar screens as being about the size of a small bird.) Advanced computer modeling will make it possible to design shapes (sure to be kept classified) that can disappear even more effectively from radar screens. Then there's the plane's surface. The B-2 uses a rubbery skin that contains tiny beads coated with ferrite; radar waves induce a magnetic field in the coating that converts the radio energy to heat. The problem is, this coating is fragile and easily damaged by bad weather. The Next Generation Bomber will have a radar-absorbent coating that can withstand rough flight conditions.

The new craft could also have a major defensive advantage over today's bombers -- fighter-jet capabilities drawn from the F-22 Raptor. Air-to-air missiles would defend the bomber from attacking aircraft. Possible onboard microwaves or laser weapons could destroy incoming missiles or radar stations on the ground. For particularly dangerous missions in which stealth is less of a concern, the bomber could fly at the center of a protective "wolf pack"; this group of fighter jets, drones and guided missiles will travel in formation around the bomber, organizing automatically by sending signals to one another using radar and satellites.

Is there anyway that they could make the plane completely triangle shaped? Wouldn't that make it faster and less noticeable on radar?

Possibly, but making it fly would be difficult, and it would end up very thick so it could hold a pilot and weapons and engines, so a flat triangle plane would be impractical to the best of my knowledge, but maby it would work if it went along the lines of other flying wing projects. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flying_wing_aircraft
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The general idea of this new stealth bomber is great, but there is one aspect of this project i do not agree with, and that is the lack of a pilot. true, it would make it so if the aircraft were to be shot down somehow, there would be no pilot to loose his life. however, no computer has the ability that humans have to judge and reevaluate a situation. the movie Stealth should be an excelent example of the possibilities of such an aircraft, espically in the part where it drops the bomb on the russian nukes that the terrorists have and then the wind blows all the fallout over a nearby village and kills all the villagers. (yes, i know it "learns" and becomes one of the "good guys" in the end, but you get my point)((if you havent seen this movie yet, go do so, its well worth it)) so thats pretty much the only problem. no matter what, without the human element, theese types of things will never be able to replace a humans judgement and thought process. this is one of the reasons i hate growing up in this time period, everybody is getting lazy or scared and relying on machines and all theese artificial things to do all their work....well someday thats going to come back and bite us in the ass..(do the terminator movies ring a bell?)...i just hope i'm not around to see it when our technology destroys us.

If it's unmanned, then the pilot will simply be a human across the world flying it and making the judgement calls. Sure you have planes that can navigate auto pilot way points for the transit to the target, but the operation of such an aircraft will always be by humans. You also get rid of fatigue and associated human error that comes with long flights. Besides, Stealth wasn't technologically accurate even though it was a good movie to watch.

An unmanned bombing plane is also less pilot intensive than a fighter, so things like "lag" from video games won't mess you up jk. Bombers are traditionally the ones going into enemy territoy, so a shoot down not only may mean death, but being behind enemy lines as well. Machines are expendable and people are not. It's good that the Airforce is starting to lean this route for bombers at least.

Everyone has that sentimental feeling that People should always be in the air, and rightfully so. We chuck probes out into space and set rovers on Mars; but everyone knows that it is only prelude to sending Human astronuats.

My only one concern is an EMP bomb. Planes these days are all fly by wire, and one of those things would drop all our 5th + gen stuff out of the sky. A traditional pilot can recover a plane even without hydrolic support if its not tied into electronics, which will make it one plane still flying in the sky. Maybe our Airforce has all thier avionics shielded in lead; if thats the case, it must be top secret since i've never heard a mention of it.

But you have to remember, an enemy can put up an emp barrier around its country for cheap (though highly unorthodox) and a country like Iran has vey little to lose technologically in such a scenario even if it can't keep it's fighter planes behind EMP range. Though i may be overestimating the effectivness or long term usefullness of such a weapon.

I thought supersonic and stealth were mutually exclusive, because supersonic shock waves could be detected on radar.
None of the new features of this "future bomber" are so radical that they require a new airframe.
New coating-> paint the B2 with it.
Laser weapon-> mount one on the B2.
The B2 is a solution begging for a problem, right now.
I wish the military would, spend their effort and development money on manufacturing techniques which were less expensive, reduced maintenance costs, and increased life span of airframes. This is the type of technology we can invest in which will pay in spades, and cannot be rendered obsolete by tweaking a radar frequency or algorithm. Think of all the pretty toys they could have if everything cost less than it does now.

from Wilmington , DE

In response to tyminator robert1374 ... tyminator... no, a triangle shape would not be better due to air resistance, if you have a flat triangle then it will have to be very tall therefore increasing drag.

robert1374 about your comment on the EMP bomb, yes an unmanned craft would fall to earth where a manned plane is not tied to electronics and will not crash in the case of a EMP bomb

I hope you find this useful :D

Unmanned aircraft carrying nuclear payloads wouldn't be that much different than unmanned ICBMs loaded with nukes. NASA built a testbed fighter airframe back in the 70 that had composite wings which would bend slightly in turns. The increased angle of attack achieved, allowed the drone testbed to achieve 10g force turns. Pilot less aircraft can operate at superior endurance and physical dynamics levels than human guided craft can. The question isn't so much about the loss of a pilot in combat. Our governments proved that human life loss in combat is an acceptable and even expected event. The question is control ability. To date no computer can match human judgment, loyalty, or control in unexpected situations. A craft controlled remotely would need built in fail-safe default commands should it lose communications with its ground handlers. Plus it's a proven fact the worst kept and shortest lived secrets are military secrets. The enemy always seem to come up with a counter technology in war time. Whose to say an enemy couldn't crack the control codes and turn our own aircraft against us?
I'm confident that we will continue to spend the best and brightest minds and engineering research on better ways to destroy each other, than to find simple measures in which to share and get along to save the earth from it's taxed burden of human spawned problems.

Hello,

Little message for cyberscriber of Alabama.

As what you would probably call an expert in IT Security, it would be very very difficult to "crack the code" to take over one of these airplanes.

First off, today's encryption algorighms are extremely strong. There are public and private algorithms. First, the military may use three or four of these which means you'd have to break each individual one. The public ones such as AES192 are modern algorithms (combined with RSA for key distribution) often utilized for Virtual Private Networks for governments. You can get products today that can, for example, encrypt your hard drive with three different algorithms.

Furthermore, private encryption algorithms are not known which means that a hacker would have to study how it work which could take a HUGE amount of time. The military can often use private encryption algorithms which really makes this a lot more difficult.

There are two schools of thoughts on public vs. private. Public has been "tested" by the public INternet user community and therefore these algorithms are highly scrutinized. Private ones are less scrutinized and, therefore, potentially subject to more bugs.

Finally, the frequencies used to remote manage these military devices (I am not an expert on wireless or military) are most likely rotational or maybe these use multiple at a times.

The only way I could think (realistically - in a war time scenario) to do something to these planes is to blast the airwaves on thousands (if not millions) of frequencies with higher amplitude (stronger signal) than the military.
Consider the military could be further away, it could be possible to have a wireless device which is closer maybe generating 100,000 watts. If your signal strenght is stronger, you'll be jamming the airwaves and the aircraft would not be able to get instructions from base. It is possible that engineers have though about this and may have included fail-safe mechanisms such as having the aircraft fly home immediately if it fail to received a "heartbeat" instruction every 30 seconds.

If there is no such fail safe... then it could be possible that the military would no longer control the aircraft and the aircraft could simply crash.

There's a funny thing about this though....... if you're deflecting / absorbing radar, how could you get a wirelss signal through? Maybe because it's not RADAR? IF that's the case, could you not use some other wireless device that uses something different than RADAR to see the airplane?

ANyways... fun stuff.

Un-piloted does not mean un-manned. Considering that we no longer have sight-to-target bombing, whether that computer screen is 5' away in the cockpit or 5 miles away in a bunker, it is still a person pushing a button on a screen.

Not to mention, why put nukes on this? You don't have to aim nukes (much). They are fire a forget weapons. You don't need them hovering overhead, like the sword of Damacles, instead, you keep them just off the coast in subs, waiting to be launched in. The military is not looking for better ways to use its nuclear arsenal. It is looking for better ways to use conventional weapons in a low-to-no casualty way.

I'm sure the airforce is thinking of a scenario like this:

Wave One - Unpioleted small stealth bombers (this thing), to fly in undetected and eliminate anti-aircraft instilations. No possible casualties.

Wave Two - The ole' B2, with heavier loads goes in for mid-sized early targets (airports, communications, etc). This could be preceded or followed by ye old fashioned country style cruise missile barrage. Without the air full of anti-aircraft fire, lower risk of casualty and more cruise missiles make it to target.

Wave Three - Pull out the B52 "cargo plane full of fun" for the big bunker busters, MOABs, multiple target assignments, and large area tagets.

I seen this in a movie. the plane went nuts and killed a lot of people then saved its wing man then killed itself. The plane sould be remote-controled through the satilights. Or We should go old school and remake all the B-24 bomers in to a loud bullit and missle proof plane that can kick the snot out of any thing. these planes could withstand almost any thing and just fly on one engine. This is what we should let the world know that we are not afraid of them spotting us then wipe them out.

EMP is pretty easy to defend against, well on everything except radios that is. It requires nothing more than shielding your electronics, by wrapping it in conductive material, and connecting that material to a common ground. Radios are a bit trickier, because antennas don't work well when shielded.

Unmanned bombers?
Consider:

CWO Johnny Walker gave the Soviets all the information they needed to read the most sensitive Naval codes, and they used that information to sink the Scorpion to send a message to the US -- stop messing with us.

Kim Philby enabled the USSR to direct British counter intelligence - Soviet division.

Pham Xuan An enabled North Vietnam access to the very highest secrets in the US military.

Vladamir Sakarov gave codes to the Israelis (via the US) that completely turned the tide against the Arabs in the 6-day war.

The Chinese like to play "Go" which involves flipping an opponents aassest to their advantage.

In warfare, the high ground is the strength of the culture. Another way to express this:

The strength of a nation is not indicated by the number of missiles sitting in silos, but the by the number of flowers growing on a village green.

Ultimately, what matters is the wisdom of how weapons are used, rather than the weapons themselves. With appropriate wisdom, or guile, you can have your enemy make your weapons for you.

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