A Senior U.S. Defense Department official speaking to 19FortyFive claimed that Russia’s planned new stealth bomber, the PAK DA, “will never fly.” A second DoD official backed up that statement, claiming that Moscow likely does not have “the resources, technological base, expertise and of course the money needed to build anything like a stealth bomber for the foreseeable future.”
While not wanting to get into specific details for a fear of revealing sources and intelligence-gathering methods, U.S. Defense Department officials clearly have serious doubts about the PAK DA, with one official being so bold to state that the bomber “looks really good in those social media posts and artist renderings I see on defense sites around the internet, however, that plane is going to stay where it is: on the drawing board.”
:lol:
Another sign that Russia isn’t as mightily as many Putin fanboys here want us to believe. They aren’t anywhere as near peer as they want us to believe.
How old is the B-2? And if the Chinese decide to help out? Lots of ‘old’ tech that has been around for a bit. Not saying that it will happen, and underestimating, or over estimating, the Russians has been the issue. I just don’t like it when our guys say that no one can do what we do….
For now at least, Russia can’t make decent passenger airplanes. China can’t make current technology (much less state of the art western tech) jet engines, and has to buy jet engines from Russia for its latest fighters. There’s plenty of reason to think that the USA and a few key allies have a lead over Russia and China by decades.
But…
And the whole west seems to be far behind in hypersonic technology also, which is bizarre given the lead we had in the 1960’s. Can’t tell if it’s some kind of sandbagging ruse, but if news reports are reality (big IF) then not only Russia and China, but even North frickin’ Korea, have a lead over us in hypersonic tech. That seems like a problem. Yes, I’m aware of the multiple catch-up missile programs right now.
I find this interesting. The new Bomber is basically dependent upon “computer networking” to find the target.
Does anyone think China has no plan to disrupt our computers in a war?
What’s interesting is that what you just said kind of summarizes a lot of Russian procurement strategy over the past century. They take alternative paths to attempt to counter the gaps they have vs The West. For example, developing and fielding lots of SAMs to reduce Western advantage in the skies. And then attempting to make up for the loss in tactical strike capability with other fires platforms.
This war has shown that the Russian’s are so backward they can be pushed back with basic, regular old western gear like HiMars. Nothing exotic, no fancy fighters, tanks, missiles, etc. The Russians can’t do basic modern war fighting for some reason. I am not worried about anything from Russia other than Antique nukes, which are always a concern.
The Chinese I feel like could pull off almost anything if they really wanted to. Although their economy is likely about 1/3 as big as advertised, it is still the second largest economy in the world. Fortunately, authoritarian communist regimes seem to be terrible at broad innovations across technical fields. They do a pretty good job of making knock offs like their space station and mars rover, but all of their stuff is clearly inferior. I think their habit of copying other people’s homework has kept them from leapfrogging the west.
That sort of spending (running of the printing presses) only works when you are the worlds reserve currency of choice and other countries want to buy and hold that debt.
As our interest rates rise and the cost of servicing that debt increases - Guess what happens to the number of planes we can build with ‘borrowed’ money?
What happens as other countries that traditionally bought / held a lot of our debt experience financial hardships at home and decide to cash in some (or a LOT) of their American dollars? (Thinking about Japan and China here)
After you finish considering all of that - Consider the percentage of those American bombers that we make entirely HERE at home in the USA. The ‘parts’ content and where exactly all of the various parts came from before we assembled them to make our final product… Any of those magnets or computer chips in those bombers coming from China? Could we still make those without those magnets or chips coming in from elsewhere like they do???
F-35 jet under a waiver allowing Chinese-origin alloy to go into an engine part, the Pentagon said on Saturday. In September the Pentagon stopped accepting new F-35 jets after it discovered a magnet in the stealthy fighter’s engine was made with unauthorized material from China.Oct 8, 2022
I have no doubt that America ‘could’ gear up to source materials for and actually make everything needed for me to have my same iPhone as I have currently here in the USA. Sure, it might take a minute to dig a few mines to dig our own rare earths and build a few semiconductor plants here and there but for sure we COULD do it if needed for whatever reason. Same phone would likely cost so much more that I could never afford it.
Probably, I was highballing the estimate. A hard minimum is eighteen planes for one operational squadron, plus a handful for R&D flight-test and attrition reserves. IIRC the only way NMUSAF got a B-2 is that theirs is actually the non-flyable Structural Engineering Mockup…
To me it seems like the Navy takes the cake for develop and desert… The (c)Littoral ships, those cruisers that they can’t put enough shells in, any sub since the LA class. They also can’t seem to stop building carriers when it is pretty clear that times are changing. Sure the F22, but that was a pretty unique timing, and I’m sure the AF would have taken more if someone had ponied up some money.
On the B21, how much payload will be lost to the third bathroom for the crew…
I’ve always been a big Navy fan. But I have to agree carriers now days are one heap big target. China has really been producing and practicing with ballistic missiles that would end an aircraft carrier. That Dongfeng 21 anti-ship missile coming in at hypersonic speed is going to be hard to stop. And when they fire them at one of our carriers they ain’t going to fire just one.
You have to remember at one time the Battle Ship mafia made the carrier play second fiddle and they refused to accept the time had come for them to play second fiddle. Then Pearl happened and the only assets we had in any type of shape to fight was the carrier. The navy put a lot of acquired anti ship cruise missiles into the USS America before she finally went to the bottom. But that was ten plus years ago and I’m not sure they had any hypersonic items to hit her with.
That being said, I do not think there will be a lot of B-21’s produced. They are going to be too expensive to produce a shit ton of them. I’m thinking if they get to 50 hotdog. The problem comes with attrition because they are going to loose a few due to bird strikes, pilot error and any other dumb thing you can or can not think of.
If Chinamart unilaterally fires hypersonics at one of our carriers, they’ll regret it. But honestly any situation where such an act is being considered, we will probably be trading cans of sunshine long before that.
:rolleyes: 
