The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber
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Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber
#2Dupes / other identical submissions:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26321523
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26322477
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As an aside, does it still qualify as a dupe if there wasn't any significant discourse?
Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber
#3Reverse engineering seems like a good skillset for the DoD to nurture, anyway. Yes, the US is going to be at the cutting edge of weapons design at least through the medium term, but the leadership isn't arrogant enough to think that all engineering innovations will come domestically. If the US acquired a next-generation Chinese fighter, wouldn't it be handy if someone had the expertise to tell you exactly how its parts were made and machine replicas if needed?
So, the tinfoil hat interpretation of this story would be, of course the Pentagon has the original blueprints in quintuplicate, but it's identified reverse engineering as a key strategic advantage China has over the US (pretty reasonable so far, right?) and has announced this as a way to shuffle some money into building up domestic RE expertise in the defence industry.
Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber
#4The B-2 is ancient, doesn't seem very surprising.
Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber
#5I read once that if you tried to build WWII-era aircraft according to specs and mechanical drawings, they wouldn't fly. The real design was found in the dies and jigs that were adapted after many iterations and test flights.
Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber
#6Reverse engineering seems like a good skillset for the DoD to nurture, anyway. Yes, the US is going to be at the cutting edge of weapons design at least through the medium term, but the leadership isn't arrogant enough to think that all engineering innovations will come domestically. If the US acquired a next-generation Chinese fighter, wouldn't it be handy if someone had the expertise to tell you exactly how its par…
I don't think this kind of thing is all that uncommon for military airplanes that have been long out of production. I recall reading a decade or two ago that our local air guard wing had to fabricate some of its own replacement parts for its F-16s (IIRC, then some of oldest that were still in service).
I also recall that Lockheed had to take special effort to preserve production know-how and tooling for the F-22 when they shutdown production early, so it would be possible to restart if needed. You can't capture everything you need to know in blueprints and documentation.
Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber
#7I've done installs of video streaming tech on USAF-managed NIPR net and we've had to reverse engineer some of the mechanisms on their own network... This does not surprise me at all.
Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber
#8The B-2 is ancient, doesn't seem very surprising.
I had to check, it's not as ancient as some other bombers with B-2 first flight occurring in 1989. I met a pilot who flew on the same B-52 as his father, and his grandfather had flown some of the first B-52s. This was in the 00s, about 15-18 years ago.
Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber
#9Reverse engineering seems like a good skillset for the DoD to nurture, anyway. Yes, the US is going to be at the cutting edge of weapons design at least through the medium term, but the leadership isn't arrogant enough to think that all engineering innovations will come domestically. If the US acquired a next-generation Chinese fighter, wouldn't it be handy if someone had the expertise to tell you exactly how its par…
US DOD and their industry partners definitely has this capability already. If they're putting this call out there then there's a real need, not a covert effort to promote the discipline of reverse engineering.
Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber
#10Reverse engineering seems like a good skillset for the DoD to nurture, anyway. Yes, the US is going to be at the cutting edge of weapons design at least through the medium term, but the leadership isn't arrogant enough to think that all engineering innovations will come domestically. If the US acquired a next-generation Chinese fighter, wouldn't it be handy if someone had the expertise to tell you exactly how its par…
I don't think this kind of thing is all that uncommon for military airplanes that have been long out of production. I recall reading a decade or two ago that our local air guard wing had to fabricate some of its own replacement parts for its F-16s (IIRC, then some of oldest that were still in service). I also recall that Lockheed had to take special effort to preserve production know-how and tooling for the F-22 when…
>Long out of production.
The difference in technology likely plays a large role - these parts were designed without CAD and modern fabrication protocols have changed.
It reminded me of NASA's endeavor to reverse engineer the Saturn rockets
https://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/how-nasa-brought-the...