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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

#241

Post by jn1234 »

double0jimb0 wrote: post #239
Spooky23 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s risk reduction. That was an innovative plane and the reality is that nobody is going to wake up and build it again once production stops. Once you break up a team, the team is gone — that’s why we always build submarines, even if unnecessary. You have to keep the people and plant working. That tooling was going to be compromised and useful to the Soviets or some other adversary. There is a well established recor…

This was talking about destroying the physical tooling. Ain’t nobody sneaking 60,000 tools out the back door to the Soviets. Many/most of those tools are going to weigh many tons, would require rigging to lift and flatbeds to move. Could they easily sneak out tooling drawings and schematics? yes probably could and did. But not the physical tools themselves.

It was also keeping the manufacturing process and technologies, specifically stealth secret.

Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber

#242

Post by R0b0t1 »

monkeybutton wrote: post #233
Naga wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Avro Arrow being destroyed is a meme in Canada, but there's a lot of questions at least in the historical community on whether that was a blessing in disguise. The state of the art was rapidly moving away from bombers coming over the North Pole (which an interceptor like the Avro Arrow) which would have rendered a fleet of Arrows expensive and useless. That being said, it destroyed a large part of the Canadian ae…

With a globalized economy, does it make sense for every country to have a manufacturing base for every industry? Especially for a country with small/moderately sized population like Canada? I agree though, the government has been short sighted and procurement of ships, planes has been a debacle for years. It seems that either way a lot of money is going to be burnt, either by propping up a non-competitive industry lo…

For critical defense needs, likely. If you can't meet those needs you are beholden to the people who can, and they may not have your best interests in mind.

Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber

#243

Post by koalahedron »

rstupek wrote: post #46
aphextron wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's impossible to overstate how long these things have been in service. The oldest B-52 airframes still in active service were built longer ago than the first flight of the Wright brothers was when they were built.

And likely to be in service for another 30 years. A 100 year airframe

I worked at Boeing Wichita (which is no more), and an engineer told me that the B-52 was getting heavier over time because the old wires weren't removed for avionics upgrades. Of course, they were always trying to put one over on me as a newbie (I worked on avionics S/W in Ada for the tankers).

He also said a big problem was the expense of doing a modern engine upgrade. Anyone know if they ever re-engined it? Was he joking again?

Having one of these fly over my apartment on Rock Rd. was a dish rattler--I used to see B-2s every once in a while too (fairly loud too, IIRC).

Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber

#244

Post by robotresearcher »

wwww4alll wrote: post #209
robotresearcher wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a reasonable chance you typed this on a pocket computer/communicator with an armful of MRNA vaccine in an electric car.

Which country built the pocket computer/communicator? Which country built the electronics, circuit boards, cables, batteries, housing and fastening screws? Which country built the components and systems and subsystems that go into manufacturing an electric car? Which country has lithium, rare earth metal processing capabilities critical in manufacturing all modern electronic systems? Which country built the component…

The UK has clean drinking water despite losing its manufacturing primacy to the US 100 years ago.

Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber

#245

Post by m463 »

sitkack wrote: post #221
m463 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My heart hurts reading that. I felt something similar walking through Weird Stuff Warehouse and seeing old SGI workstations that I used to covet sitting on shelves for a pittance. Even if you bought them, you probably didn't have a 13w3 monitor or software to get them up. and now weird stuff is gone itself. It's that "it's gone and can't come back" feeling.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/tech-history/... When we look backwards in time, we see lots of tributaries that dried up for various reasons. That SGI workstation is still in your head, it is really up to us to copy and extend those concepts forwards in time. That software is still sitting on a box of junk in someones basement somewhere, it just has to be found.

That's a sad one too. it's hard to quantify the loss of an ecosystem.

Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber

#246

Post by dwheeler »

neurotech1 wrote: post #200
dwheeler wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the revolving door is always a potential issue, and I'm sure it happens, I don't think that's a key problem for the DoD. When government officials leave office they're required to not do work, for a period of time, on things they controlled, and the penalties can be steep. That reduces incentives for the worst of abuses. Also: a US government employee who retires after 20+ years has a guaranteed pension; it's n…

The whole "Has to do everything to get funded" type problem, was very apparent with the Army's Bradley Fighting Vehicle[0]. The result was so misguided, if not comically bad, they made a movie about it, Pentagon Wars[1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Fighting_Vehicle [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon_Wars

The "has to do everything to get funded" is definitely not a new problem, it's structural.

"The Best of the Journal of Irreproducible Results" (January 1, 1983) includes an article by William R. (Randy) Simpson about Murphy's Law, where he notes in a haha-only-serious way the many predictable problems that happen because of it. It's not online as far as I can tell, but the book can be purchased: https://www.amazon.com/Best-Journal-Irreproducible-Results/d...

Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber

#247

Post by dokem »

dmurray wrote: post #3

Reverse 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 think the US (and power nations in general) have a history of reverse engineering the foreign war tech they can get their hands on.

Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber

#248

Post by xtiansimon »

m463 wrote: post #140
b-mmxx wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of the following: “In my view, shared by many blue-suiters, this marvelous airplane should still be operational but, alas, that was not to be. One of the most depressing moments in the history of the Skunk Works occurred on February 5, 1970, when we received a telegram from the Pentagon ordering us to destroy all the tooling for the Blackbird. All the molds, jigs, and forty thousand detail tools were…

My heart hurts reading that. I felt something similar walking through Weird Stuff Warehouse and seeing old SGI workstations that I used to covet sitting on shelves for a pittance. Even if you bought them, you probably didn't have a 13w3 monitor or software to get them up. and now weird stuff is gone itself. It's that "it's gone and can't come back" feeling.

Old SGI workstations and the things people make with them....I loved the surplus you could buy in the Vally in the early 90s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPvIs0I-gmg

Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber

#249

Post by lorenzhs »

richrichardsson wrote: post #205
stratosgear wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

s/URSS/USSR/

s/USSR/CCCP I think this is why people like to refer to the Communinist Party of China (CPC [1]) as the CCP, because it evokes memories of the Soviet Union. [1] cpc.people.com.cn

s/CCCP/СССР/ - Latin C and Cyrillic С (and P/Р) are different unicode characters, see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDN_homograph_attack ;)

Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber

#250

Post by Daho0n »

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #83
Daho0n wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet just landed on Mars, bringing a helicopter. Please don't spread FUD.

How much of the spacecraft was manufactured in the USA? Are we able to create another one without our trading partners?

Of the spacecraft? All of it.
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