Yep, that's why that B-2 crashed at Guam.
Now all we have to do is make sure that any potential opponent of the United States lives in a dry area, and we'll be just fine!
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
1 day ago
Saturday, June 07, 2008
3 comments:
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Now all we have to do is make sure that any potential opponent of the United States lives in a dry area, and we'll be just fine!
ReplyDeleteMaybe THAT'S why the neonazi-cons are so keen on bombing Iran!
The B-2, due to its flying wing design, is aerodynamically unstable and requires sensor readings and multiple computer systems to keep it up in the air. The aerodynamically unstable design allows the plane to have greater manueverabiltity than an ordinary fusilage and wing configuration. If the sensors don't provide an accurate reading then it is asking for trouble. Your implication that the plane crashed because it got wet does a diservice to the men and women in our armed forces and also to the tremendous ingenuity that allowed for the creation of the plane.
ReplyDeleteNorthrop had been trying to sell flying wings to the Air Farce for 40 years (and many more crashes of experimental prototypes) before they finally bamboozled the Reagan Administration into buying one. The Air Force hadn't bought one before then for a good reason: An inherently unstable bomber is a bad idea. We're not talking about some tiny F-16 that costs $80M and has to dogfight, we're talking about a 40 ton bomber that has no need to maneuver quickly and every need to stay up in the air even if a computer gets a bullet through it. Combine that with software that is not robust enough to cope with sensors dropping out and sensors not robust enough to deal with being operated in a wet environment, and you get a plane that falls out of the air in the rain.
ReplyDeleteThis has nothing to do with the men and women in our armed services. This is a design issue with the B-2 bomber itself. We literally have a bomber that makes a cat look downright water-lovin'! As for Northrop's "ingenuity", there's no ingenuity involved in flogging the same old defective design for 40 friggin' years and many more crashes, just endless persistence.
Let's face facts here: The B-2 bomber was a welfare program to keep Northrop in business. No more, no less. It was a bad design from the beginning, and though it can be fixed to be more reliable than it currently is (with better software and better sensors), it will never be as good a bomber as one that was designed to be robust and inherently stable. That's just the facts, and no amount of courage on the part of the airmen flying these Edsels of the sky can change those facts.
- Badtux the Air Penguin