# The Long-Range Strike Bomber winner is - NORTHROP!



## FLYBOYJ (Oct 28, 2015)

So let's see if this is the new punching bag for the press! I worked on the B-2 AV3 - 7 and wish Northop and its employees all the best. I always felt Northrop got screwed over by the premature B-2 cancellation.

Air Force picks Northrop Grumman to build next big bomber - Yahoo News


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## GregP (Oct 28, 2015)

I think Northrop has been getting screwed ever since Symington was Secretary of the Air Force right after WWII.


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## gumbyk (Oct 28, 2015)

I had read somewhere that one of the factors involved in this decision was to try to prevent a duopoly between the other two big aircraft manufacturers.


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## FLYBOYJ (Oct 28, 2015)

gumbyk said:


> I had read somewhere that one of the factors involved in this decision was to try to prevent a duopoly between the other two big aircraft manufacturers.


And LMCO and Boeing are protesting...


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## gumbyk (Oct 28, 2015)

FLYBOYJ said:


> And LMCO and Boeing are protesting...



Don't they protest anything they lose?

Fact is, Northrop have the experience and capability to produce a long-range bomber.


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## CharlesBronson (Oct 29, 2015)

I dont want to think about the individual cost of each bomber, must be bone chilling, aniway is pretty interesting foe the aviation aficionado that the big players are still interested in manned combat planes, I particulary like the concept of the Su-34 bomber.


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## FLYBOYJ (Oct 29, 2015)

gumbyk said:


> Don't they protest anything they lose?
> 
> Fact is, Northrop have the experience and capability to produce a long-range bomber.



Agree to a point - at the beginning of the B-2 program, more than half of the final assembly employees worked for Boeing. At that time Northrop didn't have "large aircraft" experienced people. As production commenced many of these folks were absorbed by Northrop.

Even with the protest, Boeing and Lockheed "should" get a piece of the pie.


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## FLYBOYJ (Oct 29, 2015)

CharlesBronson said:


> I dont want to think about the individual cost of each bomber, must be bone chilling, aniway is pretty interesting foe the aviation aficionado that the big players are still interested in manned combat planes, I particulary like the concept of the Su-34 bomber.



The contract is for 80 billion and it looks like the USAF wants 100 aircraft, subtract a few billion for R&D, sustainment and administrative cost then do the math.


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## pbehn (Oct 29, 2015)

How long before the first report saying it wont work?


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## FLYBOYJ (Oct 29, 2015)

pbehn said:


> How long before the first report saying it wont work?



Next week

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## Token (Oct 29, 2015)

pbehn said:


> How long before the first report saying it wont work?



but ... but ... It won't carry the payload of a B-52 .... but .... it won't have the speed of the B-1 ... but ... it won't have the RCS of the Spirit ...

but ... money spent on RCS reduction and control is wasted because old Russian radar completely negates Stealth ...

but ... there is no way that it will be worth the cost because the B-52 only cost a couple million per copy and we have gotten over 50 years of service. Why not just build a new B-52 at the original cost?

T!





And just in case anyone missed it...JOKING

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## buffnut453 (Oct 29, 2015)

Token said:


> but ... but ... It won't carry the payload of a B-52 .... but .... it won't have the speed of the B-1 ... but ... it won't have the RCS of the Spirit ...
> 
> but ... money spent on RCS reduction and control is wasted because old Russian radar completely negates Stealth ...
> 
> ...



You may have been joking but I think you've captured the next 20 years of argument about this new platform.

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## pbehn (Oct 29, 2015)

Token said:


> but ... but ... It won't carry the payload of a B-52 .... but .... it won't have the speed of the B-1 ... but ... it won't have the RCS of the Spirit ...
> 
> but ... money spent on RCS reduction and control is wasted because old Russian radar completely negates Stealth ...
> 
> ...


You missed out but but this is old technology the future is satellites and UAVs

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## buffnut453 (Oct 29, 2015)

pbehn said:


> You missed out but but this is old technology the future is satellites and UAVs



And...why can't we just put all this cool new technology into the old platforms. They'd be so much better than this new heap of (insert perjorative doggy-doo synonym here)!


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## buffnut453 (Oct 29, 2015)

BREAKING NEWS!!!

New Northrop Grumman stealth bomber is already over-budget and late!

(Sorry...just couldn't resist. I did try to, honestly, but rather like the Borg, resistance is futile).

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## wheelsup_cavu (Oct 29, 2015)

Should be good news for Palmdale.


Wheels


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## Lucky13 (Nov 2, 2015)

Is it too early to toss the sh*t etc., about this bomber, or should we wait to Russian websites gets going?


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## GrauGeist (Nov 2, 2015)

And...so it begins...

The wrist-wringing, bed-wetting and heavy breathing starts now with this article's headline:
"*Air Force Award Of The LRS Bomber To Northrop Grumman Commits Taxpayers To A Trillion-Dollar Burden*"

Forbes - Taxpayer Burden


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## Vanshilar (Nov 2, 2015)

GrauGeist said:


> And...so it begins...
> 
> The wrist-wringing, bed-wetting and heavy breathing starts now with this article's headline:
> "*Air Force Award Of The LRS Bomber To Northrop Grumman Commits Taxpayers To A Trillion-Dollar Burden*"
> ...



What's funny is the article doesn't bother trying to justify why the author calls it a trillion-dollar burden, when he says it's an $80 billion program. He refers to "the whole package" as a trillion dollars, but that's right after bringing up the Navy's nuclear carriers and submarines. Maybe he's talking about the entire nuclear triad? It's unclear.

Looks like he's just trying to pin the "trillion" label on the LRS-B.


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## GrauGeist (Nov 3, 2015)

Vanshilar said:


> What's funny is the article doesn't bother trying to justify why the author calls it a trillion-dollar burden, when he says it's an $80 billion program. He refers to "the whole package" as a trillion dollars, but that's right after bringing up the Navy's nuclear carriers and submarines. Maybe he's talking about the entire nuclear triad? It's unclear.
> 
> Looks like he's just trying to pin the "trillion" label on the LRS-B.


Absolutely...

This is the sort of hysteria-journalism that plagues military aquisition, most recently, the F-35. The author is a so-called "expert" on pentagon affairs but his article says otherwise by his blatant misuse of statistics and shows that he's nothing more than a media hype, pandering to ratings.

The bigger problem here, is that now, blogs and click-bait websites will copy this crap of an article, (even use it as a citation when trying to convince others that it's an official source of information) and start a perpetual spin that will keep popping up for the next 5+ years...

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## CharlesBronson (Nov 4, 2015)

FLYBOYJ said:


> The contract is for 80 billion and it looks like the USAF wants 100 aircraft, subtract a few billion for R&D, sustainment and administrative cost then do the math.



Interesting to realize that inflation in the US in the last 20 years has been negligible but Inflation in US Military contracts has been astronomical, to pay 500 or 600 millons for a single aircraft, no matter how good, is stupid.


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## GrauGeist (Nov 4, 2015)

CharlesBronson said:


> Interesting to realize that inflation in the US in the last 20 years has been negligible but Inflation in US Military contracts has been astronomical, to pay *500 or 600 millons for a single aircraft, no matter how good, is stupid*.



2015 Bentley GT: $257,600
2015 Ferrari 458 Spider: $263,553
2015 Porsche Panamera: $263,900
2015 McLaren 650S: $280,225
2015 Ferrari 458 Speciale: $291,744
2015 Ferrari FF: $295,000
2015 Ferrari F12 Berlinetta: $319,995
2015 Lamborghini Aventador: $548,800
2015 Porsche 918 Spyder: $929,000
2015 Ferrari LaFerrari: $1,416,362
2015 Bugatti Veyron 16.4: $2,250,000

The best of the best does not come without a premium price...

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## FLYBOYJ (Nov 4, 2015)

CharlesBronson said:


> Interesting to realize that inflation in the US in the last 20 years has been negligible but Inflation in US Military contracts has been astronomical, to pay 500 or 600 millons for a single aircraft, no matter how good, is stupid.


Inflation? The B-2 cost $737 million in 1997 dollars for a single aircraft, mainly because the USAF only bought 21 of them


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## johnbr (Nov 4, 2015)

I remember Northrop saying the fly away cost of the B-2 was 270mil$ when they were to make 132 of them.

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## CharlesBronson (Nov 4, 2015)

FLYBOYJ said:


> Inflation? The B-2 cost $737 million in 1997 dollars for a single aircraft, mainly because the USAF only bought 21 of them



Well, tea, is a damned circle of soaring cost, planes expensive, military bought less because they are expensive, individual cost of each craft rise even more, etc, etc


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## FLYBOYJ (Nov 4, 2015)

CharlesBronson said:


> Well, tea, is a damned circle of soaring cost, planes expensive, military bought less because they are expensive, individual cost of each craft rise even more, etc, etc


 Actually if they bought the original 100+ the cost would have been cut in half and "maybe" this program would noy be happening today.

OOOPS - just saw johnny's post!!!


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## Lucky13 (Nov 4, 2015)

The more gizmos, gadgets, thingmajigs and whatsits, the higher price!


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## CharlesBronson (Nov 5, 2015)

I guess that the electronics will be 30 or 40 per cent of the cost of the new bomber, the encouraging part of the deal is that the USAF still put the money in manned warplanes, sometime ago I thought the F-35 was the last one.


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## pbehn (Nov 5, 2015)

GrauGeist said:


> 2015 Bentley GT: $257,600
> 2015 Ferrari 458 Spider: $263,553
> 2015 Porsche Panamera: $263,900
> 2015 McLaren 650S: $280,225
> ...


Good point but top of the range cars are in a strange market, some are bought purely because of the high price, you buy a million dollar car because it costs a million dollars.


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## buffnut453 (Nov 5, 2015)

pbehn said:


> Good point but top of the range cars are in a strange market, some are bought purely because of the high price, you buy a million dollar car because it costs a million dollars.



Wish I was rich enough to be that tiny-minded!


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## FLYBOYJ (Nov 5, 2015)

CharlesBronson said:


> I guess that the electronics will be 30 or 40 per cent of the cost of the new bomber, the encouraging part of the deal is that the USAF still put the money in manned warplanes, sometime ago I thought the F-35 was the last one.



You are correct, combine that with manufacturing cost relating to composite material as well as mandated production processes, test and documentation and there you easily have a $600 million dollar bomber.


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## FLYBOYJ (Nov 5, 2015)

wheelsup_cavu said:


> Should be good news for Palmdale.
> 
> 
> Wheels



It will, but no way I'm moving back!!!!


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## herman1rg (Nov 5, 2015)

It will be interesting to see any early sketches, mock-ups that reach the public domain.


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## gjs238 (Nov 5, 2015)

pbehn said:


> Good point but top of the range cars are in a strange market, some are bought purely because of the high price, you buy a million dollar car because it costs a million dollars.





buffnut453 said:


> Wish I was rich enough to be that tiny-minded!



Some buy them as investments.


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## johnbr (Nov 6, 2015)

Boeing, Lockheed challenge US bomber contract award - Yahoo News 
Found this looks like they are mad.


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## pbehn (Nov 6, 2015)

gjs238 said:


> Some buy them as investments.



Yes but an investor puts his work of art or whatever in a safe place, the truly decadent take their investment for a blast and wreck it.
I admire "Mr Bean" he crashed his McLaren twice and sold it for about six times more than he paid.

I do wonder sometimes if military procurement people are seduced by wanting more bells and whistles than are actually needed.


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## gjs238 (Nov 6, 2015)

pbehn said:


> I do wonder sometimes if military procurement people are seduced by wanting more bells and whistles than are actually needed.



No way! You think?


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## FLYBOYJ (Nov 6, 2015)

pbehn said:


> I do wonder sometimes if military procurement people are seduced by wanting more bells and whistles than are actually needed.



The true Military Industrial Complex. I've seen it for 30 years!


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## GregP (Nov 7, 2015)

I don't think electronics will be 30 - 40% at all. I think 65%, or perhaps just a bit lower or higher. It's over half. Airframes aren't all that expansive. Software testing IS.


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## Lucky13 (Nov 7, 2015)

GrauGeist said:


> 2015 Bentley GT: $257,600
> 2015 Ferrari 458 Spider: $263,553
> 2015 Porsche Panamera: $263,900
> 2015 McLaren 650S: $280,225
> ...



.....and if I had the money, I wouldn't buy any of these!


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## GrauGeist (Nov 7, 2015)

Lucky13 said:


> .....and if I had the money, I wouldn't buy any of these!


The only one on the list I would be interested in, is the Bugatti.

If I had the money to buy that Veyron, then you know I would already have a warehouse full of classics!


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## Lucky13 (Nov 7, 2015)

I'd be happy with a Ferrari 246 GT Dino....since a 250 GTO probably cost more than all of these together!


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## FLYBOYJ (Nov 7, 2015)

GregP said:


> I don't think electronics will be 30 - 40% at all. I think 65%, or perhaps just a bit lower or higher. It's over half. Airframes aren't all that expansive. Software testing IS.



You're probably right. Composite manufacturing isn't cheap either. I see manufacturers promoting composite structures for cost and ease of manufacture but it seems replacement parts are twice as expensive of metal parts.


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## Token (Nov 7, 2015)

FLYBOYJ said:


> It will, but no way I'm moving back!!!!



Oh come now, how can you pass up the light breezes, balmy summer temperatures, and light traffic on Sierra Highway?

T!

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## Token (Nov 7, 2015)

FLYBOYJ said:


> The true Military Industrial Complex. I've seen it for 30 years!



Newb.... 

T!

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## davparlr (Nov 10, 2015)

B-2 development

I was on the proposal team on the B-2 bomber, responsible for the all avionic systems excluding radar and navigation, whose criticality warranted dedicated specialist. After go-ahead I was a first level manager responsible for Avionics Controls and Displays subsystem (the red outlined areas in pix was the area of my responsibility). I was responsible for design, development, procurement, installation and test of all components, including software requirement, operational logic and symbology. I was in this role through entire development program and the beginning of production, including Program Design Review (PDR) and Critical Design Review (CDR). This was a pilot/engineer dream, and nightmare.

When I heard that Northrop got the contract I had mixed emotions. First, I though yea, by retirement is secure!, second was, boy, I would like a redo with lessons I’ve learned and the technology that is now available verses what I knew and had then (think CRTs and Comodore 64s), and lastly I thought, no way, I went through heaven and hell and that’s enough for one lifetime. I do have some thoughts which I could write a book with but will try to keep it simple.

1) Government contracts are set up to overrun cost and schedule. In order for a supplier the cost usually must be cheapest. To do this legally, the subcontractor must assume the perfect program, i.e. no development problems, that type of programs never exist.

2)	Government and supplier like changes. Every three years new user (military) support changes and with each change new preferences are imposed. Every change means profit for the subcontractor. Government program office generally does not have the power to challenge the government user, thus contract discipline is very poor. This is one of the major reasons for contract expansion.

3)	When Northrop got the contract, they rejected the infrastructure established by the Aircraft Division building the F-5 but were behind the power curve in establishing their own procedures. As a manager who needed to start development on hardware for an extremely tight aircraft program, I signed off on my own specs for release for competition to subcontractors of my own selection (authorized by the black nature of the programs). In addition, after selection I, along with my lead engineer, negotiated the contract with the selected winner. No procurement officer was present. This was for multiple computer types, display types, and software development worth multiple millions of dollars. This is an area where Northrop Grumman should now have well under control. While most of the B-2 talent has gone, there is some important people still available such as the Northrop B-2 chief engineer.

4)	When Northrop got the contract, the first thought about themselves was that they only knew building small aircraft like the F-5 and hastily went out and scarfed up leaders from other companies that had large aircraft type programs, like Boeing. My opinion was that all these big shot brought in the worst of their own companies procedures. A confusing mess.

5)	I think they still have basic expertise to handle such a program although they have lost great talent.

As for the B-3 (?), I did hear a rumor that it might be capable of piloted or non-piloted missions. This makes sense as most of the B-2 mission could be done without pilot input. I did, at one time offer to the AF the capability of executing the mission if the crew became incapacitated for some reason. They rejected that for good reason. I don’t think that, using that technology, it would have been wise for a B-2 to fly around with 16 big bombs looking for some place to drop them. Thoughts of Terminator come to mind.

As far as Boeing winning the tanker contract, I think there must have been some sort of threat to Airbus, since changing a contract after contract selection breaks all kind of laws! 

Enough for now.

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## FLYBOYJ (Nov 11, 2015)

davparlr said:


> 4)	When Northrop got the contract, the first thought about themselves was that they only knew building small aircraft like the F-5 and hastily went out and scarfed up leaders from other companies that had large aircraft type programs, like Boeing. My opinion was that all these big shot brought in the worst of their own companies procedures. A confusing mess.


 That's the time I came on the program with Boeing as a floor inspector after getting laid off from Lockheed where I was a QA Engineer. It only wasn't the big shots but some of the assembly folks brought in by Boeing. It seemed that Boeing was bringing folks down from Seattle to "train" on the B-2 while they were being paid big money in per diem. If they "got good" they went back to Seattle to work on the 767 line. My lead was a former stock room clerk who gained his position because of seniority and knew almost nothing about aircraft, let alone building them. During the last week I worked at Palmdale, I almost got him fired because he was closing out redundant production paperwork (blue lines/ green lines, remember them?) by transferring inspection stamp numbers (mine was one of them) and forwarding them on to production control rather than having the paperwork properly deleted by Boeing planning. This idiot was double and sometimes triple billing the contract because of this. One of many "war stories" during my days on the B-2. My last day was on a Friday, layoffs begin that following Monday.


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## davparlr (Nov 12, 2015)

FLYBOYJ said:


> That's the time I came on the program with Boeing as a floor inspector after getting laid off from Lockheed where I was a QA Engineer. It only wasn't the big shots but some of the assembly folks brought in by Boeing. It seemed that Boeing was bringing folks down from Seattle to "train" on the B-2 while they were being paid big money in per diem. If they "got good" they went back to Seattle to work on the 767 line. My lead was a former stock room clerk who gained his position because of seniority and knew almost nothing about aircraft, let alone building them. During the last week I worked at Palmdale, I almost got him fired because he was closing out redundant production paperwork (blue lines/ green lines, remember them?) by transferring inspection stamp numbers (mine was one of them) and forwarding them on to production control rather than having the paperwork properly deleted by Boeing planning. This idiot was double and sometimes triple billing the contract because of this. One of many "war stories" during my days on the B-2. My last day was on a Friday, layoffs begin that following Monday.



Very interesting, but not surprising. Northrop also had its problems including empire building. When we were installing avionics on AV-1, we, the design engineers, were called in to "red line" wiring on the build drawings. Since the B-2 was supposed to be a "paperless" design, I immediately to went to review the wiring database. What I found was that there were five databases, each controlled by a different organization. When I reviewed these, none of these interfaced with any other. My equipment pin-outs did not match the destination pin-outs. Therefore, manual red-lines were required.

Also, later in the program when I was working the B-2 upgrade programs, responsible for designing and costing avionics upgrades, I quickly found out that Boeing was very expensive compared to Northrop. If we installed an avionic box in the aft equipment bay, owned by Boeing, it was significantly more expensive to the government than if we installed it in the front equipment bay, own by Northrop. Therefore we tried to install upgrades in the Northrop area. The minimum cost for a change to the Boeing area was one million dollars.


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## johnbr (Nov 13, 2015)

So this today.
https://news.yahoo.com/northrops-long-range-u-bomber-paused-protest-163612571--finance.html


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## FLYBOYJ (Nov 14, 2015)

johnbr said:


> So this today.
> https://news.yahoo.com/northrops-long-range-u-bomber-paused-protest-163612571--finance.html



That will just delay the start of the program, it's very commonplace for the loser of a US government contract bid to protest. What is hoped is during the review some error on the government side will be revealed and the award will be thrown out, the contract will then go out for re-bid.


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