It’s always fun reading the opinions of arm chair engineers and scientists who don’t have one tenth of the information at the Pentagon or the people designing these systems. I’m not saying they’re always right, but a hypersonic bomber is one of the dumbest ideas I’ve read about, at least in the manned classic sense. In fact, we already have hypersonic bombers, they’re called ICBMs.
Second, the B-21’s payload is perfect for it’s mission it doesn’t need to carry more. A larger payload means a larger aircraft which means an easier to detect aircraft and fewer assets. The Pentagon wants more distributed assets, that can search out larger areas, in combination, apparently, with RQ-180s and other systems. A distributed system with many smaller nodes is more robust than a system with fewer larger nodes. I realize that doesn’t appeal to the fanboy cool looking stuff in all of us (Myself included), but that isn’t what determines the system should be. I mean, hypersonic? They went from supersonic to subsonic just on the huge cost differential between those two systems. Remember, the system difference isn’t just the airframe, it’s all of the other systems required to make it work. Thermal, targeting, ECS, Maintenance, etc.
I know nobody wants to hear this, but UCAVs and missiles (the hypersonic part of combat) are the future of air combat. There will be manned systems with them to help manage the battle, but given the current state of technology, the human limits what is possible and the military is intent on removing that limitation as much as possible.
