Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider (LRS-B)

Flight on the new rendering:
www.flightglobal.com

US Air Force releases rendering of B-21 Raider stealth bomber with unusual windows

The US Air Force (USAF) has released a new rendering of the Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider stealth bomber, showing an unusual window layout.
www.flightglobal.com www.flightglobal.com
They seem to think it means four windows, I think they're misinterpreting the shape of the forward window, which doesn't look remotely triangular to me given the four visible sides. IMO it's compatible with a wraparound front screen.

"“As with past renderings, this rendering is an artist’s interpretation of the B-21 design,” the USAF said on 6 July. The shape and configuration of the B-21 is highly sensitive as it influences the aircraft’s radar cross section.

This most-recent artist rendering differs from the second rendering, released in early 2020, in that the B-21’s cockpit windows are shown to be divided into multiple pieces: a triangle-shaped forward window and a diagonal parallelogram side window. The rendering only shows one side of the aircraft, but presumably the layout is the same on the opposite side, meaning the cockpit is made of four window pieces"
 
I retouched the photo a bit.
2xtrletoeq971.jpg
 
Yeah, the window configuration doesn't make sense to me if you think about visibility, I thought it would be very similar to the b-2
 
It would seem to suggest that there are some 'virtual cockpit' elements incorporated into the design.
 
shin_getter said:
In the grim darkness of laser weapons everywhere, all airplanes need window blinds!

How to design one to work under G forces across irregular transparent surfaces while providing very good seal against weapons level lasers is an exercise left for the reader~~
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If the object is to dazzle the pilot, a bit of irregularity won't matter.
 
shin_getter said:
In the grim darkness of laser weapons everywhere, all airplanes need window blinds!

How to design one to work under G forces across irregular transparent surfaces while providing very good seal against weapons level lasers is an exercise left for the reader~~
Click to expand...

Well, given the human eye doesn't penetrate much into the UV or IR wavebands, we can block those parts of the spectrum with coatings, and potentially selected parts of the visual spectrum as well - much as HUDs tend to be mirrors to green only.

The other option is to equip the pilots with HMDs and opaque visors and go for a virtual cockpit - there's no reason we can't feed any imagery from head-down displays onto the HMD instead and it still allows the old-fashioned out of the cockpit view as a reversionary mode

(As for physical blinds, there's no reason for them to follow the window geometry precisely, a flat screen will do just fine as long as it covers their full field of view)
 
You shouldn't be thinking dinky eye blinding lasers, but "would actually shoot down the aircraft if the shooter were closer and had more time lasers" with hundred(s) of kilowatts behind them. The power class is where highly hardened aircraft would be able to survive at closer ranges at longer period of time, not gain immunity. Half measures just don't cut it, good protection of critical vulnerabilities is needed.

That is what'd take to survive a 6th gen "close" engagement.
 
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flateric said:
BS
Windowless design will never pass military standards. Not talking of EMP or recent total success with boom cam on KC-46
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Absolutely. A dark parable among test pilots, I've read, is that the last words on a black box recorder are 'I've tried A, that didn't work; I've tried B, that didn't work' I'm going to try-' First, a test pilot takes that attitude and second, a good designer makes that possible.
 
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DWG said:
shin_getter said:
In the grim darkness of laser weapons everywhere, all airplanes need window blinds!

How to design one to work under G forces across irregular transparent surfaces while providing very good seal against weapons level lasers is an exercise left for the reader~~
Click to expand...

Well, given the human eye doesn't penetrate much into the UV or IR wavebands, we can block those parts of the spectrum with coatings, and potentially selected parts of the visual spectrum as well - much as HUDs tend to be mirrors to green only.

The other option is to equip the pilots with HMDs and opaque visors and go for a virtual cockpit - there's no reason we can't feed any imagery from head-down displays onto the HMD instead and it still allows the old-fashioned out of the cockpit view as a reversionary mode

(As for physical blinds, there's no reason for them to follow the window geometry precisely, a flat screen will do just fine as long as it covers their full field of view)
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The problem with that is, if we're going to block specific wavelengths, that only leaves other wavelengths as windows. There's also the consideration of the changing nature of warfare. Once upon a time, the enemy was 'way over there' but today, they might well be near the airbase and the enemy may have less strategic than paranoid motives (that is, they'll be unpredictable and not exclusively active during actual wartime - pre-war attrition is an appealing strategy, if you can get away with it). Takeoff and landing are an aircraft's most vulnerable times and psychopaths pointing lasers at civilian airliners are already a problem. Granted, the latest generation of recruits might be digital natives used to VR, but that can't be the sole mode of ... er, whatever - see my comment above on options A, B and C.
 
Rhinocrates said:
The problem with that is, if we're going to block specific wavelengths, that only leaves other wavelengths as windows.
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We already do this without issue. HUDs and HMDs block certain frequencies, usually green, so that they can write symbology in that frequency, using the surface of the combiner as a mirror in that frequency while leaving it transparent in other frequencies. Similarly gold coloured canopies are blocking certain frequencies in the yellow range, even if the intention is actually reducing the radar signature. And in the civilian sphere UV blocking is common in double glazing.
 
flateric said:
BS
Windowless design will never pass military standards. Not talking of EMP or recent total success with boom cam on KC-46
Click to expand...

While I don't necessarily disagree with the point, we have been teaching pilots to fly IFR by covering their canopy for most of a century, and AH-64 Apache pilots are actually trained for low-level combat in a blacked-out canopy to get them used to relying on the PNVS - so it's doable.
 
shin_getter said:
You shouldn't be thinking dinky eye blinding lasers, but "would actually shoot down the aircraft if the shooter were closer and had more time lasers" with hundred(s) of kilowatts behind them. The power class is where highly hardened aircraft would be able to survive at closer ranges at longer period of time, not gain immunity. Half measures just don't cut it, good protection of critical vulnerabilities is needed.

That is what'd take to survive a 6th gen "close" engagement.
Click to expand...
Yes, but the perfect is the enemy of the possible. The 'citadel' approach to naval armour was based on the principle that an invincible battleship would sink under its own weight, so it's best to design a ship that can stay afloat and keep shooting when the shopping mall is inaccessible. Does the laser have enough power available? Can it deliver that energy to the target in a usefully short time? Can you be assured of accomplishing a 'mission kill' - that is, preventing the enemy from accomplishing their mission - with greater certainty than a target kill? On the other hand, destroying an asset imposes an economic impact on the enemy which restricts their ability to field more assets, so perhaps you should hack the software running their factories instead of trying to roast their products.

Strategy, and at the higher level of doctrine and then at the practical level of design, imposes tradeoffs. You can't have everything, so what do you choose as your priority? An invincible battleship that consumes manufacturing resources that could be used versus more vulnerable but more rapidly available assets? A CH-53K that's excellent but too expensive to risk in combat? Ultimately, all design is about tradeoffs, costs, and margins. I don't pretend to have an answer, but I have to point out that these are what officials in charge of procurement and engineers engaged in design have to think about.

Moreover, when antagonists are realising the effectiveness of asymmetric warfare, 'dinky' weapons will be used by opponents who can't afford better. Like water, they will find fissures and leak through. In a sense, the USA and USSR won WWII through asymmetric means - superior production capacity versus wunderwaffen, such as Liberty ships versus U-boats, so raw economic power counts too (OK, I'm simplifying, and digressing...).
 
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The window is such a reliable, and simple and cheap (in all parameters) technology that is unlikely to be gone from aircraft. That said it can be a emergency backup system to electronic sensors, with it blocked most of the time in laser proliferated battlefields. This all is also still a decade away and retrofitting isn't a huge deal.

If "dueling lasers" ever become a thing, where lasers are using to counter lasers (by disrupting the atmosphere or blinding the shooter) one could potentially see mass laser adaption all the way down to individual missiles (blind the target to deny defeat its laser defense) and at that point uncovered windows in combat zones would be deadly. Masked redundant sensors may even become a common thing if it escalates.

One simply do not leave a weak point that can be defeated by 2 or more orders of magnitude less energy than hitting the airframe. Increasing effective enemy laser range by a factor of ten is dumb, when all it takes is just covering the thing.
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With some fringe logic it, it may not be that big of a vulnerability because with AI, the plane can fly itself with a blinded pilot but I'm sure this is not going to be accepted in the home front.
 
If only Stanislaw Lem was alive today. I found his speculations in The Invincible, Fiasco, and Peace on Earth fascinating. When we make warfare a mater of technology and doctrine, the evolution of techniques that exploit the fissures in these become all the more worthy of attention.
 
fightingirish said:
New CGI.
Look at the port side window. So IMHO I wouldn't take too much about the accuracy of this image.
https://twitter.com/x/status/1412481998086709248
View: https://twitter.com/rachelkaras/status/1412481998086709248?s=19
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The side windows are strange enough they probably reflect real features of whatever the concept artist was working from. Earlier concepts had a completely generic-looking cockpit. If there was no reason to change the artists would have continued with it.
 
Void said:
The side windows are strange enough they probably reflect real features of whatever the concept artist was working from. Earlier concepts had a completely generic-looking cockpit. If there was no reason to change the artists would have continued with it.
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Another possibility: the artist had a top view of the window layout to go with, but got the *contours* of the upper fuselage a little off. If the contours aren't quite right, and the top view diagrams is perhaps a little off, then the end result could be *really* goofy looking. Those windows look a *lot* like some windows I've gotten by projecting plan-view windows onto a fuselage that's modeled slightly "off."
 
Intake lips are V-shaped with internal lips being also planform aligned and having smooth transition to central fuselage behind/above side windows (you can see break on starboard inlet on 2016 rendering). On 2020 renderings internal lips look having 'beefy' edges unlike sharp outer ones. Intakes and inlet ducts are the most complicated shape on Raider.
 
I've seen a lot of speculation about the windows, could it simply be that viewed from front/below, the window follows the shadow of the leading edge? If the window is less subdued in RCS than the surrounding material, it may be advantageous to keep it behind the wing when viewed from the perspective of ground radar systems downrange or tangential to the front of the aircraft. Knowing that the airplane is shaped to fly very high, this may even be protective against airborne emitters.

Keeping in mind that signature reduction is as much about routes and aspect as it is a fundamental property of a lower observable airplane.
 
It might even just be that an eyelid was mentioned and the artist made for it as best as he/she could.
Such system won't surprise anyone given the proliferation of blinding laser around deployment airfields today.
This oblique geometry would in effect protect each pilots while climbing out of an airfield and provide enough side vision to give pilots some references. The blinded section would be open afterward clearing the opaque triangle on the picture b/w the side and front window.
 
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For comparison, the cockpit of a Vulcan.
 

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IMOHO banking only on two models that both will have to pass through their respective development phases is way too risky: aside of the novel B-21, the re-engining B-52 program is also not without risks. There is still a possibility that the airframe won't age on the same stable manner, thus could eventually go through a lot of new complications that would plague its modernisation for long (or even force an early retirement).
 
It makes perfect sense to retire one of your three existing bomber types as the new platform comes online. It appears the B-1 fleet would be first, as the fleet is worn out and hard to maintain already. There's a lot of savings to be had by retiring an entire class of aircraft.

As for the B-52 re-engine program, the new engines are basically one for one in terms of numbers and thrust. I'd think that was a very low risk program. Previous plans to replace the engines one for two were far more risky.
 
Josh_TN said:
It makes perfect sense to retire one of your three existing bomber types as the new platform comes online. It appears the B-1 fleet would be first, as the fleet is worn out and hard to maintain already. There's a lot of savings to be had by retiring an entire class of aircraft.
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And a lot of capability to be lost. The B-1B is the LAST of the three I'd want to retire, especially now that they're (supposedly) reactivating external hard points. If the B-21 is duplicating B-2 capability then retire the B-2. Both the B-1B and B-52 have capabilities the B-21 or B-2 do not.
 
sferrin said:
Josh_TN said:
It makes perfect sense to retire one of your three existing bomber types as the new platform comes online. It appears the B-1 fleet would be first, as the fleet is worn out and hard to maintain already. There's a lot of savings to be had by retiring an entire class of aircraft.
Click to expand...

And a lot of capability to be lost. The B-1B is the LAST of the three I'd want to retire, especially now that they're (supposedly) reactivating external hard points. If the B-21 is duplicating B-2 capability then retire the B-2. Both the B-1B and B-52 have capabilities the B-21 or B-2 do not.
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I'm merely stating what appears to be USAF's decision. It appears the B-1 will be retired first due to maintenance issues, even though the B-2 fleet is smaller and is a closer match to the B-21 in capability. That said, I don't know what the B-1 brings to the table other than greater payload. It is barely supersonic at high altitude and I've seen it posted before that the current racks/bays aren't cleared for supersonic carriage anyway. There are also a lot of turbulence/separation issues with smaller weapons in the back bay(s).

The USAF teased the idea of updated the B-1s to use hard points but I personally never though they'd ever spend the money to do so, particularly when they had to retire over a dozen of the worst examples to keep the rest of the fleet flying.
 
Josh_TN said:
sferrin said:
Josh_TN said:
It makes perfect sense to retire one of your three existing bomber types as the new platform comes online. It appears the B-1 fleet would be first, as the fleet is worn out and hard to maintain already. There's a lot of savings to be had by retiring an entire class of aircraft.
Click to expand...

And a lot of capability to be lost. The B-1B is the LAST of the three I'd want to retire, especially now that they're (supposedly) reactivating external hard points. If the B-21 is duplicating B-2 capability then retire the B-2. Both the B-1B and B-52 have capabilities the B-21 or B-2 do not.
Click to expand...

I'm merely stating what appears to be USAF's decision. It appears the B-1 will be retired first due to maintenance issues, even though the B-2 fleet is smaller and is a closer match to the B-21 in capability. That said, I don't know what the B-1 brings to the table other than greater payload. It is barely supersonic at high altitude and I've seen it posted before that the current racks/bays aren't cleared for supersonic carriage anyway. There are also a lot of turbulence/separation issues with smaller weapons in the back bay(s).

The USAF teased the idea of updated the B-1s to use hard points but I personally never though they'd ever spend the money to do so, particularly when they had to retire over a dozen of the worst examples to keep the rest of the fleet flying.
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Knowing how fickle government is, I'm sure it's difficult to give up any capability or capacity. I expect DoD is feeling the same way. Yet, Congress must be told something.

Quite frankly, I am most interested in seeing news of what is being planned to increase Raider production rates. It seems that new tools will streamline testing and allow this plane to get to IOC far more quickly than we've seen in the past. I'd like to hear how a squadron per year might be achieved.
 

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