As we all know, the United States is a country that is very good at showing off its military power, and all kinds of posing and ** abound. Just recently, the United States staged a B2 Bomber Elephant Walk at Wiseman Air Force Base in Missouri, with eight B2 bombers taking off off off from the runway in turn. Since the United States currently has 20 B2 bombers in active service, these 8 bombers are equivalent to 40% of the B2 bombers. On the surface, the B2 bomber seems to be very advanced and powerful, but in fact, the B21 bomber, which will be unveiled in the near future, will replace the B2 bomber in the future. Speaking of which, many netizens will have questions, isn't the B2 bomber the most advanced bomber in the world at present, why should it be retired?
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The B2 bomber is an advanced stealth bomber developed by Northrop Grumman in the United States, with the purpose of providing the U.S. Air Force with a low-detectability subsonic super bomber that can penetrate the enemy's tight air defense system for ground strikes. It is completely different from the penetration method of the B1B and Tu-160 and Tu-22M series supersonic bombers, which also points out the direction of development of advanced bombers.
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The B2 bomber first flew on July 17, 1989, that is, it had made its first successful flight 33 years ago, and the official service time was in April 1997, and it has been 25 years until today. In terms of service and first flight, it is an aircraft that is a little older than the F22, so it also has many inherent problems with the advanced aircraft of that era. There is no doubt about the advanced and powerful nature of the B2 bomber itself, its normal take-off weight is 152 tons, and the take-off weight is more than 170 tons, and the payload is as high as 23 tons. Although it is inferior to the B52 bomber and B1B bomber of the U.S. Air Force in terms of absolute take-off weight and bomb load, the unit manufacturing cost of the B2 bomber is as high as 2.1 billion US dollars because of the stealth design and stacking high technology, which is not counting the development cost after the amortization.
It is precisely because of the early development time that many advanced equipment on the B2 bomber body are extremely expensive, and the maintenance cost is much higher than that of the ancient B52 bomber. The United States also began to upgrade the B2 bomber shortly after the B2 bomber entered service, including new data links and communication equipment, etc., and the B2 bomber was gradually able to use other new munitions.
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However, after more than 20 years of service in the B2, the United States has a new plan, that is, to develop a new stealth strategic bomber. As mentioned earlier, the B2 bomber was in service in 1997, according to the development interval of the American bomber during the Cold War, the US Air Force will receive a new bomber in 2010, but because the threat of the end of the Cold War has dropped significantly, so the troika has also been in service until now.
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The reason why the United States wants to develop the B21 bomber is actually mainly aimed at the problems existing in the B2 bomber. Although the B2 bomber is advanced enough, its cost of construction and use is very high, and a small accident has to pay a very high price for maintenance. Although the B52 bomber is very old, after a long period of upgrades, its own avionics system is still quite excellent. It can be said that in addition to the stealth ability and flight performance are inferior to the B2, the B52 not only does not have a disadvantage in terms of use, but also has its advantages. The design of the other B1B bomber itself is more complicated, especially the design of the variable sweep wing, plus it has been around for a long time, and there is not much life left, and the low-altitude supersonic penetration is gradually useless, so it is indeed time to replace it. The advanced B21 bomber developed by the United States can actually be understood as a more advanced but also more compact low-cost advanced bomber, with a unit price of only 800 million US dollars, but it is ahead of the B2 bomber in terms of core technology.
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According to the current plan of the US Air Force, about $20 billion will be spent in the next few years to produce the new B21 bomber. Although the United States has not disclosed the specific number of equipment, judging from some of the information summarized so far, the final number of equipment should be around 150, which means that the B1B and B2 bombers will be completely replaced by the B21 bombers. In the future, the U.S. Air Force strategic bomber formation will be composed of B52 and B21 bombers, in essence, the attack capability has been significantly improved, while the overall maintenance and use costs have been greatly reduced, which is also in line with the current development direction of the U.S. Air Force.
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In fact, the U.S. Air Force once wanted to develop a truly advanced bomber, which can be understood as a super bomber that is more powerful and advanced than B2 developed by integrating all the essence of the United States. But the US Department of Defense believes that this new bomber is too expensive, and that future wars will not need such a sophisticated bomber, which is why the B21 bomber does not look as powerful as the B2 bomber. The United States is ambitious to build a strategic force of more than 200 bombers, and if all the B1B bombers and B2 bombers are decommissioned, the United States can basically meet the needs of the United States with about 150 B21 bombers and 76 B52 bombers. So don't look at the United States still using B2 bombers to show off its might, but in fact, the time for B2 bombers is really running out.
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