"Alan Minyard" wrote in message
news
On 20 Nov 2003 05:39:14 GMT, 362436 (Ron) wrote:

This concept is
way beyond anything the US has concieved for the as-of-yet
undetermined B-3.

Rob


And how do you know what ideas our engineers, scientists and military
have come
up with, that makes them inferior to the EADS idea?

I somehow doubt LockMart, Boeing and Northrop include you in their
discussions
of designs and ideas.


Ron
Pilot/Wildland Firefighter

Herr Arndt is off in his fantasy land again. Airbus is not capable of
building a
B-2 equivalent, much less an aircraft "way beyond".

Al Minyard

It's certainly bombastic to claim that any nation's top-secret projects are
more advanced than another's. Although I know it's impossible to ever get Al
to admit that there's anything outside the USA except a howling wasteland,
filled with ghosts, an EADS study recently concluded that the construction
of a B-2 type aircraft in Europe was perfectly feasible, provided the
combined European governments were prepared to sink the nesessary $40
billion into the project.

The Technology on the B-2 is now fifteen years old, and much of the research
that went into it is now creeping into the public domain. Although DASA/EADS
have never produced a full-scale Low Observable aircraft, they have a strong
LO department that has produced a number of sub-scale test articles and
their research is certianly on par with much of the work done in the US.
It's also worth considering that much of the technology that was involved in
the B-2 was developed specifically for the Aircraft - Europeans are no
dumber than Americans, so there's no reason why they couldn't develop it
too.

In terms of constructing such a beast, many of the composite construction
technologies that are going into the construction of the A-380 are
identical, or more advanced, than those in the B-2. The title of world's
largest carbon composite component now belongs to the A-380's center wing
box.

In all honesty, the truth these days is that there is little requirement for
an Aircraft with the B-2's highly L-O capablities. Modern Bi-Static radar
systems, such as the one associated with the Russian SA-10/SA-12 system, are
capable of detecting, and more importantly, tracking the B-2 at intermediate
ranges (Especially in the rain!).

The best proof of this is that the current US Administration has tried six
ways from Sunday to find an excuse to order more B-2's, even to the point of
retiring a portion of the B-1 fleet to create a requirement, but in the end
even they've had to admit that they're far too expensive for what they do.
(And they've cut the numbers of retiring B-1's!)

Matt