JohnB wrote:
Apples & oranges....
The B-2 (or any modern aircraft) can do things the B-29 could only dream.
Imagine a F-14-15-16 over Korea...it's a fair guess that a lot of F-86 pilots would still be alive if they had the capability to destroy a MiG far beyond visual range. Or all the 105s lost trying to take out a bridge in North Vietnam...today, we'd send a cruise missile and forget it.
Again, one reason why the B-2 cost so much is they only built 21. If they built 21 B-29s intead of thousands, their unit price would have been much higher.
(To put it another way, Ford spent billions on the new Taurus...imagine them building only 21...they'd be a hundred tmes more expensive than a Rolls.)
Getting away from warplanes..back in the 70s a new Beech Baron as $100-150,000. A new one is about $1 million.
BUT the new one have avionics that bizjets and airliners didn't have in the 70s.
As far as a performance/price ratio...it would work only would work if we never had to face an enemy.
All the "other guy" would have to do is outspend you....
Had the original 132 B-2's foreseen by military planners been built, the unit cost would still have been over half a billion dollars per plane. They cost twice as much to maintain as any other strategic bomber in service. They are not a bargain, economies of scale notwithstanding. That being said, the argument is not without merit...had only 21 B-29's been built, they would've cost about as much as a B-2 in inflationary dollars.
I will not concede that the comparison is apples to oranges, though. It's expensive apples to oh-my-gosh-were-these-watered-with-unicorn-tears-or-something expensive apples. Both aircraft were designed to drop a bunch of high-explosive (or nukes) on a distant nation and come back in one piece. We live in a day and age when there are a lot of ways to do that. The B-2 tries to do it sneakily. That is what all that expensive extra tech is for. It can't fly higher or faster than modern air defenses, nor can it outrun a modern interceptor. (The B-29 could do both when it was built) It stays alive via stealth. When (not if) someone finds a way to defeat stealth tech, it will be as hastily retired as the B-29 was when it became obvious that jet powered fighters made it obsolete.
It is not a revolutionary weapon. It is just another high-tech strategic bomber that happens to cost 200 times more than a previous high-tech strategic bomber.
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
)
