If you’re at all blimp-aware, you’re certainly cognizant of the sudden demise of the U.S. Army’s Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System, provoked when one of the two JLACMDENSS blimps went rogue, accidentally shorting out the power to about 20,000 folks before being shot down over eastern Pennsylvania by state police, something Army officials had been unable to do for the past five years, thanks to effective lobbying by Raytheon Corp., aka “Blimps ‘R Us”.1
What really caught my eye regarding the JLACMDENSS fiasco, however, was this little nugget: while the Army failed to eliminate the program back in 2010, they did cut planned procurement from 16 blimps to 2, just as the Air Force cut procurement of the B-2 bomber from 132 to 21, a fact that acquires particular poignancy in light of the recent announcement that the Air Force has just awarded the $40 billion and counting contract for the B-2’s replacement, the B-3, to Northrup Grumman.
None of the accounts I have read of the Northrup Grumman contract award have mentioned that the new bomber’s past two predecessors, the B-1 and the B-2, have been out and out frauds on the American people. Even though the U.S. bought a hundred of them, the B-1bomber is not really a combat aircraft, because it can’t operate both its offensive and defensive weapons at the same time. The B-2 is so “sensitive” that it must be kept in special climate-controlled hangers. The real mainstay of the U.S. bomber fleet is the B-52, which can both attack a hot target and be left outside in the rain. The B-52, which went into production back in the 1950s, is the last big U.S. bomber that actually worked, perhaps because back in the 1950s we actually needed a long-range bomber.
The purpose of the B-3 contract is to begin renewal of America’s strategic “triad,” consisting of bombers, intercontinental land-based missiles, and intercontinental submarine-based missiles. Since the B-3 is both the cheapest and least necessary of the three (the missiles actually work), it’s not surprising that the Air Force wants to get it out of the way before people begin to wonder if we actually need the damn things. Which we don’t.
Afterwords
I’ve written previously about blimps here and bombers here.
Remarkably, the National Review, though constantly seeking new wars for the U.S. to fight (and constantly seeking new reasons to fault Obama for being a sissy), cast a very cold eye on the B-3 here
- According to Politico’s Austin Wright, “top Pentagon officials intervened — including then-Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman James Cartwright, who’s since made hundreds of thousands of dollars as a member of Raytheon’s board of directors. Cartwright on Wednesday declined to comment.” Oh, Austin. You bitch. ↩︎
