Also, the NGLRB will be able to haul tons over great distances as well as survive a high-threat environment we do not yet control.
Fighting your way in is costly. Gulf War I proved the effectiveness of smart targeting, smart weapons and LO platforms to deliver the effects. That is what the NGLRB will deliver. With NGLRB there will be no need for hundreds of aircraft to support the deep strike. Talk about cost, hundreds of aircraft that are engaged in a fight, cost to men and the mission is very high. Why do that when a NGLRB would be able to operate alone and go deep?
We have the “dump truck” (the F-15E and B-52). The B-52 is old and needs replacing, but in the times of small budgets you simply cannot afford to build a single-mission jet. No way.
Sorry, makes no sense to build dump trucks when they can't get to the target unless supported by hundreds of sorties (if not thousands over a day or so to make way) and or saturation of the skies.
Besides, you, as a pilot, would YOU want to fly the dump truck, knowing you are shining like a flashlight in the dark, easy to spot and shoot-down? Imagine this conversation: “Yeah, Captain, we know, we could have bought the good stuff and been as good as we can be and you could be going in there and no one would be the wiser, but we decided to buy dump trucks so we could be only as good as the threat and overwhelm them with numbers. Anyway, group with your buddies and play the odds.”
The NGLRB is not based on B-2 technology any more than, say, the F-22 is based upon wright-brother technology. I wager you have not seen the AOA and have no real knowledge of the direction the platform is taking. I have. Not to play a game with you, not my point as anyone can claim anything on the net. I am just pointing out that the NGLRB will not be what you think it will be. . . it will be lots better.
The A-10 is popular because it can deliver ordinance in a tactical environment and affect the immediate tactical battle. Multiple passes are needed in the CAS environment, not the deep strike environment, and take a look at what happened to the A-10’s when they went “deep into Indian country” in Gulf War I. Not pretty.
Our targeting is to achieve effects, not to bounce rocks. . .no matter how satisfying that is. Why blow up each cantonment area when dropping a single bridge or two cuts them off, takes them out of the fight? Less exposure to the threat, less risk to the pilots and aircraft, more effective in stopping the threat. We are smarter than the enemy, no matter who he is.
You fly each sortie in support of a specific objective, and objective that can trace it lineage up to the over-all pol-mil objective, and bouncing rocks is not one of them.
While the B-52 , B-1 and B-2 were designed as strategic bombers, dropping a JDAM on a suspected Al-Queda meeting in a small village is not a “conventional” strategic mission.
Unless you are planning on bombing China or Russia, most of the worlds Air Forces are toast within 72 hours of the US beginning ops against them. And initial strikes are usually B-2’s, Cruise Missiles and F-117’s these days. Follow ons are F-15’s F-18’s ect. Then we tend to stay in a country for at least a decade.. ( see bosnia, iraq ,afghanistan, germany, japan, korea, vietnam, puerto rico ect..)Where we rule the skies. And if you remember in afghanistan, it was b-52 dumb iron that broke the taliban’s back when the northern front was advancing with special ops assistance.