Bombers and fighters are good, but America needs different stealth aircraft for 21st Century warfare

by Alex Hollings · July 3, 2018

The fielding of hypersonic anti-ship missiles by America’s competitors have created a pressing need for the U.S. military to adjust its peer warfare strategy.

America’s fleet of Nimitz and Ford class super carriers serve as the nation’s primary method of force projection the world over, but when held at bay a thousand miles from enemy territory by the anti-ship missile threat, these massive power houses of military force find themselves neutered by simple math. Carrier based aircraft simply don’t have the range to fly combat operations from that far out at sea.

About Alex Hollings

Alex Hollings writes on a breadth of subjects ranging from fitness to foreign policy, all presented through the lens of his experiences as a U.S. Marine, athlete and scholar. A football player, rugby player and fighter, Hollings has spent the better part of his adult life competing in some of the most physically demanding sports on the planet. Hollings possesses a master's degree in communications from Southern New Hampshire University, as well as a bachelor's degree in Corporate and Organizational Communications from Framingham State University.

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Antonio A
Bring pack an upgraded F14. They had the range.
Thomas S
Given the way stealth works currently, I don't know that it has a long term future for bombers. Well at least in terms of keeping the enemy from knowing that you're coming. It will have a longer life for being effective at making an aircraft harder to hit with a missile. Presently stealth aircraft reduce their signature to that of say a small bird. In the past that was enough to keep a radar station from being able to easily get a return and track you. Now, well it is possible to throw enough computing power at the data to separate all those "noise" signals and for a computer to say "hey, sparrows don't fly above 30,000 feet at 500 mph, let's tell the humans". Even intermittent momentary returns would be enough to say "hey, we have something off in this area". Yeah, 20+ years ago when much of this was being thought up for stealth it wasn't feasible to put such computing systems at a facility. These days reasonably small companies do that sort of data processing with really just a few small servers. I imagine as time goes on that only becomes easier.
Louis M
Once we know where these Hypersonic platforms are, couldn't we use current stealth long range bombers like the B1 and B2 to hit them? I always thought more along the lines of swimming a team of SOF in and blowing the fuckers up but that might be to risky.