The B-1B Lancer bomber already carries more weapons than any of its counterparts. But officials are exploring the possibility of adding a cannon to its arsenal.
Boeing Co. has been granted a patent for a cannon that could enhance the aircraft's ability to take on more close-air support roles. The patent, U.S. 9,963,231 B2, shows various mounts for the gun, which would retract into the aircraft's belly.
The company is exploring the possibility of mounting different types of weapons. "A weapon may include or correspond to a machine gun, a chain gun, a cannon, an autocannon, a rail gun, a projectile firing device, or a laser weapon," the patent states.
"By mounting the weapons system within a weapons bay, the aircraft may operate at supersonic speeds when the weapons system is retracted, extended, or both," it continues. "By including a weapons system on board an aircraft, functionality of the aircraft may increase and the aircraft may gain additional capabilities. For example, a bomber may be able to provide close-air support or better support ground troops."
I just want to see this thing carpet bomb somethign then jdam carpetbomb a lot of nearby targets.
Juan Wood
The only way to make a rail gun cooler is let it travel at two times the speed of sound. I support this fully.
Angel Edwards
Instead of bombing they should just mount 10 mini guns in the belly pointed down and fly at the altitude where you maximize bullet spread but still have lethality
Benjamin Rivera
> Laser on a B-1B
I need a physics professor's new house and a shitton of popcorn.
Logan Peterson
C'mon, OP.
Julian Ward
>Supersonic close air support heavy attack bomber with laser guns. I kind of can see it? >loitering offshore with some kc-10s >cas requested >supersonic penetration of enemy airspace >diving in from 30k and blasting targets with weapons bay turbo lasers >circle back and provide mortar/rocket laser interception as well antipersonnel laser incineration with on ground networked sensor detection auto acquire and engage from belt mounted articulating laser platform >rocket back to 30k feet and line up on a tank column that is exciting a mountain pass, turbo laser thier hull shields until they melt and f-35s finish them with cluster munitions (lol). Extend B1 shelf life past 2060, such a beautiful machine deserves to cause hell for as long as it can.
Because it turns out that since it's not the 18th century people don't walk in massed columns
Luis Bailey
Not enough ppsh
Jackson Morales
You may not like it, but this is what peak Russian engineering looks like.
Jacob Ross
>B1-B is a disastrous pile of shit that costs huge amounts of money to operate false
Dylan Kelly
Puff the magic dragon is shiny now
Lincoln Foster
I have no idea how I went my entire life never, ever seeing a b-1.
Something is suspicious as fuck about this. The look of it is all wrong for being so, umm, "old". The wrapping, the little wings attached to it (which is something I have ONLY seen on the MQ-25 DRONE) and the swept back wings.
It does look a lot like the U2 but still. Where the fuck did this come from?
B1-B is best jet. The right amount of thicc F-15 little sister is acceptable too
Blake Robinson
For some reason the B-1 just does not get very much love in the media. It's been an important part of the Air Force lineup since the 1980s and have filled a fairly big role in every US war since that time, but I don't think I've ever seen one in a movie or video game. That might be because of its looks, as it's sleek and sexy in a way that does not say "this is a bomber plane that bombs thing", so the layman might not immediately see it as such the way they would with a B-52.
why am I so fucking suspicious of this fucking plane. Like it's hiding something, something they aren't telling us.
The back of it is also FUCK HUGE and not in a "the bomb-bay is in it's ass" kind of way either. Like it has a secret engine back there. And seeing how far ahead the crew is from it (while all other bombers tend to be bunched up flying wings) that secret engine may very well be nuclear.
I want to say it's a nuclear bomber but I DON'T FUCKING KNOW WHY I AM SO GOD DAMN SUSPICIOUS OF THIS FUCKING THING.
The design of it's hull with the placement of those engines. It looks like a fucking falcon, as if the wings would fold allll the way back so it could do some kind of dive bomb from outer space. The neck is shaped like a king fisher, which again, is another bird that evolved to be able to dive at incredibly speeds and go slamming into water at speed. Which, if you had a plane that needed to re-enter earth atmo at fucking 20MILES/s then yeah, copying the king fisher would be a good idea.
I've never seen them in any magazines, books, documentaries, games, movies, internet (until recently), or annyythinnnnggg.
Now it's fucking everywhere.
Brandon Clark
My dad worked on it. It's not a nuclear powered plane.
Luke Butler
this is a waste of a good aircraft. the largest 155 artillery shell is well shy of 100lbs, much smaller than any of the bombs the B1 can carry.
I doubt they can fit a 155 in there anyways
Nicholas Morris
>I have no idea how I went my entire life never, ever seeing a b-1 >I've never seen them in any magazines, books, documentaries, games, movies, internet (until recently), or annyythinnnnggg. You're from the Bowling Green Massacre timeline, aren't you?
Lucas Hill
MORE DAKKA!
Christian Edwards
>all other bombers tend to be bunched up flying wings That's literally one other bomber. The B-1 isn't all that unique, both among equivalent bombers and civilian plane designs- it basically looks like an extra big extra sexy private jet.
and future drones, and other experimental planes all tend to be flying wings. And the other, smaller bombers, are a lot more dense looking. The f-35 LOOKS like a kestrel. The b-2 looks like an owl. The mq-25, the f-117.
Long, sleek bombers are planes of yesteryear.
And the thing you posted also has the king fisher nose. That thing though, look at it. It LOOKS like an f-14 tomcat.
The b-1 doesn't fit the aesthetic from the decade it came from.
I just don't trust it.
Xavier Williams
Wing geometry may vary but my love never will.
Evan Ortiz
>The b-1 doesn't fit the aesthetic from the decade it came from. ...The same decade as the F-14?
Josiah Wright
of literally any other plane.
It doesn't look like the U2, Blackbird, F-117, F-14, f-16, f-18, B52, V-bombers, Valkyrie, B-2, fucking anything. The wrapping makes it look far more modern than anything else. It looks closer to an f-22, f-35, and DRONES than anything else.
It looks like a drone.
It's a drone bomber. IT'S SOMETHING THAT SOMEONE ISN'T TELLING ME AND I DON'T TRUST IT.
Easton Cooper
You are just wrong. You need to do deeper research and look at concept designs going forward and backward two decades from 1980. The design of the B1 has clear riots in other known concepts and is carried through into other things. It is perfectly a creature of its time. Pic related is from the design study for the Advanced Manned Strategic Aircraft (AMSA) program from the mid 1960s.
You're not going to tell me about this subject. I can assure you, my eye is better than yours.
Daniel Cruz
>take F-14 >scale up >add U-2 paint
Aiden Myers
You eye can be whatever you want. You don't know your facts. You dont even know how the design was arrived at and why. You are pushing some /x/ narative that the B1 is somehow way too advanced for its design to make sense when it rolled out. You sound very uneducated about the history of aircraft design and your lack of manners confirms you are not a gentleman and certainly not a scholar as you have proven.
Jonathan Mitchell
She has to be nuclear. That's all there is to it. There is no other reason for that plane to fucking exist. We already had bombers that can do the mission of a regular ass bomber. She would have been the PERFECT time to build such a plane. Starting development at he height of the Cold War, right when we are in the need of a new bomber (b-2) and they went two different ways with it.
It's nuclear. It is 100% a nuclear bomber. As in, nuclear powered. The wrapping isn't for stealth, it's not RAM, it's a covering for the reactor. A lightweight shielding for radioactive material.
She's a nuclear powered bomber.
Mason White
>paint I don't think you fucking know what paint looks like. Or the u2.
DOD and Navy go home. I have higher clearance than you do.
Aaron Lopez
13 year olds in the Jow Forums again.
Christopher Cooper
>There is no other reason for that plane to fucking exist. Its niche is "goes fast", which neither the B-2 nor the B-52 do.
Jordan Richardson
I lived near Ellsworth AFB for a few years. Stupid things were always farting about like a damn plague. You just didn't bother to look around apparently.
Ryder Flores
Your paintball club membership isn't a clearance, and the B1s design hasn't been classified for over 50 years.
Angel Turner
So it carries jet engines and hundreds of thousands of pounds of fuel to keep everyone fooled right? Right?
Parker Russell
You are either twelve years old or fucking retarded. If you really want to feel retarded you could hop on over to Rapid City and go look at the B1's fucking about all damn day over the city. Hell they have one of the fuckers on a post out front of the base that they stuck there after it ran off the end of the runway in the 1980's. I'm pretty certain if it was even borderline radioactive they wouldn't have even its carcass on a stick about fifty feet from a Domino's Pizza.
Charles Hall
actually, yes. They were made big and loud to make people think that's what was flying it.
In the same way an architect will surround a buildings actual support with an empty shell. It's psychological.
What's going to blow your mind is that the pilots aren't there either. It's a drone. It's a long range, long-term-mission nuclear powered heavy drone bomber.
God home DoD you're drunk.
Jaxon Gray
>Private Pisschenko start loading the magazines
Jeremiah Cook
Obviously, ignoring the fact they never managed to get an airborne reactor small enough to fit into his imagined 'reactor space' you suddenly have an aircraft that in his mind is supposed to be lugging around four jet engines and like 10,000 gallons of fuel just for funsies, at a height of a few hundred feet.
Clearly he is either the smartest man in the world, or he wears a helmet and special clothes. I know what I'm leaning towards.
Christopher Baker
>It's a long range, long-term-mission nuclear powered heavy drone bomber. No, that was a different program.
You're a dumb faggot who wants to feel important. >U2 50s >Blackbird Also 50s >F-117 70s and first of its kind designed for a vastly different role. >F-14 Swing wing just like the B-1 >F-16 HURR SINGLE SEAT LIGHTWEIGHT MULTIROLE DOESNT LOOK LIKE A FUKHUEG BOMBER WITH 4X THE ENGINES AND 8X THE PAYLOAD
>F-18 Same as F-16
>B-52 Late 40s design
>V Bombers Same
>XB-70 Why doesn't a high altitude bomber designed in the 60s look like a low altitude bomber designed in the 70s? The world may never know
>B-2 See F-117 and add a decade or subtract three for the B-35 and 49
>Fucking anything Not including Tu-160 or F-111
>Looks far more modern Looks.
>It looks like a drone Any proof? You look like a fag.
Also the little canards are to keep it from beating the pilots up at low altitude.
Chase Walker
kill yourself nigger
James Richardson
Which is why a farmer was able to drive out to a crash site and ask the pilots what was going on and then live to tell the tale, right?
Nathan Myers
>mfw I'm a 13F imagining calling for fire with an air-mounted rail gun
Swing-out railguns on B-1s Massive spinal railguns on A-10s Rapid fire railguns onna Spooky And all of them get supplementary laser turrets for anti-missile defense
Jose Lewis
It was Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, but I definitely understand if you didn't play it.
Samuel Myers
Ace Combat: Assault Horizon
Oliver Roberts
Its not in movies because they can't keep them running long enough to get footage of them.
These things are maintenance nightmares. Always have been.
See It was in a movie featuring this very idea of a mounted weapon a looong time ago, it's just not the new hot shit, nobody cares about it. I thought it had gone out of service years ago, but it's still lurking, waiting, plotting.
it was in the Transformers movie where they blow up the pyramid too.
Blake Baker
mmmm, stupid sexy backfire
its strange that it's the same size as B-1, but in fact it's more like an overgrown aardvark
Evan Ramirez
>mounting guns on a bomber that extends out of the bomb bay Just go all the way and have a retractable gun/missile rack in the bomb bay.
>reach area of operation >open bomb bay >extend down gun/missile rack >need missiles? Choose your targets, arm the missiles, drop em off >need CAS? Fire away with guns, bonus points if artillery guns are mounted on it >empty all guns and missiles, retract the rack >climb and gtfo
Carson Jones
>random canards
I fucking hate artists that try to "stealthify" planes.
I learned about them from a popular mechanics article years ago but yeah as far as entertainment media anything larger than a fighter but smaller than a b-52 kinda gets ignored
Adrian Powell
Why would you need any of this bullshit when the A-10 is still the absolute king of close air support? Huge amount of payload + armour + brrrrrrrrrttt = unbeatable.
I'm still in the camp that we need the A-10 but it has definite disadvantages. It's slow, short-ranged and very vulnerable once you have MANPADS in play. Turns out armor is a really poor substitute for not getting hit.
Jordan Gutierrez
I've seen one in person at an airshow on eglin afb. Sexy af desu