The Lockheed Martin FB-22 was a proposed supersonic stealth bomber aircraft for the United States Air Force, derived from the F-22 Raptor air superiority fighter. Lockheed Martin proposed its design in the early 2000s with support from certain Air Force leaders as an interim "regional bomber" to complement the aging U.S. strategic bomber fleet, whose replacement was planned to enter service after 2037. The FB-22 was to leverage much of the design work and components from the F-22 to reduce development costs. Lockheed Martin suspended work on the concept following the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review, which called for a new and much larger strategic Next-Generation Bomber by 2018; this program had morphed into the Long Range Strike Bomber.
Background
In March 1999, the Air Force released a Long Range Bombers white paper in response to a Congressional mandate for the service to update its bomber roadmap. The paper stated that the service's current fleet of strategic bombers consisting of the B-52, B-1, and B-2 would be sufficient until around 2037, when they will need to be replaced by a new "capability" with an acquisition program starting in 2019. However, this target date frustrated members of Congress who hoped to see greater budgetary emphasis on the bomber mission. Furthermore, the subsequent 2001 Department of Defense (DoD) Quadrennial Defense Review identified increasing threats to U.S. power projection, and the Air Force's aging bomber fleet. One of the key threats identified by the review was the increasing prevalence of sophisticated air defense systems which could deny airspace access to any aircraft without stealth capability. In November 2001, the Air Force released an updated white paper on Long Range Strike Aircraft, which acknowledged these challenges and also anticipated a strategic shift from nuclear deterrence to conventional precision bombing and network-centric warfare for global power projection in potentially unexpected conflict zones. Although the updated paper identified the possibility of a replacement "capability" entering service in the 2025 to 2030 timeframe, it cautioned that this was not an in-depth or detailed bomber roadmap. Against this backdrop, some Air Force officials began considering an "interim" strike capability such as "regional bombers" to complement the existing fleet of strategic bombers while the service and the DoD explored ideas and timelines for a longer term replacement program.
Design and development In 2001, Lockheed Martin began internal studies on the feasibility of the FB-22 as the company sought to leverage the design and capabilities of the F-22 Raptor, the result of the Advanced Tactical Fighter program. The studies primarily focused on the ability to survive and perform bombing missions (i.e. air interdiction) in contested environments, in both day and night, against increasingly capable air defense systems and adversary fighter aircraft. Furthermore, experience gleaned from Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan also demonstrated the value of a bomber that could reach targets quickly and remain in theatre in the absence of surface-to-air missiles. The F-22, while designed as an air superiority fighter, embodied some degree of air-to-ground attack ability through precision strikes with Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM), with further strike capability improvements planned with upgrades. Though initially unsolicited, the studies attracted the attention of several Air Force leaders, including Secretary of the Air Force James Roche in 2002. One primary objective of the internal studies was to exploit and further expand upon the F-22's high speed air-to-ground capability while keeping costs to a minimum. To this end, the company devised several concepts that saw significant structural redesigns with respect to the fuselage and wings, while retaining much of the F-22's mission system avionics. With an early design later designated FB-22-1, Lockheed Martin lengthened and widened the fuselage to increase the internal weapons load; another design, the FB-22-2, had a stretched mid-fuselage for increased main bay capacity and featured an enlarged delta wing with greater leading edge sweep angle while the horizontal tails (stabilators) were removed. However, it was later found that doing so would have incurred a cost penalty of 25–30% in weight, materials and development. Instead, the company subsequently focused on leaving the fuselage intact as much as possible while enlarging the diamond-like delta wing with the same sweep angles as the F-22.
Several proposals in this vein were investigated. The FB-22-3 used the stock fuselage with enlarged delta wings and no stabilators, while the FB-22-4 was similar to -3 but with maximal wing whose leading edge met with the upper edge of the caret inlet. The FB-22-4's maximal wing, which was around three times that of the F-22, enabled the storage of a much larger quantity of weapons and fuel. In addition, as a stealth bomber, the FB-22 was designed to carry weapons externally while maintaining stealth with the assistance of detachable and faceted pods dubbed "wing weapons bay"; previously, an aircraft could only remain stealthy if it carried its weapons internally. Various figures give the payload of the FB-22 to be 30 to 35 Small Diameter Bombs; this is compared to the F-22's payload of eight of such 250-pound (110 kg) weapons. The main weapon bay doors would also be bulged to allow internal carriage of 2,000-pound (910 kg) bombs in the fuselage. By employing the wing weapons bay, the FB-22 was designed to be able to carry bombs up to 5,000 pounds (2,270 kg) in size such as the GBU-37 GPS-Aided Munition (GAM) or two 2,000-pound bombs in tandem. With stealth, the aircraft's maximum combat load was to have been 15,000 pounds (6,800 kg); without stealth, 30,000 pounds (13,600 kg).
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
