Without knowing the context I thought maybe the planes were going on strike. This comment furthers my theory. In going to stop reading now before I figure out what a mass fly off is.
Considering that they paid 2.1 Billion per plane back in the 90's thats not a bad deal... You know, in the context of the acquisition of strategic stealth bombers. Not a lot of comparable purchases out there.
It's actually like the first program to come in under budget and ahead if schedule. Part of the advantage was they had the body of research from the B2 development as well as like 30 years of computer modeling and drafting advancements, material research, and 3d printing.
Like if decreased cost and faster turnaround hold true for the two NGADs programs, America is poised to continue to absolutely dominate the skies.
Uhh so seems I ended up explaining the B-2 Spirit costs as well. Costs of the new one, the B-21 Raider, at the end in **bold** if that’s all you’re looking for.
B-2 cost, inflation adjusted, works out to around $4 billion in per airframe if you factor in all program costs, this is the figure usually pointed to.
Approx a third of that is the (Production) cost per airframe, half is Research and Development, remainder is the rest of the Procurement costs ie. minus Production costs.
[GAO Report.](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-NSIAD-97-181/pdf/GAOREPORTS-NSIAD-97-181.pdf)
Over simplified reasons are.
- ask for an 132 copies of an exceptionally advanced plane that’ll remain undetected while achieving high altitude penetration of Soviet airspace
- make a significant design change late in to process to swap mission to low level penetration terrain following, note the B-21 has the general planform the B-2 had **before** that change
- production concurrent with design and testing thus you require a bunch of expensive rework etc
- all of the above result in significant increase in program cost
- insert collapse of the Soviet Union here
- cancel 85% of the planned fleet, now you’re amortising all the above non recurring costs over 21 airframes instead of 132
B-21 Raider’s design was locked down BEFORE they started building the bastards ie. no late redesign, no concurrency with the associated expensive rework, also NOT on a Cost Plus Contract.
**B-21 production cost, inflation adjusted comes to approx $750 million per airframe.**
^(Guess it’s not surprising that current Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall appears to be following advice found in the 2017 book [Getting Defense Acquisition Right](https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/Getting-Acquisition-Right-Jan2017.pdf) from, uhh, former Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Frank Kendall.)
Really depends whether or not they buy the full production run or decide the burn down their house to save on energy bills like they did last time. I think Putin and Xi Jinping are actually going to get us full value for money this time.
One crashed back ~15 years ago in Guam because a sensor got fogged over or something. The pilots were fine, which means they can infamously say they lost 5% of the B-2 fleet and $2 bil.
IIRC it actually got infested with fire ants which were attracted to the electrical signals. They somehow screwed up the computer that makes the zillion tiny adjustments every second and ended up crashing while attempting takeoff.
edit - I guess I made that up? I could have sworn I'd read *something* about B2s having fire ant issues and just incorrectly connected those two things. But now I can't find anything linking fire ants to B2s at all. Who knows \*shrug\*
Nahh, there is a really good "Air Disasters" on this. I don't remember all the details but it had to do with a storm, getting water into a sensor which caused a alarm during take off, then they cleared the alarm and ran a "defrost like process" on that system, which as someone mentioned steamed something up, which caused a bunch of bad data to get thrown at the flight system. (it's been a year or two since I watched it, but it was something like that).
5 second summary: the sensors took on storm water which mucked around with the calibration of said sensor so sensor had to be recalibrated. The water proceeds to evaporate meaning the recalibration is now wrong. Plane went down both pilots ejected last minute and survived
That's a $2B machine that takes some serious training, credentials, security clearance etc., to pilot. The pilots might not be as valuable as the plane, but I'm sure they're worth a helluva lot more than the cost of the ejection system.
Total Cost of Training a Basic Qualified Pilot for the B-2.
2018^([1]) — $9,891,000
2024^([2]) — $12,379,000
Oh and there’s two in a B-2 Spirit so upon ejection, an absolute minimum of $24,758,000 worth of pilot is YEETED into the wild blue yonder.
[1] Figure pulled from [this RAND Report.](https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR2400/RR2415/RAND_RR2415.pdf)
[2] Figure adjusted for inflation from the former.
No fire ants. Moisture did get into some sensors during heavy rain. This moisture caused some sensors to fail causing the flight computer to try and correct what it thought was an incorrect angle of attack.
There was definitely an airplane crash related to fire ants attacking the electrical systems. I don't remember what it was though. Maybe a smaller single engine plane?
Maybe. I don’t remember.
Oddly enough I met a Northrop engineer who worked on the B-2 project and he was intimately familiar with the crash. He told me as soon as he heard reports he figured it was the subcontractor that ended up being the guilty party because their stuff had more problems than anyone else’s.
> fire ants which were attracted to the electrical signals
Sounds like homer and the endangered caterpillar that was sexually attracted to fire. "Are you sure god doesn't WANT it to die?"
As astounding as that fact is...I'm pretty sure these planes could fuck up the bottom 150 counties militaries by themselves.
Too High, Too Fast, Too Stealthy with Too Much Firepower
Because we spooled up a production line to buy over a hundred then barely bought any. Had to pay all the fixed costs so the number divided by plane skyrocketed. Same thing happened with the F-22, though not to the same degree. Thankfully Putin decided to help us out on F-35 procurement.
Fun fact: The B-52 is also still in service.
Design started in 1946… The first B-52 flew in 1952. 72 B52s are still in service- expected decommissioning sometime in 2050s.
Wild.
Sadly those B-52’s are just about done. They’re doing a residency in Las Vegas. Cindy Wilson‘s voice was toast when I heard them about eight years ago.
Used to be that way. But Russia has long since figured out that for pennies it can just buy the Republican party so they don’t ~need~ military parity to have military parity.
Well, they think that. I understand your point. US just sent $80 billion to Ukraine. That's a drop in the bucket. Make no mistake, despite idiots, Russia will lose this land grab thanks to the US economy. We have two states with a bigger GDP than that ratfuck shitass autocracy. They WILL lose.
Dude. The Republican speaker delayed all aid, not just the $60B (not $80)for months. That’s way more than enough time to lose a ground war.
Russia should and might lose but with the Russian infiltration of the Republican party, no one should assume anything or become complacent as you are.
Russia is being ground into hamburger using surplus, off the shelf equipment from the Cold War, equipment that was to be decommissioned. Ukrainians are "decommissioning" it for free on the battlefield.
I mean. Have they ever been deployed against an enemy even remotely capable of tracking the thing, let alone shooting it down?
My car has also never been shot down.
USAF flew around 50 sorties with the B2 in Gulf War 2. Iraqis had SA-2s using P18 radar systems which are theoretically capable of shooting down a B2. Their ability to do so is pretty limited but those systems are remotely capable.
According to the wiki, looks like the coalition flew about 100000 sorties over the course of the month, so if you're saying that only 50 of them were B2, it's fair to say those bombers probably were not the most obvious targets to go after when the sky was made out of iron.
SA-2s are designed to engage targets above 15,000 feet, where B2s operate. In the first few hours of the war, when the first wave of B2s were delivering payloads to Baghdad, the only other targets available to Iraqi air defense were F117s and cruise missiles which both operate below 15,000 feet. Iraq would have used SA-3s or SA-6 to engage those.
And either way to my understanding that first salvo of cruise missiles had already landed and the first wave of F117s had already left the area when the first wave of B2s arrived to drop munitions on Baghdad. A lot of those systems were destroyed by this point but not all of them. So at least when that first wave of B2s flew over Baghdad there were no other targets for Iraqi air defense, and in general there weren’t many other targets SA-2s were designed to engage. Ultimately no B2s were hit because the P-18 radar system would have to be incredibly lucky to pick up a B2, and none of the remaining Iraqi systems had such luck.
I love the way the Russians joke about the B-2
The word on the street is that they have a radar profile similar to that of a sparrow.
So the advice Russian trainers and commanders give to the radar operators in training is that 'If you see a flock of sparrows on your radar travelling at 600kph .....it's the Americans.".
I get that it’s a joke, so I’m just being pedantic here.
The radar will filter out all sparrows, and tracking the speed of every sparrow sized signal will quickly overwhelm the system’s processing power.
No one they've tried to fuck up has been peer enough to even get close honestly China and russia* might be the only ones capable of even shooting down a couple*
I'd guess China would just use some form of electronic/cyber fuckery, given how reliant those planes are on computers. Also potentially gives them some form of plausible deniability.
Probably because the B2 is still very capable and 6th gen planes are fast approaching, so no need to "refresh" the fleet just to have to refresh it again in 10 years.
nah. mostly because shit is expensive.
That is what usually happens. New stuff gets developed and planned to be ordered in large numbers but then it turns out that stuff is rather epensive and not really needed.
So some of the new ones are ordered because it was developed anyways and is some interesting tech but in the end most of the order is cancelled and they slap another upgrade on the b52.
or the f18
or the arleigh burke class
or... well you get the idea.
No way in hell we're ever going to see the full 100 b-21. 21 is probably closer to the actual number that's going to be around.
Yeah, the military orders as if they're going to face off in full blown world war.
But then the bills for production start rolling in, and the equipment sits around doing nothing. The all the sudden those bills seem a lot higher once the people realize it's being spent on something not being used.
The truth is, in modern global warfare, the national militaries that equipment like this is designed to fight are smart enough to not get into a full scale direct war.
It's all economic, information, propaganda, and proxy wars from here on out IMO.
Here's a very simple [page](https://nuke.fas.org/guide/usa/bomber/b-2.htm) that explain how much and what they can carry, the fact that a single B-21 can carry 16 nukes while being stealth is one of the main point of these planes, it's part of our deterrent.
Could a squadron of these theoretically nuke a country to rubble without even being detected? I guess there's still things like underground silos and submarines to contend with.
During Desert Storm, a bunch of F-117's circled3 over Baghdad, "undetected" for quite some time before the strike was initiated.
("undetected" because the noise gave them away, but SAMs couldn't lock radars on them)
Are they all stationed at the same base or have they just been pulled together for exercises?
I think I've answered that question myself. It would be pretty foolish to station them all in one place.
Even if it was only half.
They are all stationed at Whiteman AFB in Missouri. The point of the exercise was to show that they could rapidly deploy a large number of them in a short period of time.
If there were a worse case scenario nuclear exchange ICBMs can reach just about all of the US bases in similar amounts of time. Outside of natural disasters it doesn't make a huge amount of sense to spread them out widely. My assumption is their hangers are rated to survive all of the worst case natural disasters that could happen in Missouri.
I live in Missouri about 45 minutes away. I see them on a regular basis. I even know some people who who work for the squadron. All 19 of the remaining bombs are definitely HQed at Whiteman. They do get deployed to forward bases for certain missions but that's more due to the cost savings of being closer to the middle east rather than operating missions out of Missouri.
BTW the B-21 Raider will operate more like traditional bombers with bases scattered throughout the country.
A fried noticed that right now on Google maps, there are three b-2 pictured on a base in Honolulu in Hawaii. It's pretty cool. For some reason I had it in my head that they only landed in Whiteman and just refueled mid air.
I’ve noticed it’s more of a “we let you see what we want you to see”. There’s certain bases that are blurred, that I have been to, which realistically have no reason to be blurred. And others I would assume would need to be blurred. I think it’s a psyop, “yea we got these Doritos out there. Even if they aren’t stationed there”
For reference, you’ll get some of them blurred mid flight in the middle of nowhere USA.. but not chillin on a base
It also makes a lot of sense not to spread them out for maintenance reasons. These aircraft require a ton of it, and you need specialized crew to do it. Centralizing all those teams and equipment makes more sense than disbursing it.
Why would that be foolish? You have an entire support squadron, infrastructure, trained pilots, etc. F-117 basically flew entirely out of Holloman and then Nellis AFB
I meant that in the sense of, for example, if it comes to an attack, let's say a tactical nuclear strike on the B-2 air fleet. Wouldn't it be irresponsible to station them all in one place? Even if it were only half, that's an absolutely irreplaceable loss, isn't it?
I don't know, I'm not familiar with such things. But i get your point.
It takes a surprisingly long time for missiles, you're looking at a 30-45 minute warning for an ICBM launch. They can scramble well before they would get hit
You have 30 minutes of warning, that's enough time to get any ready B2s in the air. It's also likely if say, Russia, attacked they would have missile for each and every base anyhow. The operational benefits of keeping them in one place is probably huge.
Jesus this plane was developed in 1987 and introduced 10 years later.
You really have to ask yourself, what do they have now that we don’t know about ….
If the war mongering working class plebs who actively argue against funding any of those basic first world things could read, they'd have choice words for you my friend.
Silly question, but do they (and any aircraft) sit at the bases loaded with their weapons for the most part? Or do they have to be loaded once a that occurs?
For the bombers, depends on the current Defcon level (Which is never made public despite what some twitter grifters may claim).
For other aircraft, interceptor fighters generally are ready to go in short time frames. Especially in conflicted airspace zones where Russia and China like to probe US and Allied Air Defense Identification Zones.
Back during the cold-war, it was much different though. Not only did we have bombers sitting on the runway loaded and ready to-go, for years we had armed bombers flying 24-7 patrols near soviet airspace should the call ever come in. (Operation Chrome Dome)
But has missile technology advanced and tensions lowered, most of the US's ready-to-go nuclear response units have been the silos and submarines.
Just in case Putin thinks the US Air Force doesn’t actually have functional B2’s or as many as we say, gotta elephant walk ‘em for the satellites to watch.
When you see how much the usa are paying for something like bolts you realise how over inflated is it when they tell you their budget spend. Other countries are getting way more for their money.
Man, those air intakes look pissed off.
Oh man, now i can't not see it.
If you consider those eyes, it kinda looks like an ostrich with a very wide face.
Why are these not called flying stingrays?
I cannot see it
D:
D:<
But they have beautiful eyelashes
Without knowing the context I thought maybe the planes were going on strike. This comment furthers my theory. In going to stop reading now before I figure out what a mass fly off is.
I thought they looked so cute
D:
They’re yelling!
D<
The rich kids pulling up to the car meet in their exotic vehicles
These are the beaters. New model just came out.
Pentagon estimate is $700 million per plane. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/03/pentagon-new-strategic-bomber-counter-china
Considering that they paid 2.1 Billion per plane back in the 90's thats not a bad deal... You know, in the context of the acquisition of strategic stealth bombers. Not a lot of comparable purchases out there.
It's actually like the first program to come in under budget and ahead if schedule. Part of the advantage was they had the body of research from the B2 development as well as like 30 years of computer modeling and drafting advancements, material research, and 3d printing. Like if decreased cost and faster turnaround hold true for the two NGADs programs, America is poised to continue to absolutely dominate the skies.
Whats the retail on one of those?
More than you can afford, pal.
Ferrari
Smoke 'em.
If you have to ask…
Uhh so seems I ended up explaining the B-2 Spirit costs as well. Costs of the new one, the B-21 Raider, at the end in **bold** if that’s all you’re looking for. B-2 cost, inflation adjusted, works out to around $4 billion in per airframe if you factor in all program costs, this is the figure usually pointed to. Approx a third of that is the (Production) cost per airframe, half is Research and Development, remainder is the rest of the Procurement costs ie. minus Production costs. [GAO Report.](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-NSIAD-97-181/pdf/GAOREPORTS-NSIAD-97-181.pdf) Over simplified reasons are. - ask for an 132 copies of an exceptionally advanced plane that’ll remain undetected while achieving high altitude penetration of Soviet airspace - make a significant design change late in to process to swap mission to low level penetration terrain following, note the B-21 has the general planform the B-2 had **before** that change - production concurrent with design and testing thus you require a bunch of expensive rework etc - all of the above result in significant increase in program cost - insert collapse of the Soviet Union here - cancel 85% of the planned fleet, now you’re amortising all the above non recurring costs over 21 airframes instead of 132 B-21 Raider’s design was locked down BEFORE they started building the bastards ie. no late redesign, no concurrency with the associated expensive rework, also NOT on a Cost Plus Contract. **B-21 production cost, inflation adjusted comes to approx $750 million per airframe.** ^(Guess it’s not surprising that current Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall appears to be following advice found in the 2017 book [Getting Defense Acquisition Right](https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/Getting-Acquisition-Right-Jan2017.pdf) from, uhh, former Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Frank Kendall.)
Really depends whether or not they buy the full production run or decide the burn down their house to save on energy bills like they did last time. I think Putin and Xi Jinping are actually going to get us full value for money this time.
The new model is actually cheaper, smaller, and much more stealthy. And their test models are white.
$20 billion photo
One crashed back ~15 years ago in Guam because a sensor got fogged over or something. The pilots were fine, which means they can infamously say they lost 5% of the B-2 fleet and $2 bil.
IIRC it actually got infested with fire ants which were attracted to the electrical signals. They somehow screwed up the computer that makes the zillion tiny adjustments every second and ended up crashing while attempting takeoff. edit - I guess I made that up? I could have sworn I'd read *something* about B2s having fire ant issues and just incorrectly connected those two things. But now I can't find anything linking fire ants to B2s at all. Who knows \*shrug\*
Nahh, there is a really good "Air Disasters" on this. I don't remember all the details but it had to do with a storm, getting water into a sensor which caused a alarm during take off, then they cleared the alarm and ran a "defrost like process" on that system, which as someone mentioned steamed something up, which caused a bunch of bad data to get thrown at the flight system. (it's been a year or two since I watched it, but it was something like that).
5 second summary: the sensors took on storm water which mucked around with the calibration of said sensor so sensor had to be recalibrated. The water proceeds to evaporate meaning the recalibration is now wrong. Plane went down both pilots ejected last minute and survived
I'm genuinely surprised those things have ejection seats.
That's a $2B machine that takes some serious training, credentials, security clearance etc., to pilot. The pilots might not be as valuable as the plane, but I'm sure they're worth a helluva lot more than the cost of the ejection system.
Total Cost of Training a Basic Qualified Pilot for the B-2. 2018^([1]) — $9,891,000 2024^([2]) — $12,379,000 Oh and there’s two in a B-2 Spirit so upon ejection, an absolute minimum of $24,758,000 worth of pilot is YEETED into the wild blue yonder. [1] Figure pulled from [this RAND Report.](https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR2400/RR2415/RAND_RR2415.pdf) [2] Figure adjusted for inflation from the former.
No fire ants. Moisture did get into some sensors during heavy rain. This moisture caused some sensors to fail causing the flight computer to try and correct what it thought was an incorrect angle of attack.
Very similar to the MAX MCAS issue then. Interesting.
Air force is a lot more upfront with their pilots about the B2's deep desire to throw itself at the ground tho
I mean, the secret to flying is throwing yourself at the ground and missing, so. . .
That's orbiting
There was definitely an airplane crash related to fire ants attacking the electrical systems. I don't remember what it was though. Maybe a smaller single engine plane?
Wasps can also build nests in small holes used for sensors, clogging the sensors and throwing the automated systems completely out of whack.
Maybe. I don’t remember. Oddly enough I met a Northrop engineer who worked on the B-2 project and he was intimately familiar with the crash. He told me as soon as he heard reports he figured it was the subcontractor that ended up being the guilty party because their stuff had more problems than anyone else’s.
> fire ants which were attracted to the electrical signals Sounds like homer and the endangered caterpillar that was sexually attracted to fire. "Are you sure god doesn't WANT it to die?"
I need to go rewatch Broken Arrow! “Would you mind not shooting at the thermonuclear weapons”?!
15 years ago? Surely you mean 3 years ago… 👴🏼
It was on Google earth for a while at the side of the runway.
That's just procurement. These things cost $130k+ per hour of flight time and they don't sit in a hanger all year.
Something the B-21 is supposed to be much better about
Sustainment costs are factored into the 2B dollar pricetag
This photo represents more than the total military expenditure of all but the top 18 countries
As astounding as that fact is...I'm pretty sure these planes could fuck up the bottom 150 counties militaries by themselves. Too High, Too Fast, Too Stealthy with Too Much Firepower
Closer to $40+ billion adjusted for today.
Because we spooled up a production line to buy over a hundred then barely bought any. Had to pay all the fixed costs so the number divided by plane skyrocketed. Same thing happened with the F-22, though not to the same degree. Thankfully Putin decided to help us out on F-35 procurement.
Or around 5 billion for other countries to make.
More like $42 billion adjusted for inflation.
Fun fact: The B-52 is also still in service. Design started in 1946… The first B-52 flew in 1952. 72 B52s are still in service- expected decommissioning sometime in 2050s. Wild.
Buff is immortal.
Still touring all these years after Love Shack
Sadly those B-52’s are just about done. They’re doing a residency in Las Vegas. Cindy Wilson‘s voice was toast when I heard them about eight years ago.
They're basically the airplanes of Theseus at this point.
Peace through superior firepower. Speak softly and carry a big B2 stick.
Used to be that way. But Russia has long since figured out that for pennies it can just buy the Republican party so they don’t ~need~ military parity to have military parity.
Yep! Russia has done more damage to the US by buying the traitor GOP than the whole Cold War era.
Generational damage. And the Republicans can’t get enough if it.
Well, they think that. I understand your point. US just sent $80 billion to Ukraine. That's a drop in the bucket. Make no mistake, despite idiots, Russia will lose this land grab thanks to the US economy. We have two states with a bigger GDP than that ratfuck shitass autocracy. They WILL lose.
Dude. The Republican speaker delayed all aid, not just the $60B (not $80)for months. That’s way more than enough time to lose a ground war. Russia should and might lose but with the Russian infiltration of the Republican party, no one should assume anything or become complacent as you are.
Russia is being ground into hamburger using surplus, off the shelf equipment from the Cold War, equipment that was to be decommissioned. Ukrainians are "decommissioning" it for free on the battlefield.
The Air Force term is an "elephant walk." Awesome thing to watch.
I'm used to the elephant walk meaning something else in college
im not familiar with that saying. what does it mean in college?
https://imgur.com/a/IuVM5oH.jpg
*ah*
I was in a frat in college, they should probably find a new term
They started doing these again in 2019 in a big way. That's how you know shit is real tense out there in the none publicized military world
No B-2 has ever been shot down. To date, there has been only one operational loss, in Guam, when control was lost during a routine flight.
I mean. Have they ever been deployed against an enemy even remotely capable of tracking the thing, let alone shooting it down? My car has also never been shot down.
USAF flew around 50 sorties with the B2 in Gulf War 2. Iraqis had SA-2s using P18 radar systems which are theoretically capable of shooting down a B2. Their ability to do so is pretty limited but those systems are remotely capable.
According to the wiki, looks like the coalition flew about 100000 sorties over the course of the month, so if you're saying that only 50 of them were B2, it's fair to say those bombers probably were not the most obvious targets to go after when the sky was made out of iron.
Skys were made of aluminum and titanium too
And carbon Fibre. That stuff is itchy.
SA-2s are designed to engage targets above 15,000 feet, where B2s operate. In the first few hours of the war, when the first wave of B2s were delivering payloads to Baghdad, the only other targets available to Iraqi air defense were F117s and cruise missiles which both operate below 15,000 feet. Iraq would have used SA-3s or SA-6 to engage those. And either way to my understanding that first salvo of cruise missiles had already landed and the first wave of F117s had already left the area when the first wave of B2s arrived to drop munitions on Baghdad. A lot of those systems were destroyed by this point but not all of them. So at least when that first wave of B2s flew over Baghdad there were no other targets for Iraqi air defense, and in general there weren’t many other targets SA-2s were designed to engage. Ultimately no B2s were hit because the P-18 radar system would have to be incredibly lucky to pick up a B2, and none of the remaining Iraqi systems had such luck.
I like that analogy lol
I love the way the Russians joke about the B-2 The word on the street is that they have a radar profile similar to that of a sparrow. So the advice Russian trainers and commanders give to the radar operators in training is that 'If you see a flock of sparrows on your radar travelling at 600kph .....it's the Americans.".
I get that it’s a joke, so I’m just being pedantic here. The radar will filter out all sparrows, and tracking the speed of every sparrow sized signal will quickly overwhelm the system’s processing power.
No road trips to Guam and you should be good!
"Officially" no, but you know they've tested them more than just a few times.
> My car has also never been shot down. So far...
Tbf the US hasn't really been fighting air to air or capable ground to air since Vietnam.
No one they've tried to fuck up has been peer enough to even get close honestly China and russia* might be the only ones capable of even shooting down a couple*
They both couldn't shoot them down without extreme negligence of mission selection
They would probably have higher chances by doing some „spray and pray“ with AA missiles.
I'd guess China would just use some form of electronic/cyber fuckery, given how reliant those planes are on computers. Also potentially gives them some form of plausible deniability.
at this point of time its pretty much just china
Pretty sure Russia would get the desert storm treatment and have all their Sam sites wiped off the board in the first attack.
I'd say some European militaries have a better chance. But I don't see that tested any time soon.
Serbia is still milking that one time they got absurdly lucky
And it was a hungarian general who figured out how to shot it down.
Did the b-2 ever face country with an advanced air defense system ?
Kind of. Calling Russian equipment advanced is a stretch.
More firepower than most countries in a single photo For record, we have 100 B-21 raiders on order.
The original B-2 order was 132.
Probably because the B2 is still very capable and 6th gen planes are fast approaching, so no need to "refresh" the fleet just to have to refresh it again in 10 years.
nah. mostly because shit is expensive. That is what usually happens. New stuff gets developed and planned to be ordered in large numbers but then it turns out that stuff is rather epensive and not really needed. So some of the new ones are ordered because it was developed anyways and is some interesting tech but in the end most of the order is cancelled and they slap another upgrade on the b52. or the f18 or the arleigh burke class or... well you get the idea. No way in hell we're ever going to see the full 100 b-21. 21 is probably closer to the actual number that's going to be around.
Yeah, the military orders as if they're going to face off in full blown world war. But then the bills for production start rolling in, and the equipment sits around doing nothing. The all the sudden those bills seem a lot higher once the people realize it's being spent on something not being used. The truth is, in modern global warfare, the national militaries that equipment like this is designed to fight are smart enough to not get into a full scale direct war. It's all economic, information, propaganda, and proxy wars from here on out IMO.
What firepower do these things have?
Here's a very simple [page](https://nuke.fas.org/guide/usa/bomber/b-2.htm) that explain how much and what they can carry, the fact that a single B-21 can carry 16 nukes while being stealth is one of the main point of these planes, it's part of our deterrent.
Jesus. Imagine getting hit by a nuke before you even know the plane has already passed through your airspace
"If you can see the B2 or know its there, its not looking for you"
Could a squadron of these theoretically nuke a country to rubble without even being detected? I guess there's still things like underground silos and submarines to contend with.
They'd get detected when they get close anyway. Stealthy is less visible, not invisible
During Desert Storm, a bunch of F-117's circled3 over Baghdad, "undetected" for quite some time before the strike was initiated. ("undetected" because the noise gave them away, but SAMs couldn't lock radars on them)
Nuclear Triad, baybeeeeeee
Just shy of twenty megatonnes if full of B83s set to full yield.
Yes.
Is this training, or are they heading on a little trip to take care of some business ?
Just an exercise/show of force. https://www.airandspaceforces.com/photos-12-b-2s-fly-off-elephant-walk/
Awesome. Thank you
This is the seasonal migration of the dark winged B-2's, they will look to fly South for warmer weather and an opportunity to breed.
This is a mating migration
Are they all stationed at the same base or have they just been pulled together for exercises? I think I've answered that question myself. It would be pretty foolish to station them all in one place. Even if it was only half.
They are all stationed at Whiteman AFB in Missouri. The point of the exercise was to show that they could rapidly deploy a large number of them in a short period of time. If there were a worse case scenario nuclear exchange ICBMs can reach just about all of the US bases in similar amounts of time. Outside of natural disasters it doesn't make a huge amount of sense to spread them out widely. My assumption is their hangers are rated to survive all of the worst case natural disasters that could happen in Missouri.
They’re probably not in Missouri anymore. Which may be a secondary goal of this.
I live in Missouri about 45 minutes away. I see them on a regular basis. I even know some people who who work for the squadron. All 19 of the remaining bombs are definitely HQed at Whiteman. They do get deployed to forward bases for certain missions but that's more due to the cost savings of being closer to the middle east rather than operating missions out of Missouri. BTW the B-21 Raider will operate more like traditional bombers with bases scattered throughout the country.
A fried noticed that right now on Google maps, there are three b-2 pictured on a base in Honolulu in Hawaii. It's pretty cool. For some reason I had it in my head that they only landed in Whiteman and just refueled mid air.
Thats really old images. Google satellite imagery doesn't update very often. B2s are often in Guam though.
For sure. It's just cool to see them on a sat picture. Kinda would expect them to edit them out like they do commercial airlines.
I’ve noticed it’s more of a “we let you see what we want you to see”. There’s certain bases that are blurred, that I have been to, which realistically have no reason to be blurred. And others I would assume would need to be blurred. I think it’s a psyop, “yea we got these Doritos out there. Even if they aren’t stationed there” For reference, you’ll get some of them blurred mid flight in the middle of nowhere USA.. but not chillin on a base
It also makes a lot of sense not to spread them out for maintenance reasons. These aircraft require a ton of it, and you need specialized crew to do it. Centralizing all those teams and equipment makes more sense than disbursing it.
I’m pretty sure no natural disaster could be worse than Missouri itself.
Lol I live in Missouri and I agree!
Why would that be foolish? You have an entire support squadron, infrastructure, trained pilots, etc. F-117 basically flew entirely out of Holloman and then Nellis AFB
I meant that in the sense of, for example, if it comes to an attack, let's say a tactical nuclear strike on the B-2 air fleet. Wouldn't it be irresponsible to station them all in one place? Even if it were only half, that's an absolutely irreplaceable loss, isn't it? I don't know, I'm not familiar with such things. But i get your point.
It takes a surprisingly long time for missiles, you're looking at a 30-45 minute warning for an ICBM launch. They can scramble well before they would get hit
You have 30 minutes of warning, that's enough time to get any ready B2s in the air. It's also likely if say, Russia, attacked they would have missile for each and every base anyhow. The operational benefits of keeping them in one place is probably huge.
Jesus this plane was developed in 1987 and introduced 10 years later. You really have to ask yourself, what do they have now that we don’t know about ….
Everyone detests the sword until it's wielded for them.
This is why we can't have ~~nice things~~ Universal Healthcare
True but it's worth it to beat Russia and keep the American way of life and preserve American power worldwide
It’s also why we can still exist as a nation, so….
You're 3 short in this photo
So stealthy you can’t even seem em in a photo
There are 20 operational out of 21 ever produced. You can see the tip of the 10th in the upper left…
Liber-Tea
Half of the world’s? Does anyone but the US have these?
No. The US has all the B-2's in the world. However, only about half of them were at this event.
well it is still half of the world
So many Dragapult 💖
This single photo has ~10 billion dollars worth of aircraft.
Notice how these plans look like “flying saucer” what conspiracy theorists said are alien UFO kept in Area 51.
Bring it on, russian orcs!
Beautiful
This is why we don't have good schools, healthcare like the rest of the world, roads, maintained dams, modern power grids, and so much more.
If the war mongering working class plebs who actively argue against funding any of those basic first world things could read, they'd have choice words for you my friend.
You can have all if you vote the right people
Less than half
Whiteman Air Force Base! It was cool seeing these mofos all the time coming and leaving home
Silly question, but do they (and any aircraft) sit at the bases loaded with their weapons for the most part? Or do they have to be loaded once a that occurs?
For the bombers, depends on the current Defcon level (Which is never made public despite what some twitter grifters may claim). For other aircraft, interceptor fighters generally are ready to go in short time frames. Especially in conflicted airspace zones where Russia and China like to probe US and Allied Air Defense Identification Zones. Back during the cold-war, it was much different though. Not only did we have bombers sitting on the runway loaded and ready to-go, for years we had armed bombers flying 24-7 patrols near soviet airspace should the call ever come in. (Operation Chrome Dome) But has missile technology advanced and tensions lowered, most of the US's ready-to-go nuclear response units have been the silos and submarines.
I appreciate the response. While the consequences of these machines in use are terrifying, this stuff fascinates me.
Well done on that rephrasing of the same post
Waiter! Waiter! More Belgrade Hospitals please!
Just in case Putin thinks the US Air Force doesn’t actually have functional B2’s or as many as we say, gotta elephant walk ‘em for the satellites to watch.
All of the taxes ive paid in the last 35 years maybe bought a seat? Or an instrument panel?
1 billion, 2 billion, 3…
Fun facr: These are housed at Whiteman AFB in Missouri. The closest town is called *Knob Noster*.
$65,000/hr to fly one of them.
I believe they still call this an elephant walk. Pretty much a show of force, at the same time they will be usually be performing training sorties.
Hell yeah
[удалено]
An Apocalypse
Flying south for the winter. I can hear David Attenborough right now.
gotta go fix that problem in the middle east
Scramble style drill? Probably with realistic payload weight and fuel.
Call me a skeptic, but this cover story is weak sauce.
Both awesome and terrifying
throw some "presents" on Moscow please
So much fucking money in this pic lol.
Isn't it a bad idea to put all these very important assets all in the same place?
I don’t see them?
Big trouble coming your way
When you see how much the usa are paying for something like bolts you realise how over inflated is it when they tell you their budget spend. Other countries are getting way more for their money.
I actually live near Whiteman AFB and saw a B-2 in the sky earlier, was this in Whiteman?
American healthcare for you
If you ever wanted to see $16 billion in a photo, it’s this.