Forum: Mishaps

Lose one (1) B-2 equals the financial loss of 61 F-16s!?

Does 1 B-2 really equal 61 F-16s in these modern conflicts? Barring the one mission, infiltrate a large country with a large, modern and sophisticated air defence, is there a single mission (or a series of missions) where a single B-2 would perform better than 61 F-16s?

I personally find myself thinking even with the F-22 and B-2, that is it really: 2*mission efficiency

US military grounds stealth bomber fleet
By William Lowther in Washington and Ben Martin
Last Updated: 3:30am GMT 24/02/2008



America's entire B-2 stealth bombing fleet, which has played a crucial part in all major conflicts since 1999, has been grounded after one of the jets crashed near a military base in Guam.

The crash - the first involving the £610 million plane - was the most expensive single aircraft accident in history.

A senior US military source told The Sunday Telegraph that all remaining B-2 stealth bombers were on a "no-fly" order and that there would be no further take-offs until the initial investigation into the crash had been completed.

Officials assume the crash was caused by either mechanical failure or human error, but have grounded B-2s to ensure there is not some fundamental fault developing in the 21-strong fleet.

The grounding means that a major component of the US military is out of action. The jets are normally stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, but have been deployed to the Pacific territory of Guam to maintain the US military presence in the Asia-Pacific region and deter potential enemies from taking surprise military action while other American forces are diverted to fight in the Middle East.

The Pentagon's reliance on the plane's ability to evade radar, making it difficult for defensive systems to detect, track and attack, means the no-fly order is unlikely to last more than a few days.

Two crew members on board the bomber managed to eject safely before the crash, which occurred at 10.40am Saturday near Andersen Air Force Base, on the American island territory, 3,700 miles south-west of Hawaii.

The crash occurred shortly after take-off, sending thick black smoke billowing from the wreckage of the plane. The military source said there were no munitions on board and the plane was on a routine training flight.

The source said that while the plane had been destroyed, he believed - but was not certain - that the vital computer recorder which monitors all engine and flight developments had been recovered. Jeanne Ward, who was on the base visiting her husband, said crowds began to gather as emergency services arrived. "Everybody was on their cell phones, and the first thing everyone wanted to know was did the pilots make it out in time,'' she said.

The B-2 bomber, which was among the US military's most closely-guarded secrets during its development in the 1980s, made its first combat bombing runs in Kosovo in 1999 and has been used in missions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Serbia.

It is flown by a pilot and a mission controller and has a range of 6,850 miles without refuelling. The US military says the plane, which can be refuelled in mid-air, can stay airborne as long as maintenance and crew fatigue allow.

The aircraft's systems allow one pilot to fly the plane while the other sleeps, prepares a hot meal or uses the plane's flushing toilet system. The B-2, which can carry 50,000 lb of ordnance and can drop up to 80 bombs in a single run past a target, is equipped to carry nuclear weapons.

During the 1980s, when the US was battling for supremacy in the Cold War against the Soviet Union, an estimated £11 billion was spent on developing the stealth bomber. But the break-up of the Soviet state meant that plans to build up to 135 of the planes were abandoned, and only 21 were ever made.

The American military closely guards the technical secrets which give the plane its "stealth" qualities. In October 2005, Noshir Gowadia, an Indian-born American design engineer, who worked on the stealth bomber project, was arrested for allegedly selling classified information about the plane to China. His trial was due to start this month, but has been postponed several times.

The US Air Force said one of the B-2 crew was in hospital in a stable condition and the other was released after a brief medical examination. "They have been evaluated by medical authorities and are in good condition," it said in a statement.

Guam, which was captured from Spain by US forces in 1898, has been a bomber base since March 2004. B-52, B-2 and B-1 bombers deploy on rotation from bases on the US mainland.

The crash came just four days after two F-15C Eagle jet fighters collided off the coast of Florida. Both pilots from the single-seat jets ejected from their planes and were rescued after a search by US Coast Guard and local fishing vessels, but one died soon after.

The US Air Force grounded its about 450 of its 700-strong F-15 fleet in November, after one failed during a training flight in Missouri, forcing a pilot to eject. He survived with minor injuries.

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... ber223.xml

Loss of B-2 jet marks the first time one has crashed in nearly two decades
By SCOTT CANON
The Kansas City Star

Uncle Sam’s arsenal is suddenly 80 tons lighter and absent $2.2 billion-plus of irreplaceable, high-tech bomber firepower.

Still, the crash of the Spirit of Kansas stealth bomber on takeoff from Guam this weekend marks just the first time in almost two decades of flying that a B-2 has fallen from the sky.

Analysts said the remaining 20 stealth bombers — even with half a dozen typically out of commission for maintenance or upgrades — give the Pentagon more than enough jet-powered muscle for virtually any air attack.

They said that the crash, which left one of the plane’s pilots hospitalized in Guam, wouldn’t raise serious alarms about the bomber’s safety.

“I guess you could say the B-2 was due,” said Owen Cote, a military specialist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “There’s not a plane in our inventory that hasn’t crashed. The odds were bound to catch up, even with a small force like the B-2.”

Air Force spokesmen released only sketchy details Saturday about the crash. They confirmed that the plane crashed shortly after becoming airborne while taking off from Andersen Air Force Base about 10:30 a.m. Guam time, or about 6:30 p.m. Friday Kansas City time. The cause was under investigation.

The pilots were able to eject from the jet shortly before it crashed onto the tarmac. One pilot received minor injuries, and the other was kept at Guam Naval Hospital in stable condition. The pilots’ names were not released Saturday. No one on the ground was injured, and no buildings were damaged.

Built in 1989, the Spirit of Kansas was among four stealth bombers that had been flying training missions from Guam since October. It had no munitions on board and was headed to Whiteman Air Force Base near Knob Noster, Mo., with the three other jets.

Whiteman is about 60 miles east of Kansas City and home to the stealth bomber, although the jets have increasingly been deployed to Guam. Typhoon-proof hangars built especially for the planes were completed on the Pacific outpost about two years ago.

The bomber was the second of the aircraft to take off for Whiteman from Guam on Saturday. The first quickly returned to another runway on the island, and the other two jets remained on the base. An Air Force spokesman said it was unclear when the three remaining stealth bombers would leave for Whiteman.

After an F-117 stealth fighter was detected and shot down in Kosovo in 1999, reports surfaced that Serbian troops invited Russian engineers to study the debris.

The Guam crash comes after years of B-2 flights without catastrophes. The plane took its first flight in 1989, and the first combat-ready B-2 touched down at Whiteman in 1993. The last arrived four years later.

Once projected for a much larger fleet, only 21 were ever made, at a cost of $2.2 billion a copy, with hundreds of millions more spent on subsequent repairs and upgrades.

It was originally designed in an arms race with the Soviets for the sole purpose of delivering nuclear bombs. Strategists once spoke of it as a plane that would have nowhere to land on its first combat sortie because it would be delivering a payload unleashed only in all-out nuclear war.

But by the time it was built, the Cold War was over. The Air Force quickly reconfigured the jet’s belly-flush bomb bay to carry conventional weapons, although the B-2 remains part of the country’s nuclear arsenal.

The fleet has a combined 75,000 flight hours. That includes nearly 100 combat missions. It first struck in nonstop flights from Missouri to the former Yugoslavia in 1999 in the NATO effort to protect Kosovo against Serbian oppression. It dropped a bomb on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, a hit blamed on outdated maps.

B-2s were airborne for more than a day in nonstop missions from Whiteman to Afghanistan in 2001. And at the start of the Iraq war, it flew 22 sorties from the British-controlled Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and 27 more from Whiteman.

It has no tail and was shaped to avoid all manner of air defenses. By military standards, its subsonic speeds are turtle-like. And the bomber’s flight plans are elaborate efforts to sail above and around enemy radar.

That means its pilots don’t yank and bank their aircraft like fighter jets. Rather, they manage an array of computer controls designed to keep the plane out of view and to unleash sometimes dozens of satellite-guided bombs on an array of targets.

Experts said that may be one factor in why the planes had flown so safely over the years.

“It’s not a lot of close-formation flying. Not a lot of barrel rolls,” said John Pike, the security analyst who runs GlobalSecurity.org. “Some of the types of things that would get an airplane in trouble, they’re just not going to go there.”

No plane will be built to replace the Spirit of Kansas, only partly because the assembly lines that piece the B-2 together were shut down years ago. Although bomber maker Northrop Grumman Corp. tried in recent years to sell the Pentagon more B-2s, the Air Force chose to pass.

“Losing one aircraft is not going to hurt their ability to do what they think they need to do,” said William Hartung, a military analyst at the New American Foundation.

Military planners find the B-2 most valuable in the first nights of an air barrage, before the battering of air defenses. More recently, it’s been identified as the plane most likely to blast Iran’s nuclear program.

Last fall the Bush administration asked Congress for millions to pair the bomber with the 15-ton Massive Ordnance Penetrator — a bunker-busting bomb designed for underground targets — in what was interpreted widely as a warning to Tehran.

“Iran would be its next big mission,” MIT’s Cote said of the B-2. “Realistically speaking, they wouldn’t need very many B-2s for that.”

Source: http://www.kansascity.com/news/nation/story/502870.html

B-2 Crashes on Takeoff From Guam

Feb 23, 2008
By Michael O. Lavitt

A B-2 stealth bomber crashed on takeoff from Andersen AFB, Guam, on Saturday morning, the U.S. Air Force reported.

The Spirit of Kansas, Tail No. 890127, was the first B-2 bomber to crash from the fleet of 21 built by Northrop Grumman Corp.

The two pilots ejected. One was in stable condition with unspecified injuries at a naval hospital in Guam, while the other was released after a medical evaluation, TSgt. Tom Czerwinski of Pacific Air Forces public affairs office said.

The aircraft was one in a flight of four B-2s that was returning to Whiteman AFB, Mo., following a deployment that began Oct. 5, Czerwinski said. They were being replaced in the constant bomber presence role at Andersen by six B-52s.

The Spirit of Kansas crashed on the runway shortly after takeoff at about 10:30 a.m. local time, Czerwinski said. It was not clear whether the crew had declared an emergency before ejecting.

Skies were clear, and there was no indication that weather contributed to the crash.

The other B-2s returned to Andersen. Czerwinski said it was not clear how many of the four had taken off before the crash.

The B-2 Spirit first flew in July 1989, and the first operational aircraft was delivered in December 1993. The B-2 made its combat debut in Operation Allied Force against Serbian targets, flying nonstop missions from Whiteman.

Source: http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/ ... h02238.xml

Saw a post over on another forum that made me chuckle. Was talking about the rumor that if the crew of a B-2 tried to pull the handles, the CSAF would pop up on their MPDs telling them that they better try harder

As for the math that the plane cost $2.2B...well that drives me nuts. 75% of that cost was development and produced nothing. The remaining 25% was the actual production cost (about $500M per jet).

OK - True, I was only pointing out the "fiscal loss" of one B-2 versus F-16s, and I will agree that bombers are still needed in a proper mix with conventional fighters, BUT...

I'd rather see two dozen FB-22 or F/A-22s attacking targets than 20 hugely expensive bombers. (For the NEXT generation) I realize B-2s were developed and purchased during a different time, (Commies and all...) and they do serve a strategic deterrence so it's a mute point to discount them today.

I guess I'd feel a little different if we (Congress/DOD/USAF/etc) had purchased 100 of them. 20 aircraft in a single fleet seems like a waste of logistics/maintenance money. When the numbers were slashed today's low "20" the USAF should have given up and differed the $$ into something else. Maybe public outcry over the BILLIONS spend on a defunct program would have gotten Congress to buy more?

Congress sure knows how to kill BILLIONS of R&D money, that is for sure. Lets hope they don't do the same to the Raptor/Lightening II. (Limit production to "special" airframe status)

By 2045, we'll have 12 B-52H, 6 B-1Bs, 2 B-2, 48 F-35, and 24 F-22. We're likely to have them stationed at an army base because it won't be worth keeping an actual "AF Base" to fly them from. BRAC 2035 will close them all. All maintenance will be contracted to the OEMs to save money. They'll likely combine us with the Army as well, to save money on uniform changes each new AF administration wants...

There will be no need for new contracts/aircraft either; China is sure to give up all of their new fighter/bomber programs due to expense.... right?

Sorry, I suppose I'm having a pessimistic day? See you all in the VA home FY2055! (If beer isn't outlawed by then...)

I say lets sell ad space on the jets and flight suits.