Why did the B2 cost 2 Billion dollars each?

On Nans awesome French website www.jp-petit.com... is a question that I translated using altavistas babelfish...

A great mystery of B2, impossible to circumvent, is its price: 2 billion dollars each.
Let us announce that a B-52 costs 50 million dollars. Thus B2 costs the price of forty B-52!
Why? Let us specify that the engines of B2 equipped before B1 as well as other apparatuses.
There thus was not a considerable investment in the study of " new a motorization ".
The train is traditional.
The bomb bays are also traditional.
The only thing really original it is the body of the plane. How, under these conditions, to justify this price of two billion dollars?

Lastly, additional mystery: why this apparatus was built only in 21 specimens, the production having been stopped in 1997?

Thats a great question....

The answer (as far as I can understand) is that J E thinks that this a ...
" mini-fleet " of B2 is used as screen with a fleet of hypersonic bombers with very large operating range, able to fly to 60 km of altitude and 10.000 km/ h without creating shock waves.
These performances would make it possible such machines to go indeed to carry out missions of bombardment in any point of the sphere, without in-flight refueling, including with the antipodes of their starting point while taking off the USA and while " turning over to the house ", in the one night space.


So is the B2 just a screen for more advanced planes that we are unaware of?

We allready have couple of these topics about B-2..

For examble here there is talk about this..

www.abovetopsecret.com...



And it did cost 2 Billion because of the R&D cost and also cause only 20 out of 126/136 planned were produced.



[Edited on 29-9-2003 by Bandit]

I'm pretty sure the $2 billion price tag is the result of assigning a cost to each individual aircraft based on the entire B-2 Spirit program from research to actual production.

Seeing as it is still a highly secretive program, the black world research the public will never know about could account for alot of the cost. With such a high price, it is possible there were many technical problems along the way which resulted in the high costing.

After all, we are talking about a stealth fly-by-wire tactical bomber, not a typical heavy-role example such as a B-1 or B-52.

Damn it Bandit, beat me to it by one minute!

That is because i aint no n00b even if it seems like i am.



Reagards
Bandit

aka
Uninen
FULCRUM

Hmm I read the threads and I am not really sure they answer the question.
I think DR with his comments on Magneto-Hydrodynamic propulsion may be closer to the truth.

If this is incorporated in the planes then that may be the bulk of the cost.

Interesting from a google search I did on it there are lots of abstracts on Magneto-Hydrodynamic propulsion, even to using it in boats, but no "real" info as far as I can find. Only comments on UFO sites.

Could it be that the UFO sites are right for a change, and this tech is "hidden". One guy even did his thesis on it.

[Edited on 29-9-2003 by Netchicken]

This is something we want to find out with the B-2 research project.
At the moment I'm gathering information, and will soon post my first findings.

Yes, the b-2 is expensive. But, cutting edge technology always is. The XB-70 cost about 700 million each, in 1961 dollars! Far more than the 2 billion in late 1990's dollars.

I guess they hired a Fung-Shway artist to redecorate the internior and he stiffed them with a high bill?

AJAX aircraft. this will enlight you about the MHD russians research in aircraft technologies.

I know the author of this website : Jean-Pierre petit.
He is actually retired from the CNRS. He is graduated from National Aeronautical School of Paris (fluid mechanics speciality).

It's about AURORA and MHD :

www.jp-petit.com...

Nans, he should put up an english language version of his site, its the only one of its type I have seen,

Much has been made of the cost of the B-2, and its association with advanced stealth composite material designed to absorb and scatter radar energy.

There is also the very interesting story of 2 employees at Area 51 who were injured and eventually died due to supposed exposure to this material.

This is not the exact truth....

I would point out that there is conclusive evidence that the B-2 uses some form of electrokinetic systems, as the leading and trailing wing edges and exhaust are highly charged electrostatically (I would point out that this is 100% in keeping with the published experiments conducted by Thomas Townsend Brown while demonstrating the Brown/Beifield effect).

It is also interesting to point out that at least 2 men have died on the ground by touching the B-2 wings immediately after landing... cause of death has been ruled electrocution...

I found a link in Google groups to 5 articles on Magneto-Hydrodynamic propulsion.

here

All but one link were dead....



Strange and stranger.....

First the B-2 is a Strategic not a tactical bomber. True it's not a typical bomber like the B-52 or B-1. The B-2 was design for two very spacific missions: first the B-2 was design to attack the air defense networks opening up a corador for other bombers, second, the B-2 was design to attack Underground Strategic command centers deep inside of the USSR (now Russia). This is clearly a strategic mission.

Second, the B-2 incorperates revolutionary technologies. For example The B-2 was the first bomber with a subterrain scanning radar for locating underground bunkers. It was also the First operational stealth plane with a radar system period. The B-2 was also the first plane design to use GPS for weapon delivery. I admit that when the first B-2 prototype flew the system wasn't ready for
use, but it had been a part of the B-2 since it was first design. These any many other technologies (some of which are still classified) are the reason that the B-2 was called the Advanced Technology Bomber.

Tim

i cn clear up some of the cost questions.

All the development costs,facility, costs, are figured into the cost of the b-2
so if you take the 44.4 billion and divide it by 21 planes you get 2.2 bill each.

origionaly 132 palnes were origionally to be built. it was then cut to 75, in the early 90's by bush, and clinton caped the program at 21 planes.

so as with all things the less you make the more they cost