B2 Bomber Cost, page 1

I'm sorry, but the idea that the B-2 has any form of anti-gravity assistance is laughable in my opinion, especially considering some of the 'evidence' put forward to support those claims.

The fact of the matter is, as FredT has said in this thread already, the B-2 is expensive because the Department of Defence backed out of buying enough of a fleet to amortise the development cost across.

Originally posted by minkey53
Hi guys

Thank you all for responding to my question and answering my curiosity somewhat.

I am going to dig deeper into this with my US Air Force friend, he knows more than he is letting on, you can tell when you ask him things by the look on his face. But he is retired now and in his 60's so I can't see why he wouldn't talk! Maybe his huge pension might be at risk if he spills some beans?

Maybe he just honours the vow he took as a serviceman?

If the electronics need to be kept at a certain temp, then surely flying at high altitude would cause problems as it could be minus 50 up there?

The issue is not the electronics, its the airframe skin coating that is the issue - radar absorbing materials are complex and prone to quick degredation when kept in the wrong conditions. The B-2 spends a significant amount of time on the ground compared to in the air, and any degredation while in the air is simply taken as the cost of that mission.

So that is why the B-2 (and indeed the F-117 when it was in service) gets specialised hangers - it reduces the overall operating cost of the aircraft by reducing the amount of maintenance needed on the skin of the aircraft, which is a considerable portion of the ongoing maintenance costs of the aircraft (think of its size - at least with other components you can remove it and replace it with a spare, you can't do that with the actual skin of the aircraft).

When my friend was at Mildenhall and Alconbury in the UK, he said the SR-71 would taxi straight into a hangar after landing to be kept from the public eye and that thing leaks everywhere from the airframe gaps when it's cold and not flying at Mach 3+.

Yes, this is documented in several books by Col Richard Graham. They simply wanted to remove it from any photographic opportunities.

Nothing special there.

The B2 needs to have an escort usually an F15 when it flies at airshows and not on missions. I think this might be in case one goes down and the F15 needs to make sure no wreckage is left for the public to salvage? The partial anti gravity drive as somebody put it would cause issues if it got into the wrong hands.

The F-15 escort is nothing more than security theatre to increase the publics awe of the aircraft - 'oh look, it even needs to be protected while in the air at an airshow! wow, that must be very secret then!'

Invariably, the F-15s are locally based and do not accompany the aircraft on its entire trip - and they are unarmed. When the B-2 displayed at the Royal International Air Tattoo a few years back, the F-15s were from the UK and did not carry any stores at all.

At the end of the day, the B-2 is an aircraft that was designed for a specific purpose - advanced penetration of the Soviet Union with enhanced survivability. Then the USSR collapsed, and the need for a huge fleet of these aircraft went with it - there was no major non-allied air defence system in the world that could pose a significant threat to the USAFs existing operational capabilities.

The B-2 was designed for a role which was not publically spoken about because it wasn't really publically acceptable - it was a first strike weapon, something you could use to take out the enemies leadership.

Up to the 1990s, the plan of attack against the USSR was essentially two stage -

1. ICBMs to initiate the attack, damaging or destroying the opponents ability to react and defend themselves.

2. Bombers to continue the attack, causing as much damage and destruction to the opponent as possible.

Step 2 was only possible because step 1 took out much of the military infrastructure, including the air defence system. It wouldn't remove it completely, but it would increase the survivability of the bomber force until it reached its targets.

The B-2 was designed to introduce a step 0. Remove the opponents leadership and infrastructure but without the 10 to 45 minute warning that comes with ICBMs. Put the aircraft over the target, right through the existing air defence system without warning, hit the leadership, and then go to step 1 with the potential that no retaliatory strike would take place because there was no one to order it.

When the USSR collapsed and suddenly there was an air of friendship and reconciliation, the justification for such an expensive fleet of aircraft (see below on costs) went out the window - the emphasis became one of peace keeping and skirmish conflicts, a role which the current capabilities of the USAF could accomplish well.

The B-2 had an initial unit cost of around $740m, but the $2.1b figure comes from the amortisation of the total development costs across the entire procured fleet.

If the USAF had purchased its proposed fleet of 132, you would have ended up with a figure a lot less than $2.1b - because the development costs were amortised correctly.

Thats it folks, no secret, no wonderful technologies involved, just basic accounting and fulfilment of an operational requirement which disappeared with the cold war.

Thats also the reason the F-22 was touted as it was - it had no special requirements to be hangered or maintained specially, its stealth system was third generation and as such came with muchly reduced operational costs. You can sit the F-22 out in the rain and it will still be able to do its job effectively, but if you tried that with an F-117 or B-2, you would end up with an aircraft with a very large radar cross section.