Military Grounds Stealth Bomber Fleet

Ponca City, We Love You writes "America's entire B-2 stealth bomber fleet, which has played a crucial part in all major US conflicts since 1989, has been grounded after one of the jets crashed near a military base in Guam. The crash — the first involving the B-2 — was the most expensive single aircraft accident in history. (The planes cost $1.2B each.) Officials assume the crash was caused by either mechanical failure or human error, but have grounded all B-2s to ensure there is not some fundamental fault developing in the 21-strong fleet. The crash occurred Saturday morning local time as the B-2 was taking off from Andersen Air Force base on Guam, a US territory south of Japan. An Air Force spokesman said, 'The cause of crash is unknown, pending an investigation. The pilots had ejected safely — no serious injuries. One is mobile, one is still in the hospital under observation.'"

Comments

Atlantic insight

[gstone]

A very interesting article was published in the Atlantic about the B2. The reporter spent some time living with the people who comprise the flight crew:

A B-2 Spirit costs roughly as much as a fast-attack nuclear submarine or a guided-missile destroyer. But whereas a Los Angeles-class submarine requires a crew of 130 and an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer a crew of 320, the B-2 has a crew of just two: a pilot and a mission commander. There are only 21 B-2s in the Air Force. Nobody else in the U.S. military is entrusted with as much responsibility, in terms of sheer dollars, as these bomber pilots are. If a single B-2 were to go down, even in training, it would be a banner-headline story.

So who are these guys?

Re:Stealth?

[bIOHZRd]

...and the fact that their wing sweep angle in relation to the tip of the nose is way too low to even approach supersonic speeds. You have to be below the mach angle in order to stay away from Mach drag divergence and the resulting huge increase in drag. Check out this for more info.

Re:Marginal Cost

[Charcharodon]

Actually that not true all three aircraft can fire cruise missiles, the only thing that keeps the B1 from doing so is a treaty with the former Soviet Union (Russia).

It is as bad as I think because I've worked on all three bombers. The B-52 is robust much in the way an old pick-up truck is, things work because they're old school electronics. The only problem is that they're just like working on an old truck. If you need a replacement part alot of the time it meens a trip to the junk yard. I also got real sick real quick trying to trace down wiring problems on 50 year old wire bundles that are not necessarily wired the same on every aircraft. Of course while the newer digital aircraft are easier to fix, they can be nightmares when things don't show up on the diagnostics or don't hard break but fail erratically. That'll even have the engineers scraching their heads. Space wise I've only run into a few times where things were too cramped to work on. Typically of things that I'm sure some dumb ass design engineer said "They'll never need to get to that the plane is only going to be used for 20 years then replaced" Even the "brand new" B2 is over twenty years old

To say the B-52 has extra space is an understatement since most electronics these days are hundreth the size they were in the sixties, but again most of the Buff's problems are not lack of space or the inability to be upgraded, it's just the simple fact they are freakin ancient.

With the new weapon systems & munitions you don't need a specialized military aircraft to deliver them anymore. You just need something reliable that has a long endurance and can fly high.

My ideal B-52 replacement would be a B-747-8, (New Boeing 747 model coming out out). It's a well vetted design, with commonly available off the shelf commercial parts. It could carry 105,000lbs of cargo (bombs) and a full load of fuel with an 8000 mile range. For those keeping count that's 210 Mk 82 bombs compared to the B-52's 51. Park two or three of those in a race track pattern at high altitude along with two extra flight crews each and you could keep them up there 24/7. Throw in a little air refueling and they'd stay on station until either they ran out of bombs or out of hot pockets and little debbies, which ever comes first.