Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit

Josh_TN said:
It would be impractical to restart production of obsolete components, assuming it was even possible. It probably would also be all but impossible to reaquire the human capital of a major program. And the end result would generally be an obsolescent aircraft even if you could.
Click to expand...
I agree.

But it should be law that as long as the thing is in military service, all the spare parts remain in production.
 
The company I am currently with, we are supporting the B-2 (among other platforms) with a variety of parts and components, we work very closely with NG and it helps since I used to be part of the program, its not easy but we're doing it. Also, the B-2 still seems to be pretty reliable when comes to its subsystems and flight controls even though the aircraft is quite sophisticated. We invested a lot early on in the program especially in regards to risk reduction testing and integration. Nobody can say that the B-2 was not thoroughly tested that's for sure. I think most of its recent mishaps were maintenance related, not deign related.
 
The thing is, it would theoretically be possible, purely theoretical speaking here, to restart B-2 production. After all the Russians managed to get the Tu-160 production up again, including the titanium welding chamber. But that was a much publicized, truly herculean effort committed by them for an aircraft with no direct successor, as the PAK DA will replace the Tu-95s and Tu-22Ms. So in order to maintain and grow the fleet there wasn't much of an option. Positive side effect, new units can be produced from factory in the modernized configuration. Also, it's all state owned, Tu-160 production back then and now. Having everything in the hand of the state has it's advantages with regards to such efforts.

But the B-2 has a direct successor, a much more capable one, right around the corner to be introduced in large numbers and it's not manufactured by a state owned entity. We would have heard about such an effort as restarting B-2 production and we would have scratched our heads at the "why" of it.
 
Last edited:
Part and subsystem obsolescence and vendors disappearing or being acquired happens all the time.

Unlike China, the US cannot designate a company as strategically important and encourage and even facilitate its expansion via loans and financing. Rather than cultivating and expanding such enabling nodes, in the US these smaller companies with groundbreaking tech or approaches are ultimately and simply rolled up into a larger MIC/defense conglomerate, at least historically, with profit harvesting taking immense priority over everything else post integration, to the owners benefit, but typically the ecosystem’s detriment.

All that having been said, if the US can meaningfully move to a USG owned, fully open, modular and model based approach, combined with modular and automated manufacturing approaches, these fundamental issues might be meaningfully dampened.

So bringing it back to this discussion, these design and production breakthroughs should actually be most relevant to long-lived airframes that receive less rather than more airframe stress - that mean high altitude not low and low G progressive maneuvers over low speed dynamic flight. In short a bomber more than a fighter. So given what we know about B-21s design, if any aircraft gets reopened for production it’s probably Raider. But if we had those things available for B-2 (which would still be a massive counter factual just on the human capital side), then more B-2s might be actually be a nice compliment to a Raider fleet. Leave that to Grim Reapers on YT I guess.
 
The only way this happens is they happen to have had 28 nearly complete B-2's laying around that nobody seems to have known about.
 
Even more crazy, the late 1980s based avionics systems somehow boot and pass self-tests successfully. Mmmm….. a hidden cache of vacuum sealed Spirits…
 
Buried in the desert? A quick vacuum clean should be enough post resurrection.

As long as the termites are not an endangered species of course.
 
I think the USAF did another lot buy of 28 B-21s. Trump is a go-getter and likes to move quickly but sometimes the mouth has phase-lag in relation to the mind and the available info. If the USG was to spool up B-2 production again, where would the funding come from and nobody say tariff money. As compared to the B-2, the B-21 development was done in a different manner and with far more advanced tools as compared to the B-2 development period but we a lot of up-front work as well. NG and USAF did a lot of work in-parallel especially in the digital design environment, modeling, simulation and test bed aircraft. I think the 21 is a pretty mature platform at this point in time and probably could fly limited missions.
 
Hydroman said:
I think the USAF did another lot buy of 28 B-21s. Trump is a go-getter and likes to move quickly but sometimes the mouth has phase-lag in relation to the mind and the available info. If the USG was to spool up B-2 production again, where would the funding come from and nobody say tariff money. As compared to the B-2, the B-21 development was done in a different manner and with far more advanced tools as compared to the B-2 development period but we a lot of up-front work as well. NG and USAF did a lot of work in-parallel especially in the digital design environment, modeling, simulation and test bed aircraft. I think the 21 is a pretty mature platform at this point in time and probably could fly limited missions.
Click to expand...
I think so about B-21 but He realy speak about an updated version of the B2 difficult to undersatnd what he is talking about, or there was a work in the black about the B2.
 
I think the B-2 has to keep flying until 2038 and remember NG got $7B for upgrades, maintenance and sustainment. I think the USAF may be considering upgrading the B-2 with some B-21 tech, possibly even B-21 OML LO treatments/coatings.
 
“They looked so beautiful all of the sudden. I knew they were pretty planes but I had no clue what they could do what they did. In fact we just ordered 28 more of them. A little updated version. We ordered a whole pile of them."

Speaking at a press conference in August at the White House, Trump said that the US had ordered a “new and enhanced” version of the B-2. While he did not expand on his comment, he said that the upgraded aircraft was “similar but actually quite different.”

Actually these specific comments by President Trump pretty cogently describe B-21, in colloquial language.

28 B-21s would be a huge expansion of the US global strike capability.
 
What's really sad for B-2, 132 aircraft original order, 75 aircraft compromised order, 21 final produced aircraft plus 1 loss and one to get back into flying condition.
 
Hydroman said:
I think the B-2 has to keep flying until 2038 and remember NG got $7B for upgrades, maintenance and sustainment. I think the USAF may be considering upgrading the B-2 with some B-21 tech, possibly even B-21 OML LO treatments/coatings.
Click to expand...

Where does the 2038 figure come from? That $7 billion contract I believe only extends through 2029, though presumably another one will be signed for continued sustainment. But given the s schedule of B-21 related base upgrades, I would not be surprised if the B-2 force was replaced after the B-1 force was downsized by ~40 and concentrated at Dyess. Whitemans upgrade comes after Ellsworth.
 
www.twz.com

B-2 Stealth Bomber’s Latest Upgrade Is Here

The Spirit Realm 1 upgrade provides the B-2 stealth bomber with new communications and weapons capabilities. The Spirit Realm 1 upgrade provides the stealth bomber with new communications and weapons capabilities.
www.twz.com www.twz.com
Public statements on DMS-M have focused heavily on improved electronic warfare capabilities, as well as added data sharing with sensors on offboard platforms, to spot, geo-locate, and categorize hostile defensive nodes, including air defense radars. The new defensive systems also have a secondary electronic intelligence capability.

SR 1 was fully developed inside the B-2 Spirit Realm “software factory,” the establishment of which was announced by Air Force Global Strike Command and the B-2 Systems Program Office in December 2022. The Spirit Realm facility uses integrated digital tools to design, manage, build, test, and then field B-2 software more rapidly, also in conjunction with legacy systems.

If the DMS-M is genuinely fixed/up to snuff. .
 
joshjosh said:
He thinks the B-21 is an "upgraded version" of a B-2
Click to expand...
Well, he has been photographed with a Pacmin model of the B-2 on the corner of the Resolute desk. Perhaps if he had a gold-leafed plated model of the B-21 to look at, he could ponder the design morphology and differences between the two?
 
Sferrin said:
The B-2 is still better than anything else anybody has. Can't say that about the Lancaster.
Click to expand...
But the nostalgia! And if Farage were PM...

Anyway, the point is not whether the B-2 is better than anything else flying, the point is whether its better than Chinese, not Iranian defences.
 
Last edited:
martinbayer said:
PROVE. IT. *QUANTITATIVELY*. AND. SHOW. YOUR. WORK.
Click to expand...
You have to compare bombers in their peer group and eras. Right now, no other country has a "proven" stealth bomber like the B-2, Europe, South Korea, Japan other than China but China is trying to develop something (H-20?). Compare B-1 to TU-160, TU-95 to B-52, etc. Everybody is whooping it up for China as an example but "CHINA DOES NOT HAVE OR HAS HAD ANY PREVIOUS OR CURRENT MODERN AERIAL COMBAT EXPERIENCE!" There, some capital letters in quotations for ya. The B-2, proven in combat, the B-21 evolves that. China is doing a very rapid build-up, maybe too fast and could be a potential undoing as well. Bottom line, if we go to war with China, we'll find out, huh?
 
Hydroman said:
You have to compare bombers in their peer group and eras. Right now, no other country has a "proven" stealth bomber like the B-2, Europe, South Korea, Japan other than China but China is trying to develop something (H-20?). Compare B-1 to TU-160, TU-95 to B-52, etc. Everybody is whooping it up for China as an example but "CHINA DOES NOT HAVE OR HAS HAD ANY PREVIOUS OR CURRENT MODERN AERIAL COMBAT EXPERIENCE!" There, some capital letters in quotations for ya. The B-2, proven in combat, the B-21 evolves that. China is doing a very rapid build-up, maybe too fast and could be a potential undoing as well. Bottom line, if we go to war with China, we'll find out, huh?
Click to expand...
The *era* for comparison is *RIGHT NOW*. At this particular point in time, any number of 195 currently recognized countries in the world may or may not plot to build strategic bombers, so I think it is not unreasonable to ask you for a definition of a *peer group*. You alluded to a few countries or regional alliances in your message - would you care to get more specific with respect to any *concrete* efforts you are aware of?
 
Last edited:
joshjosh said:
He thinks the B-21 is an "upgraded version" of a B-2
Click to expand...
Unfortunately I've seen many people who think the B-21 is just a "Super Spirit". That the B-21 is completely different and much more versatile in accordance with evolving doctrine doesn't occur to such people. They see a flying wing and that's all they want to see.
 
The silver lining here could well be Spirit of Georgia getting as much of an OSA infrastructure as possible and the ability to receive rapid software and hardware pushes. I know the details will be inherently sparse but hopefully there’s a lot more SWAP-C headroom to work with here on these Spirt airframes. They seem like solid airframes.
 
Hopefully this is the right thread for this; there are a bewildering number of B-2 topics.

What drove the B-2s bomb bay requirements, specifically in length? The primary weapons were to be free fall bombs, with B83 being the largest/heaviest in inventory at 12 feet, 18 inches, 2400 lbs. I assume SRAM carriage was also envisioned (I assume SRAM was fully integrated). But the bay is much longer than necessary for either of those - did the USAF require a large enough bay for AGM-86 as a way of future proofing?
 
Josh_TN said:
Hopefully this is the right thread for this; there are a bewildering number of B-2 topics.

What drove the B-2s bomb bay requirements, specifically in length? The primary weapons were to be free fall bombs, with B83 being the largest/heaviest in inventory at 12 feet, 18 inches, 2400 lbs. I assume SRAM carriage was also envisioned (I assume SRAM was fully integrated). But the bay is much longer than necessary for either of those - did the USAF require a large enough bay for AGM-86 as a way of future proofing?
Click to expand...
My memory on this is pretty spotty, but I believe the original weapons list was nothing but nuclear gravity bombs and the AMRAAM. However, the original spec said the aircraft had to accommodate the Common Strategic Rotary Launcher, which was being developed in parallel.
 
kmrumble said:
My memory on this is pretty spotty, but I believe the original weapons list was nothing but nuclear gravity bombs and the AMRAAM. However, the original spec said the aircraft had to accommodate the Common Strategic Rotary Launcher, which was being developed in parallel.
Click to expand...
AMRAAMs? :eek:o_O
 
kmrumble said:
My memory on this is pretty spotty, but I believe the original weapons list was nothing but nuclear gravity bombs and the AMRAAM. However, the original spec said the aircraft had to accommodate the Common Strategic Rotary Launcher, which was being developed in parallel.
Click to expand...

Ah, the rotary would stretch it out a lot. Was the CSRL ultimately adopted? I had thought so but seem to remember someone here correcting me that the rotary is actually B-2 specific.
 

Similar threads

Back
Top Bottom