$2 billion update for Whiteman’s B-2 bomber

Kansas City Star ^ | 3/29/2012 | Rick Montgomery

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Say you own a 20-year-old car and intend to drive it beyond the year 2050. It will need some fixing.

A challenge similar to that continually faces Whiteman Air Force Base, home to the B-2 stealth bomber. Many aircraft parts made in the 1980s, when the first of 21 B-2s rolled out of a Northrop Grumman Corp. hangar, are as obsolete today as the floppy disk.

Yet the plan is to keep those bat-winged bombers flying, and eluding the latest in radar technology, until 2058.

The Pentagon is moving forward with a $2 billion, 10-year effort to modernize the fleet’s defensive capabilities. Digital equipment will replace analog, antennas will be upgraded, communication systems and pilot displays will be enhanced — all needed to address “emerging and proliferating 21st century ground and airborne threats,” according to an Air Force report last year to Congress.

Col. Rob Spalding of Whiteman’s 509th Bomb Wing called the coming enhancements “the biggest and most complex update of the B-2 in its history.”

Washington’s commitment to the B-2 is a no-brainer, experts say, given the plane’s lethal legacy. It has been involved in every combat action since NATO’s 1999 bombing of Serbia in the Kosovo War.

“The B-2 is a door opener,” said John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org, a think tank on weapons systems. “It has the unique ability to fly unescorted into hostile airspace and blow up a lot of stuff — without us first having to take out the other guy’s air defenses.” Maintaining the fleet — now down to 20, following the wreck of a B-2 flying out of a Guam air base into heavy rain in 2008 — is job one at Missouri’s Whiteman. Scheduled overhauls happen every seven years, and replacement parts are increasingly difficult to find, Spalding said.

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Many of these cruise missiles were developed in the 1970s and technology has made great leaps and bounds since then. You can shoot down a cruise missile. You can actually spoof its GPS system and give it new coordinates or render it useless.They also need to reach a certain point for it to be effective.

http://books.google.com/books?id=VrX82txhLh0C&pg=PA44&lpg=PA44&dq=Effectiveness+of+Cruise+Missiles&source=bl&ots=SoBqMBQV_w&sig=q4NwwsoYhPev78bNeGmJJr8nAsA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=fGR1T6noBqGoiALi-rynDg&ved=0CDoQ6AEwBDgU#v=onepage&q=Effectiveness%20of%20Cruise%20Missiles&f=false

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Everything halfway down the state of Missouri would be hit by a Soviet warhead.

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OSCAR-11 from the movie “The Day After” is still there. Its all fenced in now.

[alfa6]

I have not been on base since 1976 when I had to go take a flight physical for the USMC,

It did not work out, sigh

Two of my kids went to CMSU or as it is now known as UCM. They said you would be walking across campus and all of a sudden a BIG shadow would appear and looking up would be a B-2.

Well back to work I must go

Regards

alfa6 ;>}

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The former ICBM field at Whiteman AFB

[A.A. Cunningham]

“It has the unique ability to fly unescorted into hostile airspace and blow up a lot of stuff — without us first having to take out the other guy’s air defenses.”

Pike is an idiot who has obviously never been tasked with generating nor executing ATOs providing SEAD for B-2 missions. He's given quite a few Prowler squadrons a good chuckle with that bit of BS.

[BobL]

Since when did they rename the “B-2 Bomber”? I specifically remember its name being the “Controversial B-2 Bomber”, at least during the 1980s and 1990s.

I must have missed something.

[bmwcyle]

Secret new bombers are most likely flying in space.

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In your opinion is this a waste of $$ or an essential and needed spend to modernize the air vehicle?

It is not a waste of money. In order to retain our superiority we must spend money on new weapon systems.I rather spend money on defense than on the stupid social programs we have.

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Maybe DARPA knows.