How the 30-Year Old B-2 Stealth Bomber Lives On to “Mass” Attack Power

By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization

Launching a “mass” of 12 B-2 stealth bombers from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri certainly emerges as a visible “deterrence” message by virtue of demonstrating the size, scope and deployability of the Air Force stealth bomber fleet. Yet this “massing” of stealth attack power involves other variables as well, lingering beneath the more self-evident intended message.

The B-2 formation introduces several critical implications relating to tactics, strategy, attack formations and advanced technology. While the US Air Force fleet of 20 B-2 Spirit Bombers has origins 30-years ago, today’s B-2 platform is an almost entirely different plane. The basic external configuration of the aircraft may resemble original B-2s in a general way, yet today’s B-2 is engineered with a 1,000-fold faster computer processor, advanced Defensive Management Systems sensors to detect and elude air defenses, new weapons applications, next-generation communications technology and, quite likely, substantial enhancements in the aircraft’s stealth properties.

elements of this formation, put together as part of the Air Force’s “Spirit Vigilance” exercise,

“Sun Tzu Mass Matters”

The significance of the large formation indicates the ongoing importance of Sun Tzu’s famous “mass matters” phrase in “The Art of War.” Despite the advent of longer range more precise weapons and sensors, fortified by increased multi-domain networking technologies, AI-enabled computing and unmanned systems, an ability to “mass” power in the air is still tactically quite significant. In an initial sense, massing B-2 widens the sphere or combat envelope in which a B-2 could attack, something of great significance against a large adversary, as high value targets are likely to be disaggregated across large swaths of territory.

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