New B-2 Computer Processor: 1,000-Fold Better

by Kris Osborn

With a new flight management control processor designed to modernize the aircraft’s computer system, improve its weapons integration and enable it to rapidly embrace software upgrades, service officials said.

The new processor increases the performance of the avionics and on-board computer systems by about 1,000-times, Air Force officials said.

“The B-2 Flight Management Control Processor has been replaced with a modern Integrated Processor Unit. This upgrade is a quantum improvement over the legacy system, providing over a thousand times the processor throughput, memory, and network speed,” Maj. Gen. Jon Norman, Director of Global Power Programs in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, told Scout Warrior in a written statement.

The B-2 Flight Management Control Processor Upgrade, also known as the Extremely High Frequency, Increment 1 processor upgrade, completed the final aircraft install in August 2016, Air Force spokesman Capt. Michael Hertzog said.

Faster, more capable processors will enable the aircraft’s avionics, radar, sensors and communications technologies to better identify and attack enemy targets. The sensor-to-shooter time will be greatly reduced, allowing the B-2 to launch weapons much more effectively, therefore reducing its exposure to enemy attacks.

Although built in the 1980s, the B-2 is a digital airplane which uses what’s called a “glass cockpit” for flight controls and on-board systems.

The upgrade involves the re-hosting of the flight management control processors, the brains of the airplane, onto much more capable integrated processing units. This results in the laying-in of some new fiber optic cable as opposed to the mix bus cable being used right now – because the B-2’s computers from the 80s are getting maxed out and overloaded with data, Air Force officials told Scout Warrior.