Bat-winged stealth bomber eludes radar, destroys defenses from afar. Constant upgrades ensure its deadly dominance, even after 36 years.
by Kris Osborn, Warrior
Slicing through the sky with bat-like wings, eluding enemy radar with stealth technology, quietly destroying enemy air defenses from 50,000 ft and using computers to merge sensor data with targeting information -- the Air Force’s B-2 bomber … has been in the air capable of attacking targets for “36-Years.”
The B-2’s performance in Operation Midnight Hammer drew massive praise from President Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and senior Air Force Generals. The stealth platform attacks when a pilot pulls up a weapons suite screen, aligns the weapon with the target and enters information to the B-2s DED - Digital Entry Panel. B-2 Pilots explain this process, and while few details are available regarding specifics of its upgrades, today’s B-2 likely uses computer automation, AI-enabled target verification and new generation of command and control technology.
Today’s B-2s are now 36 years old, yet the platform has remained relevant and dominant for years beyond what was anticipated due to very successful modernization efforts. Today’s B-2 flies with a 1,000-fold faster computer processor, sensors able to alert crews of the location of enemy air defenses, a vastly expanded arsenal, digital cockpit upgrades and reconfigured weapons interfaces and fire control. The B-2 has been integrated with a wider and more advanced arsenal of weapons, making it increasingly capable of destroying extremely difficult to reach targets.
Stealth & Computing
Its stealth properties have also likely been maintained and upgraded with new thermal management technologies or radar absorbent materials. The computing upgrades involve 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 previously being used – because original B-2 computers from the 80s could be overloaded with data in a modern war environment.
These B-2 upgrades have been extremely important given that Chinese and Russian air defenses are reportedly modernized to detect even some stealth and able to operate on a wider range of frequencies and leverage high-speed computer processing and digital networking.
The US Air Force B-2 bombers have performed quite well in a number of conflicts over the course of many years, to include the war in Afghanistan following 9-11, Libya and others. It would make sense if many Pentagon and government leaders have lamented and in some cases, regretted, cancelling the planned B-2 fleet.
B-2 & B-21
The key question moving forward for the B-2 is that, now that it has been modernized to remain effective for many more years, how effectively will it network with the arriving fleet of B-21s. The Air Force does plan a large fleet of B-21s totalling at least 100, yet it will be many years until they arrive in large numbers. Therefore, as the B-21 arrives, it will need to interoperate effectively with the B-2 with effective networking technologies, sensing, data exchange and targeting coordination.
Not Enough B-2s
The decision to truncate the Air Force fleet of B-2 bombers to 20 years ago has arguably had a lasting and somewhat damaging impact upon the Air Force, as the service has been operating with a bomber “deficit” for many years now. The end of the Cold War led decision-makers to massively scale back a planned fleet of 75 B-2s to 20, a move which seemed to compromise the US Air Force’s ability to project large-scale stealth bombing power in any great power conflict.
Certainly a larger force of B-2s would have operated as a stronger deterrent against a great power adversary, given that large numbers of bombers would be needed to form an offensive envelope over a major adversary, destroy air defenses and open up a safer air corridor for 4th and 5th-generation bombers to attack. A major air attack campaign against an advanced great power adversary would require a large mass of attacking bombers spread across a wide combat envelope to exact a needed effect, as both Russia and China are extremely large countries with high numbers of air defenses dispersed throughout their territory protecting vital assets. An initial high-altitude bombing strike would need to cover a wide area to disable any dispersed, yet increasingly interconnected network of air defenses in order to ensure effectiveness in establishing air superiority.
New B-2 Weapons Configuration
The B-2 handles its weapons differently, too, as it is now configured with new software, fire control enhancements, and interfaces to enable greater flexibility and a much more expansive arsenal.
For example, the B-2 can deliver B-61 Mod 13, an upgraded variant of the classic nuclear bomb able to combine multiple blast effect capabilities into a single weapon. The B-2 also drops the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a weapon used in Operation Midnight Hammer, which was in development for many years. Satellite images of the bomb attacks on Iranian sites reveal somewhat small holes of entry. This is quite deliberate—Air Force has been developing earth-penetrating weapons for many years. They are configured with pointed or sharp front ends to penetrate deep into the earth and are armed with a delayed fuse that keeps the bomb from detonating until it reaches the desired depth underground. This naturally maximizes damage to targets deliberately buried beneath the earth.
Kris Osborn is the President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a highly qualified expert in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University