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September 22, 2021

With another historic trip to Iceland, US stealth bombers are building ‘muscle memory’ as the Arctic heats up

B-2 stealth bomber at Keflavik Iceland — A US Air Force crew chief prepares a B-2 for departure from Keflavik Air Base, September 8, 2021.
US Air Force/Airman 1st Class Victoria Hommel

US B-2 stealth bombers spent two and half weeks operating out of Iceland in August and September.
It was the first time B-2 bombers have operated continuously from Iceland.
Iceland is in a valuable location, and the deployment reflects the US military’s increasing focus on the region.
See more stories on Insider’s business page.

US Air Force B-2 stealth bombers left Iceland this month after operating from Keflavik Air Base for two and a half weeks in a first-of-its-kind deployment that reflects the US military’s increased focus on the high north.

Three B-2s from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri arrived at Keflavik on August 23 for a Bomber Task Force deployment. BTFs began in 2018 and are part of dynamic force employment, which for bombers has meant more short-term deployments overseas or non-stop flights to and from distant regions for training.

The B-2s trained with US and British fighter jets over the North Sea in late August and early September. On September 8 they trained with Norwegian F-35s over the North Sea in an “advanced mission designed to test escort procedures, stand-off weapon employment and the suppression and destruction of air defenses.”

The bombers returned to Missouri on September 11, after conducting more a dozen multinational missions over the preceding month, the Air Force said.

B-2s first flew to Iceland in September 2019, but that was just one of their stops as they operated out of the UK.

“This is the first time the B-2 has operated continuously from Iceland,” according to Lt. Col. Matthew Howard, commander of the 110th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron, who called it a “historic deployment.”

The B-2s “did significant integration with our NATO partners” including “a lot of work with the Norwegians,” Gen. Jeff Harrigian, commander of US Air Forces in Europe and Africa, told reporters during the Air Force Association conference on Tuesday.

The US aircrews and their counterparts were able to continue refining “tactics, techniques, and procedures,” building interoperability and demonstrating the importance of what Harrigian described as “muscle memory being built just by the fact that they’re there and working through how we’re actually going to execute with” NATO allies.

The deployment to Keflavik also “provides a new forward operating location to operationalize bomber agile combat employment and maintain favorable regional balances of power” in support of the Pentagon’s Arctic Strategy, the Air Force said in a release.

‘Part of the competition’

Naval Air Station Keflavik was US Navy base during the Cold War. Iceland’s location in the center of a chokepoint known as the Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap allows aircraft there to monitor waters through which the ships and submarines of Russia’s powerful Northern Fleet would have to pass to reach the Atlantic Ocean.

The US closed its base there in 2006, but Keflavik has seen renewed activity in recent years as the US and NATO militaries seek to counter Russia’s increasingly capable and active military.

The 2018 defense budget included $14.4 million to refurbish the base’s hangars. In late 2020 the Air Force awarded another $38 million to improve airfield infrastructure there.

In addition to US Air Force aircraft, US Navy P-8 Poseidons, considered the best sub-hunting plane in use, have also resumed operating out of Keflavik.

As the Arctic has gotten more accessible, it has been a venue for heightened tensions between Russia and NATO. Air and naval forces from both sides have increased their presence and activity there significantly.

The historic BTF deployment to Iceland comes just six months after B-1 bombers conducted the first bomber deployment to Norway.

Norwegian forces have worked more closely with the US and other NATO militaries amid those tensions, and the deployment was meant to give US airmen experience operating in the region, which has been an ongoing goal for Harrigian’s command.

On September 15, Harrigian hosted senior defense officials from seven of the eight Arctic nations – all but Russia – at the first Arctic Air Chiefs Symposium, where they discussed Arctic-focused campaigns and initiatives.

The Iceland deployment is “part of the competition” that senior Air Force officials often talk about, Harrigian said Tuesday. “It really relates to the deterrent value that those capabilities bring, particularly when we leverage that with our partners.”

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September 1, 2021

The first enlisted woman to fly in a B-2 explains how she keeps the stealth bomber in the air and ready to fight

Air Force Staff Sgt. Elizabeth Lambert B-2 stealth bomber — US Air Force airmen perform a post-flight check on a B-2 Spirit after it landed at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, April 28, 2021.
US Air Force/Airman 1st Class Victoria Hommel

As a dedicated crew chief, US Air Force Staff Sgt. Elizabeth Lambert has spent thousands of hours working on the B-2.
But it wasn’t until April 31, 2021, that Lambert was able to board the stealth bomber and fly in it.
She earned the flight as the winner of the Thomas N. Barnes Crew Chief of the Year Award, which rewards the best dedicated crew chief with an incentive flight.
See more stories on Insider’s business page.

When US Air Force Staff Sgt. Elizabeth Lambert enlisted in 2013, she went out to the flight line at Whiteman Air Force Base and was told to pick which aircraft she wanted to work on.

The B-2 Spirit – America’s stealth bomber – stood out.

“I got brought out to the hangar and introduced to this oddly shaped black aircraft,” says Lambert, now a dedicated B-2 crew chief in the 509th’s Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, which services the military’s fleet of 20 operational B-2s.

The rare flying-wing design distinguishes the B-2 from other bombers. The unusual paint job and curvy triangular shape add to its mystique. “There’s no tail on it, so most people think it flies on pure magic,” Lambert says.

Lambert chose the B-2 and got to work learning what it takes to maintain one of the $2 billion stealth bombers. Designed by Northrop Corporation (now called Northrop Grumman) during the Cold War, the B-2 can release up to 40,000 pounds of both nuclear and conventional munitions.

That and the bomber’s long range and low observability make it arguably the most capable warplane in the world.

Lambert now oversees the day-to-day maintenance of her aircraft, named the Spirit of New York.

She leads three other servicemen in inspecting the aircraft before and after flights and by bringing in the necessary shops and teams to service the plane, from its hydraulics and environmental components to its flight control and communications systems.

For two years, she has watched the Spirit of New York take off and land, launching it from its dock – she and other maintainers are the last to touch the aircraft – and “catching” it upon its return. The pilots communicate over the intercom. She watches the black saucer-shaped plane whizz into the sky and quickly turn into a tiny black dot.

Lambert and her team service the bomber at Whiteman, where she and the aircraft are based, and when it deploys around the world. It’s not part of her job to know where the Spirit of New York has been or where it’s going, however.

“We put all the time in standing there for an hour and a half and getting these guys ready to go,” she says. “We see the runway and are told what order they’re going to be [taking off] in. Then we say ‘Hey, it’s up.’ But we never know where it’s going or what it’s doing.”

But on April 31, Lambert boarded the B-2 she has spent thousands of hours working on and actually flew in it.

She had earned the flight as the recipient of the annual Thomas N. Barnes Crew Chief of the Year Award, which honors the best dedicated crew chief with an incentive flight. She beat about 200 other enlisted airmen who were also nominated.

Her Spirit number, 760, marks her as the 760th person to fly in a B-2. While there are 10 active duty women B-2 pilots, Lambert is the first enlisted servicewoman to fly in one.

The night before her incentive flight, she only slept four hours. Taking off was a surprise. Despite the aircraft’s hulking figure – it is 17 feet tall, has a 172-foot wingspan, and weighs 160,000 pounds unloaded – she didn’t feel a thing.

She credits the extra smooth ride to her pilot. He was the mission commander on the aircraft, and it was his last official flight in the bomber.

She appreciated seeing the flight controls in action. “They are really cool because of how they move and keep the jet from corpusing, like a dolphin going in and out of the water,” she says.

Another new experience came during aerial refueling. They caught up to the tanker and talked to its pilot through their intercoms while getting into its air stream.

“The B-2 has a lot of lift. We’d get sucked in and do these square movements,” she says of the refuel experience. “I’m looking at the boom operator, and we’re close enough that I can see his face. It was insane.”

They hooked up to the KC-135 Stratotanker and took on some 10,000 pounds of fuel before disconnecting to continue their flight.

It was particularly surreal to go from her normal position – standing on the ground talking to the pilot over the intercom as he lands – to having her fellow maintainers catching her.

Maintainers normally greet returning pilots with sharp salutes and handshakes or fist bumps, a ritual that Lambert has now seen on both sides.

When the Spirit of New York landed, a crowd of 50 people – including many she works with every day, along with her former commanders and flight chiefs and her husband – were there waiting.

She’s grateful for the experience and to be back to her regular duty. She runs a tight ship, striving to have the cleanest jet and crew station.

Just four of the active-duty crew chiefs at Whiteman are women, and Lambert has worked 12-hour days for one and a half years straight, regularly coming in on weekends and days off, to get her job done.

“My name is on that aircraft,” she says, “and if I’m going to put my name to anything, it’s going to be as perfect as you can get it.”

Now her goal is to get her maintenance crew to also have the chance to earn an incentive flight and experience what she did.

Lambert recently took her first leave in more than two years, but she stayed local. She hasn’t flown since her B-2 experience. She knows the next trip won’t be as exciting as the last.

“I don’t think anything’s going to be that smooth,” she says.

Read the original article on Business Insider

April 1, 2021

Here’s how the legendary B-2 bomber’s stealth actually works

Air Force crew chiefs inspect on a B-2 Spirit bomber at Whiteman Air Force Base, July 12, 2012.
US Air Force photo

Only 21 B-2s were ever built, and they reportedly have a stealth profile similar to that of a large bird.
Because it’s so hard to spot, it can be a first-wave attacker, clearing air defenses and opening paths for less stealthy aircraft.
See more stories on Insider’s business page.

The B-2 Spirit is one of the most clandestine and rare planes in the world.

Only 21 were ever built, and they reportedly have a stealth profile similar to that of a large bird despite their 170-foot wingspan. And they’re invisible to many infrared seekers, despite four large engines.

Here’s how engineers made a massive plane with large engines nearly invisible to systems designed to detect threats exactly like the B-2.

The B-2’s stealth profile is the result of extensive computer testing that wasn’t possible before its design. While the F-117 and B-1 were stealth aircraft, they were designed by nerds with slide rules and minimal computer modeling because the technology and the computers necessary simply didn’t exist.

But when it was time to design the B-2, the all-powerful nerds had super computers and leveraged them to create a model that had no flat surfaces with which to reflect radar directly back to the sensor. While a machine with no flat surfaces is harder to manufacture, the increase in stealth was deemed worthy of extra costs.

If the B-2 were flying directly toward the radar, most of the waves would actually be reflected 90 degrees away from the receiver, giving the radar operators next to nothing to work with.

B 2 Spirit — A B-2 takes off at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, January 28, 2014.
US Airforce

But of course, the flying wing would lose most of its stealth if the engines were mounted outside of its high-tech form. So the engines were mounted inside with special openings for intake and exhaust that, again, would not reflect radar waves back to the dish.

That exhaust opens its own can of worms. After all, aircraft can be tracked by their infrared signatures, if only from relatively close ranges. So, the B-2 needed tech that would let it diffuse or mask its infrared emissions at ranges as short as possible.

It has a few (mostly classified) systems to help with this. The exact shape of the exhaust helps a lot, but it also cools its exhaust and mixes it with the outside air to create a final exhaust that is at nearly the same temperature as the air flowing into the intake.

This greatly frustrates pursuing missiles and fighters, but obviously still leaves it vulnerable if someone spots the plane and talks fighters into the vicinity to hunt it.

Except the B-2 has another trick up its sleeve that makes even that less likely. It’s actually extremely quiet, so much so that people at sporting events with B-2 flyovers have reported being able to speak to one another as the plane flies past.

Anyone who has worked with most other jets knows that you can typically hear them before you see them, often by a matter of hundreds of feet. It’s the sound that lets you know to look for the plane, but the B-2’s tiny acoustic signature means that most observers on the ground won’t know there’s anything in the sky to look for.

Combined, this makes the B-2 a plane with little radar observability, that’s too quiet for most people on the ground to notice it flying nearby, and it gives off little heat, frustrating missiles and fighters sent to down it.

All of this still requires good pilots and planning. Determined defenders could use low-frequency radar waves and skilled fighters to hunt down a B-2 following a too-populated or well-defended route. But the last element of B-2 stealth comes from good intelligence, allowing pilots and planners to send the bombers in through relatively undefended routes or through routes the B-2 can defeat.

Because that’s a big part of the B-2’s mission. It’s not supposed to act as the primary bomber in most circumstances. It’s a first-wave attacker, clearing the air defenses on the ground and opening “alleys” for less stealthy aircraft.

Ideally, they get a picture of the air defenses they will attack from reconnaissance aircraft like the RC-135 and are then able to dismantle them piece by piece.

But the B-2 can and has been sent against other targets, including bunkers in Iraq housing command and control elements during the invasion of that country. This is particularly useful when planners need to eliminate a target too early in the timeline to dismantle the air network first.

After all, if an enemy commander shows himself at a rally in the capital during an air campaign, you aren’t going to wait for the B-2s to finish opening the air corridors, you’re just going to send in B-2s to the final target (or you send B-1s if the B-2s can’t get there in time). You can get the radars later.

And that’s what’s so great about the B-2. While the plane costs more dollars per hour of flight than many others and carries fewer bombs than planes like the B-52 and B-1, it can hit targets that few other platforms can, largely because of its amazing stealth.

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March 12, 2021

Rare, close-up video shows a B-2 stealth bomber preparing for takeoff

Air Force B-2 bomber — A US B-2A bomber and a Dutch F-35A conduct aerial operations in support of Bomber Task Force Europe 20-2 over the North Sea, March 18, 2020.
US Air Force/Master Sgt. Matthew Plew

This rare video shows how the B-2 Spirit’s control surfaces move during pre-flight checks.
Such tests are done after start-up and during taxi to make sure the surfaces can move freely.
See more stories on Insider’s business page.

In March last year, three US Air Force B-2 Spirits, belonging to the 509th Bomb Wing and the 131st Bomb Wing, Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, operated from RAF Fairford, UK, as part of Bomber Task Force Europe 20-2 deployment.

From there, the stealth bombers carried out a variety of missions across northern Europe, including one that saw the B-2s fly toward the Arctic, over Iceland.

As usual, their stay in the UK also provided a great opportunity for local aviation enthusiasts and spotters to get some cool in-action photos and videos of the tailless aircraft.

To that respect, the clip below is particularly interesting. Posted by “Saint1 Aviation Vids” Youtube channel, that includes many great videos of B-2s, B-52s and U-2s, it shows B-2 #82-1068, “Spirit of New York,” as it carries out pre-flight checks on its control surfaces before departing RAF Fairford.

Similar tests are conducted after start-up and during taxi in order to assess that the surfaces are not obstructed or limited and can freely move.

The video shows the movement of the split rudders and elevons that on the B-2 are installed along the trailing edge of the plane. Since the aircraft has no vertical fin, the split rudders and the elevons are used to control the aircraft rotation along the vertical/yaw axis, whereas pitch and roll are controlled by means of (mid and inboard) elevons. The split-rudders also act as speed brakes.

Unfortunately, the clip doesn’t provide a clear view of the Spirit’s peculiar exhaust and the wedge-shaped flap in the middle of the trailing edge, the GLAS (Gust Load Alleviation System), that looks like the aircraft’s beaver tail and counters the rolling impact or resonance to smooth out the ride of the B-2 in turbulent conditions and extend the aircraft’s fatigue life.

Air Force test data finite elemental analysis (FEA) modeling suggest the B-2 will remain structurally sound to approximately 40,000 flight hours. This analysis also revealed that the rudder attachment points at the B-2’s wingtips are the highest structural stress areas and will be the first to fail.

Read the original article on Business Insider