Northrop B-2 Bomber

New York: Gallery Books, 1991. Presumed First U. S. Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Very good. The format is approximately 8.75 inches by 9.25 inches. 45, [1] pages. Decorative covers. Index printed inside the back cover. The author was a defense journalist specializing in the fields of aviation, guided missiles and electronics. He was formerly defense editor of Flight International, editor of Military Technology and Economics, and editor of Defense Material. He was the author of several books. Legend has it that when an elderly Jack Northrop was shown a model of a new, super-secret bomber project being developed during the 1980s, he wept. At last, his belief in the "flying wing" had been vindicated, some four decades after his original testing of the concept had been all be dismissed out of hand. Now his dream would take to the skies once again. Cloaked in the secrecy of a "black" project, and shadowed by controversy at every turn, the new bomber was finally revealed to the world in late-1998. A massive wing all be invisible to an enemy; an aircraft so complex it is literally worth more than its weight in gold. The Northrop B-2 stealth bomber had finally arrived on the world stage. This detailed account charts the history and development to date of the Northrop BB-2, complete with over 55 photographs, full color artworks, performance tables and technical diagrams. The Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit, also known as the Stealth Bomber, is an American heavy strategic bomber, featuring low-observable stealth technology designed to penetrate dense anti-aircraft defenses. A subsonic flying wing with a crew of two, the plane was designed by Northrop (later Northrop Grumman) and produced from 1987 to 2000. The bomber can drop conventional and thermonuclear weapons, such as up to eighty 500-pound class (230 kg) Mk 82 JDAM GPS-guided bombs, or sixteen 2,400-pound B83 nuclear bombs. The B-2 is the only acknowledged in-service aircraft that can carry large air-to-surface standoff weapons in a stealth configuration. Development began under the Advanced Technology Bomber (ATB) project during the Carter administration, which canceled the Mach 2-capable B-1A bomber in part because the ATB showed such promise. But development difficulties delayed progress and drove up costs. Ultimately, the program produced 21 B-2s at an average cost of $2.13 billion ((~$3.88 billion in 2022), including development, engineering, testing, production, and procurement. Building each aircraft cost an average of US$737 million, while total procurement costs (including production, spare parts, equipment, retrofitting, and software support) averaged $929 million (~$1.07 billion in 2022) per plane. The project's considerable capital and operating costs made it controversial in the U.S. Congress even before the winding-down of the Cold War dramatically reduced the desire for a stealth aircraft designed to strike deep in Soviet territory. Consequently, in the late 1980s and 1990s lawmakers shrank the planned purchase of 132 bombers to 21. As of 2015, twenty B-2s were in service with the United States Air Force, one having been destroyed in a 2008 crash. The Air Force plans to operate them until 2032, when the Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider is to replace them. The B-2 can perform attack missions at altitudes of up to 50,000 feet; it has an unrefueled range of more than 6,000 nautical miles (6,900 mi) and can fly more than 10,000 nautical miles (12,000 mi) with one midair refueling. It entered service in 1997 as the second aircraft designed with advanced stealth technology, after the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk attack aircraft. Primarily designed as a nuclear bomber, the B-2 was first used in combat to drop conventional, non-nuclear ordnance in the Kosovo War in 1999. It was later used in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya.