The U.S. Air Force's B-2 stealth adviser is the flagship of the nation's all-embracing bang arsenal, and one of the best survivable aircraft in the world. Its different capabilities, including its stealth characteristics, acquiesce it to access the best adult defenses and authority at accident aeriform value, heavily dedicated adversary targets. The B-2 has approved its capabilities in several action scenarios, best afresh during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The B-2 is the alone U.S. aircraft that combines continued range, ample burden and stealth in a distinct platform, giving it the adeptness to activity air adeptness anywhere in the world. It can fly added than 6,000 abyssal afar unrefueled and added than 10,000 abyssal afar with aloof one aeriform refueling. With its adeptness to backpack added than 20 bags of accepted and nuclear ammunition and bear it absolutely beneath any acclimate conditions, the B-2 additionally has the adeptness to change the aftereffect of a battle with a distinct mission.
Northrop Grumman, the B-2 prime contractor, leads an industry aggregation that is alive with the Air Force to improve the B-2 to ensure that it charcoal absolutely mission able adjoin evolving common threats. A ambit of advancement programs are convalescent the B-2's lethality; its adeptness to collect, action and advertise battlefield advice with collective force commanders or added bounded aboriginal responders worldwide; and its adeptness to accept adapted ambition advice during a mission.
Twenty one aircraft were congenital in the aboriginal B-2 fleet. Today, the agile consists of 20 aircraft, afterward the loss, in Feb 2008, of the Spirit of Kansas, which comatose while demography off from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, the aboriginal such adventure in the B-2's 19 years of operation. Since 1989, B-2 aircraft accept aureate added than 14,000 sorties and accumulated added than 75,000 aerial hours after incident, an aberrant assurance record. Nineteen B-2s are currently based at Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo., home of the 509th Bomb Wing, while one aircraft is assigned to flight-testing at Edwards AFB, Calif. to validatecomputer application and weapon systems upgrades.
